Desano is a Tucanoan language of Colombia and Brazil. There are several alternative names, including Boleka, Desâna, and Kusibi. It is spoken primarily in northwest Brazil and southern Colombia.
Location
The primary concentration of Desano people is by the Tiquié River in Brazil and Colombia. They also reside near the Papuri River, and their respective tributaries, and on the Uaupés river, which borders Brazil and Columbia, and Negro rivers, as well as in the cities within the area (Cabalzar & Hugh-Jones).
This region is populated by a number of other ethnic communities, most notably the Hup people, with whom they share several linguistic and cultural characteristics.
Characteristics
The Desano language has a 90% lexical similarity with the Siriano language. The language is reported to have a form of whistled speech.
History
The Desano people have faced influence from outsiders when the Spanish and Portuguese explored the region. These people brought outside illnesses, one being measles, which negatively impacted the surrounding communities. These explorers also introduced Christianity into the region. The majority of the history of the Desano people is known through traditional stories told by the Desano people. Tukanoan groups suffered greatly at the hands of the Portuguese; from 1739-1760, the Portuguese arrived in the Upper Rio Negro region where they took indigenous people to market them as slaves. According to Wilson de Lima Silva, within this time frame, about 20,000 indigenous people were displaced from their homes and sold as slaves. From 1761-1829, indigenous people continued to be displaced as the Portuguese established new villages for the indigenous people. From this time until 1920 is when the arrival of missionaries was encouraged by a program run by the government called ‘civilização e catequese’ (civilization and conversion). During this time, after being taken away from their communities, indigenous people involuntarily gathered rubber during a time when natural rubber in the Amazon was being taken advantage of.
In 1916, the Salesians came to The Upper Rio Negro region and gradually released the indigenous people from slavery; however, they proceeded to send the indigenous children to boarding school where they were deprived of speaking their native language and only allowed to speak Portuguese. This system resulted in a loss of many cultural traditions and customs. In modern times, many Desano people live in villages and children study in Portuguese at school. As many Desano people no longer reside in their native communities, and children receive education in Portuguese, their native language is left behind.
Study on the Language
The earliest extensive linguistic study of Desano was conducted by Kaye in 1970. In his study, he systematically covered the semantics, phonetics, and syntax of the language. In his study, Kaye attempts to compare Desano, which he describes as “an undocumented language”, with the syntactic models from Noam Chomsky as an early way to formally document and access the syntactic patterns of Desano. Kaye has also outlined certain phonological features in Desano, namely nasal assimilation, vowel coalescence, and epenthesis. Years later, Chacon (2007) carried out a phonological-comparison project focusing on Tukano and Desano, which are sister languages within the same family. Chacon’s research has taken into consideration certain historical aspects of the land where each of the languages were spoken as an attempt to further study the impact of history on the language’s phonological aspects.
Years later, Silva (2012) carried out and published descriptive grammar research on Desano. Predominantly focusing on morphological rules and patterns, Silva has also outlined certain syntactic patterns of Desano in relation to the historical background of the language community. This includes the noun-classifier and evidentiality systems, outlined by Silva. Silva has also included certain notable phonological features of Desano, namely nasal-harmony, rarely found in other languages and previously studied by Kaye.