Timoto

Timoto was the highland language of the Timote people, the southern branch of the Timoto–Cuica complex of the Venezuelan Andes, spoken through the Motatán and Chama valleys and the Tatuy plain. Its name has been traced to ti-motɨ, meaning speakers of Mutú; mutú or mukú recurs as a place name and may have meant people, community or village.

Together with Cuicas it formed a decimal-counting language with no proven relation to the surrounding families. Its speakers farmed irrigated stone terraces and grew potatoes and maize. After Mérida was founded on their Tatuy lands in 1558, clashes forced the settlers to move the town within a year.

Under Mérida and its estates the Timote villages were slowly absorbed into Spanish-speaking life. The old speech survived only in highland hamlets and in fragmentary vocabularies collected long after the conquest.