Arawakan, also called Maipurean, is one of the most geographically widespread indigenous language families of the Americas, with member languages historically spoken from the Caribbean through the Amazon basin into Bolivia and Paraguay. Most Arawakan languages today are spoken by small communities, though Taino, an extinct Arawakan language of the Caribbean, contributed loanwords such as hurricane and canoe to English.
Facts
RegionFrom the eastern slopes of the central Andes in Peru and Bolivia, across the Amazon basin of Brazil, north into Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and Colombia, and as far north as Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala 1 Proto-Language StatusProto-Arawakan phonology has been reconstructed, most recently by Nikulin (2019), building on earlier reconstructions by Aikhenvald (2002) 1 Partially Attested
Speaker CountConfirmed: Wayuu, the family's largest named language, has about 300,000 speakers. Open: no total across all roughly 64 Arawakan languages was found in this source. Connections
Associated With
Aikhenvald defining fieldwork, including her 2003 grammar of Tariana, documents the Arawakan language family of the Brazilian Amazon basin.
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Arawakan Languages
WikipediaWikipedia, Arawakan languages, section Geographic distribution, first paragraph
The Arawakan languages are spoken by peoples occupying a large swath of territory, from the eastern slopes of the central Andes Mountains in Peru and Bolivia, across the Amazon basin of Brazil, northward into Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and Colombia on the northern coast of South America, and as far north as Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala.
Wikipedia, Arawakan languages, section Geographic distribution, speaker-count paragraph
Wayuu [Goajiro], with about 300,000 speakers
Wikipedia, Arawakan languages, section Proto-language
Based on Nikulin's (2019) reconstruction, Proto-Arawakan phonology featured a relatively simple syllabic structure
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