| Description | Elvira is the daughter of Irma and Santos. The community identifies her as being a speaker of the Wërechikana/Orechicano variant of the Yawarana language. She did not receive formal education in Spanish (nor Yawarana) and did not live as a child outside of the Yawarana community. As other men from the community from his father's generation (Giordani 1995), her father decided his children should learn Spanish instead of Yawarana. The 2015 speaker census compiled by the Yawarana organization reported she was then 50 years old. Elvira tells she became fluent in Yawarana at about 14 years old, motivated to communicate with her sister-in-law, Aurora. She says she got fluent by learning and repeating over and over one sentence in Yawarana each day. |
