Arawak languages
The Arawak languages are an indigenous language family native to South America and the Caribbean .
The name Arawak originally only referred to an influential tribe in Guyana and Suriname . There are older descriptions of their language. It is still spoken in Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Venezuela to this day.
The more than 60 languages referred to as Arawak were recognized as a separate language group in the late 19th century . In almost all of the languages called “Arawak” today, the prefix of the first person singular is nu- , but the actual Arawak uses ta- . Other similarities include the second person singular prefix pi- , the relative prefix ka-, and the negative prefix ma- .
In recent decades, this undoubtedly related languages of North America are taxonomists in Maipurisch (Engl. Maipurean ) has been renamed to distinguish it from a larger, hypothetical language family to be distinguished, which is also "Arawakisch" is called.
Classification of the Arawak languages
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Maipurish
- Central Maipurish (northern Mato Grosso in Brazil)
- East Maipurisch (in the far north on the Atlantic coast of Brazil)
- North Maipurisch (north of the Amazon)
- Caribbean Group I
- Arawak (Suriname, Guyana)
- Wayuu (Wayuunaiki) ( Guajira Peninsula , Colombia)
- Paraujano (western Venezuela)
- Taíno (Greater Antilles and Bahamas)
- Caribbean Group II
- Garífuna (Honduras, Guatemala, Belize)
- Island Caribbean (Lesser Antilles)
- Inland Group I (southern Venezuela)
- Inland group II (Llanos de Orinoco, above all Colombia)
- Inland group III (northwest tributaries of the Amazon)
- Baniwa (Brazil)
- Cabiyarí (Colombia)
- Guarequena (Venezuela)
- Curripaco (Colombia)
- Tariano (Brazil)
- Inland Group IV (Amazonian)
- Wapishana group (southern Guyana and Brazil)
- Caribbean Group I
- South Maipurish
- Southern Group I (Bolivia)
- Southern Group II (Brazil)
- Pre-Andean Group (Peru)
- Purus Group (Brazil and Peru)
- Unclassified (Brazil)
- West Maipur (Peru)
- Unclassified
literature
- Ernst Kausen: The language families of the world. Part 2: Africa - Indo-Pacific - Australia - America. Buske, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-87548-656-8 , pp. 973-985.