Lokono language

Lokono, also called Arawak, is a language of the Arawakan family, part of the Ta-Arawakan subgroup within Northern Arawakan, spoken by the Lokono people of the Guianas region across eastern Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and French Guiana. Speakers themselves call it Lokono Dian, meaning the people's speech. Roughly 2,500 people retain fluent or semi-fluent command of the language, only about 5 percent of the ethnic Lokono population, and UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger classifies it as critically endangered, its decline driven by younger generations being taught national languages rather than Lokono by their elders.