Paraujano language

Paraujano is an Arawakan language of the Northern Arawakan, or Ta-Arawakan, branch, spoken in the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela's Zulia state by the Paraujano, or Anu, indigenous people. It derives from Guajiro but is a distinct language rather than a dialect of it, the two having diverged around AD 900 according to lexicostatistical analysis. Of roughly 21,000 ethnic Paraujano, UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger classifies the language as Critically Endangered, and as of 2014 only one fluent speaker remained, a thirty-year-old named Yofri Marquez who learned the language from his grandmother, alongside a few elderly partial speakers; industrial petroleum development in the early twentieth century accelerated the decline by drawing the community into contact with newcomers, though revitalization efforts begun in the 2010s now include instruction in six regional elementary schools and new cultural organizations.