Wayuu language

Wayuu, also called Wayuunaiki, is an Arawakan language of the northern Ta-Arawakan branch spoken by roughly 400,000 indigenous Wayuu people on the Guajira Peninsula and around Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia. Estimates put speakers at roughly 300,000 in Venezuela as of 2012 and 120,000 in Colombia as of 2008, representing about half of the ethnic Wayuu population in each country. UNESCO classifies Wayuu as vulnerable and Ethnologue rates it as developing, with some sources reporting that a mixed Wayuu-Spanish variety is displacing the language, though this trend is disputed.