Wapishana language

Wapishana is an Arawakan language of the Wapishanan, or Rio Branco, grouping within the Maipurean family's Northern branch, spoken across the Guyana-Brazil border region, with its largest concentration of speakers in the Canta and Bonfim municipalities of Brazil's Roraima state, where the Serra da Lua region recognized it as an official language in 2014. About 13,000 native speakers were recorded as of 2000. Formal education efforts began in 1987 when Wapishana entered use as a teaching language in Indigenous schools, and Roraima Federal University created an extension program for learning the language in 2009, while in Guyana organizations such as Wapichan Wadauniinao Ati'o support its maintenance; intensive contact with the unrelated Cariban language Pemon has led the two languages to borrow heavily from each other.