Kwaza, also spelled Kwazá or Koaiá, is an endangered Amazonian language spoken by about 25 of the Kwaza people on the Tubarão-Latundê indigenous reserve in Rondônia, Brazil. Although often called an isolate, specialists now consider it more accurately unclassified: it shares grammatical features, including its classifier system and inclusive and exclusive pronouns, with the neighboring languages Aikanã and Kanoê, but it remains unclear whether these similarities reflect a genuine family relationship or long contact between the three communities.
Facts
RegionSpoken in the south of the state of Rondonia, Brazil, among the Kwaza people. 1 Speaker CountA 2004 count in the same article gives 54 people speaking Kwaza day to day, more than half of them children. Proto-Language StatusKwaza is an unclassified language, treated as an isolate. It shares grammatical traits with the neighboring Aikana and Kanoe languages, but researchers have not established whether this reflects common descent or long contact. 1 In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Kwaza Language
Wikimedia FoundationStatus section
living in the south of the state of Rondônia, Brazil
Lead sentence 1, speaker-count clause
spoken by 25 of the Kwaza people of Brazil
Lead sentence 2
Kwaza is an unclassified language.
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