The indigenous languages of South America are those whose origin dates back to the

pre-Columbian era In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

. The subcontinent has great linguistic diversity, but, as the number of speakers of

indigenous languages An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...

is diminishing, it is estimated that it could become one of the least linguistically diverse regions of the planet. About 600 indigenous languages are known from South America, Central America, and the Antilles (see

List of indigenous languages of South America This article lists the indigenous languages of South America. Extinct languages are marked by dagger signs (†). Demographics by country Demographics of indigenous languages of South America by country as of 2012, as reported by Crevels (2012): ...

), although the actual number of languages that existed in the past may have been substantially higher.

Origins

The indigenous languages of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

and the

Antilles The Antilles (; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Antiy; es, Antillas; french: Antilles; nl, Antillen; ht, Antiy; pap, Antias; Jamaican Patois: ''Antiliiz'') is an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mex ...

completely covered the subcontinent and the Antilles at the beginning of the 16th century. The estimates of the total population are very imprecise, ranging between ten and twenty million inhabitants. At the beginning of 1980, there were about 16 million speakers of indigenous languages; three quarters of them lived in the Central Andes. The number of existing tribes and ethnic groups is around 1500, although some authors have suggested it might reach 2000. However, it is uncertain if each of these groups has a unique language, so the figures likely indicate an upper bound for the actual number of languages spoken. For many of the known historical groups, there is no record of their language and many of them are extinct today. There is only one record of some 550 or 600 languages, with some 180 of them totally extinct today. In many cases, the fragmented records do not allow us to decide if they have to do with different languages or of divergent but mutually intelligible

dialects The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

of the same language.

Relationships with North America and Mesoamerica

Since the indigenous people of South America are historically from North America, the problem of the origin involves looking for genetic and linguistic relationships with the indigenous groups of North America and Mesoamerica. Currently the only linguistic family of South America that shows a relationship with languages situated outside the region are the

Chibchan languages The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...

, for which some evidence has shown that they are related to the

Misumalpan The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples on the east coast of Nicaragua and nearby areas. The name "Misumalpan" was devised by John Alden Mason and is composed of syllables ...

and Lencan languages of Central America. In the 1970s, it was proposed that the Uru-Chipaya languages of Bolivia could be related to the

Mayan languages The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...

of Mesoamerica, but while this proposal was initially accepted,

Campbell Campbell may refer to: People Surname * Campbell (surname), includes a list of people with surname Campbell Given name * Campbell Brown (footballer), an Australian rules footballer * Campbell Brown (journalist) (born 1968), American television ne ...

argued very strongly against it.

Study of the South American languages

The first grammar of a South American language was that of

classical Quechua Classical Quechua is either of two historical forms of Quechua, the exact relationship and degree of closeness between which is controversial, and which have sometimes been identified with each other. These are: # the variety of Quechua that was ...

published by Domingo de Santo Tomás in 1560. The missionaries of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries carried out an intense activity of data collection, grammar writing (usually called ''language arts''), dictionaries, and catechisms, in order to

evangelize In Christianity, evangelism (or witnessing) is the act of preaching the gospel with the intention of sharing the message and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians who specialize in evangelism are often known as evangelists, whether they are in ...

the indigenous populations. A good amount of linguistic records also appear in chronicles and official records. Much of the information from this period was summarized by

Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro Lorenzo may refer to: People * Lorenzo (name) Places Peru * San Lorenzo Island (Peru), sometimes referred to as the island of Lorenzo United States * Lorenzo, Illinois * Lorenzo, Texas * San Lorenzo, California, formerly Lorenzo * Lorenzo State ...

in his work ''Idea dell'universo'' (1778–87), and in the work by

Johann Christoph Adelung Johann Christoph Adelung (8 August 173210 September 1806) was a German grammarian and philologist. Biography He was born at Spantekow, in Western Pomerania, and educated at schools in Anklam and Berge Monastery, Magdeburg, and the University o ...

and

Johann Severin Vater Johann Severin Vater (; May 27, 1771, Altenburg – March 16, 1826, Halle) was a German theologian, biblical scholar, and linguist. Biography He was a student and professor at Jena and Halle. In 1809, he became professor at Königsberg. In 1820 ...

''Mithridates'' (1806–17). Subsequently, most of the information collected first hand was compiled by ethnographers in the first half of the twentieth century. Despite the magnitude and fundamental nature of the works of this period, its technical quality is below that achieved in other parts of the world, which is why South America, along with

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

, was one of the worst-known parts from a linguistic point of view. Since the 1940s, the number of works about the languages of South America has grown significantly, carried out fundamentally by linguists and missionaries well trained in linguistics. However, there still exist many important gaps that affect the descriptive level, and few languages have been widely described. That has hurt comparative, historic, and typological work on the languages of South America. The descriptive work has had problems due to the shortage of linguists and the rapid extinction of many languages, often situated in remote and difficult to reach areas that require urgent study before they disappear completely. These languages produce scientific interest since their vocabulary reflects the traditional culture and contains important data about the fauna, flora, and local history of little-known regions. In addition, indigenous people have a right to bilingual education in some countries and for that education to be successful, it is important to rely on good descriptive material of indigenous languages.

''Urheimat'' of some linguistic families

For some of the main linguistic families of South America, homeland groups have been proposed, or ''

Urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...

s'', grouping them from where they originated. For example, it seems quite clear that

Tupian languages The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani. Homeland and ''urheimat'' Rodrigues (2007) considers the Proto-Tupian urheimat to be somewhere betwee ...

expanded from Rondônia, which is an area of greater diversification; in fact, almost all Tupian languages outside of Rondônia belong to only one branch of the nine branches that form the Tupian family. This principle that the original area of a linguistic family is usually also the most diversified has been questioned by some authors, although it is one of the main tools to propose an area of original expansion for most language families. Recently, the

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

relationship between

, Lencan languages, and Misumalpan languages has been demonstrated, which suggests that these languages originated in a region near the south of the Mesoamerican area and therefore, Chibchan languages will have expanded from the north to

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

and northeast of Colombia. Similarly, it is conjectured that the Caribbean languages would have expanded from east to west, and from there some groups moved to the eastern Amazon and others to the Caribbean islands, where they were expanding in the fifteenth century upon the arrival of the Europeans to America. Jolkesky (2016) speculates that from around 2,200 B.C. to 1,800 B.C., the banks of the Amazon River had been occupied by a continuous chain of language families. They are listed below in order, beginning from the mouth of the Amazon River to the upper Amazon and Marañón Rivers.Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho De Valhery. 2016.
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Brasília The University of Brasília ( pt, Universidade de Brasília, UnB) is a federal public university in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. It was founded in 1960 and has since consistently been named among the top five Brazilian universities and the ...

. #Pre-Proto- Cariban (from the Xingu to

Tapajós The Tapajós ( pt, Rio Tapajós ) is a river in Brazil. It runs through the Amazon Rainforest and is a major tributary of the Amazon River. When combined with the Juruena River, the Tapajós is approximately long. It is one of the largest clearw ...

confluence) #Pre-Proto- Nambikwaran (

confluence) #Pre-Proto- Peba-Yagua ( Madeira confluence) #Pre-Proto- Kwaza ( Madeira confluence) #Pre-Proto- Puinave-Nadahup (Lower

Madeira River The Madeira River ( pt, Rio Madeira, link=no ) is a major waterway in South America. It is estimated to be in length, while the Madeira-Mamoré is estimated near or in length depending on the measuring party and their methods. The Madeira is ...

) #Pre-Proto- Jivaroan ( Rio Negro confluence) #Pre-Proto-

Yanomami The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Etymology The ethnonym ''Yanomami' ...

(along the Lower Rio Negro) #Pre-Proto- Arawan ( Purus confluence) #Pre-Proto- Harakmbut-Katukinan ( Tefé confluence) #Pre-Proto- Bora-Muinane ( Japurá, Jutaí, Juruá confluences) #Proto- Pano-Takanan ( Içá and Jutaí confluences) #Pre-Proto- Witotoan (upper Amazon River) #Pre-Proto- Zaparoan ( Napo confluence) #Pre-Proto-

Urarina The Urarina are an indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon Basin ( Loreto) who inhabit the valleys of the Chambira, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. According to both archaeological and historical sources, they have resided in the Chambira ...

(

Ucayali The Ucayali River ( es, Río Ucayali, ) is the main headstream of the Amazon River. It rises about north of Lake Titicaca, in the Arequipa region of Peru and becomes the Amazon at the confluence of the Marañón close to Nauta city. The city ...

and Marañón confluence) #Pre-Proto- Cahuapanan ( Huallaga and Marañón confluences) ''Urheimat'' of other language families: *Pre-Proto-

Chibchan The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...

: Lower

Magdalena River The Magdalena River ( es, Río Magdalena, ; less commonly ) is the main river of Colombia, flowing northward about through the western half of the country. It takes its name from the biblical figure Mary Magdalene. It is navigable through much of ...

Valley *Pre-Proto- Warao:

Orinoco Delta The Orinoco Delta is a vast river delta of the Orinoco River, located in eastern Venezuela. Location The Orinoco Delta is one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela. It covers the whole of Delta Amacuro State and a few square kilometers of ...

*Proto- Duho: Upper Inírida, Upper Vaupés, and Upper Apaporis basins *Pre-Proto- Tukanoan: Andean foothills and Upper Caquetá basin *Pre-Proto- Barbacoan: Ecuadorian Andes *Pre-Proto- Mochica:

Daule River The Daule River is a river in Ecuador, in Guayas Province. At Guayaquil, it joins the Babahoyo River; from that point the confluence becomes the Guayas River. Cities along the river * Pichincha, Ecuador * Balzar *Colimes * Palestina * Santa L ...

basin *Pre-Proto- Cholon-Hibito: Upper Santiago and Upano basins *Pre-Proto- Macro-Arawakan: Middle and Upper

basins *Pre-Proto- Candoshi-Shapra: Upper Huallaga basin in the Peruvian Highlands *Pre-Proto-

Quechuan Quechua (, ; ), usually called ("people's language") in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely ...

: Lake Junín region *Pre-Proto- Jaqi: middle Mantaro basin in the Peruvian Highlands *Pre-Proto- Mapudungun: coast of southern Peru *Pre-Proto- Kunza: sources of the Urubamba and Apurimac Rivers *Pre-Proto- Uru-Chipaya: shores of

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, i ...

* Proto-Tupian:

Roosevelt Roosevelt may refer to: *Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th U.S. president * Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), 32nd U.S. president Businesses and organisations * Roosevelt Hotel (disambiguation) * Roosevelt & Son, a merchant bank * Rooseve ...

and Upper Aripuanã basins *Proto- Macro-Jê : Mato Grosso, from the São Lourenço River to the Rio das Mortes *Pre-Proto- Macro-Mataguayo-Guaykuru:

Pantanal The Pantanal () is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and ...

Classification

Although some of the classifications are based on geographic, ethnographic, or cultural criteria, these methods are not valid from a linguistic point of view, even though on some occasions there are correlations between them and a genuine

relationship. The previous correlation is supported only in branches or subgroups, but within the more extensive and diversified linguistic families, the correlation between cultural similarity and linguistic relationship is notably reduced, becoming random and arbitrary. Although families like Cariban languages or

are formed by villages with typical cultures of the tropical jungle, there are villages that speak Tupian languages, like

Aché The Aché ( ) are an indigenous people of Paraguay. They are hunter-gatherers living in eastern Paraguay. From the earliest Jesuit accounts of the Aché in the 17th century until their peaceful outside contacts in the 20th century, the Aché w ...

and Sirionó, who have very different cultures from those of the tropical jungle. And equally, the villages of a homogeneous cultural area like the eastern slopes of the Andes in fact, belong to unrelated linguistic families. In the same manner, isolated languages, or less diversified families, tend to concentrate in marginal areas, while

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

, that is a family of few languages not very diversified, occupies a very prominent place both from a historical and a demographic point of view.

Problems with the classification

The major part of the proper linguistic classification of the languages of South America has been done on the basis of vocabulary lists and some grammatical traits. That procedure, although it leads to the clear recognition of the top-level genetic groups, does not distinguish well between the coincidences and the lexical loans of the words retained from the common

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...

. Also the

glottochronology Glottochronology (from Attic Greek γλῶττα ''tongue, language'' and χρόνος ''time'') is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages.Sheila Embleton ...

, which is more criticizable to find relationships of higher levels, has been used extensively. Just recently the

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...

has been applied carefully and patiently to find relationships between the identifiable phylogenetic subgroups from a simple list of vocabulary. For that reason, the phylogenetic classifications of the languages of America are far from definitive, and the best of them, in the best of cases, are only an approximation of the real relationships. For that reason, many proposed families like Macro-Arawakan or

Macro-Chibchan Macro-Chibchan is a proposed grouping of the languages of the Lencan, Misumalpan, and Chibchan families into a single large phylum (macrofamily). History The Lencan and Misumalpan languages were once included in the Chibchan family proper, but ...

are questionable because evidence that exists in their favor is sporadic, debatable, and not very solid. The number of dead languages with scarce records is also very high among the languages of South America. Those languages are frequently labeled as

unclassified language An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding inf ...

s, when in reality they are unclassifiable because the recorded material relies on unverifiable philological interpretations and extremely scarce data with which it is not possible to establish a relationship unequivocally, as is the case with living languages for which data can be collected in sufficient numbers to decide if they are related to other languages or are genuine isolated languages. Another important difficulty is the multiplicity of names used for South American languages. Many times the names reflect orthographic conventions of different European languages (Spanish, Portuguese, English) or simply the whim of each author when referring to a language among the names of tribes, dialects, or groups related to that language. There are cases of fictional languages that appear in the classifications, when in fact it is an alternative denomination for another language; in other cases, it is not possible to decide if two different names represent two different languages or close dialects of the same language. And vice versa, sometimes the same name has been used to refer to unrelated languages; for example, the term "catuquina" can refer to a family of languages, to Katukinan language, a particular language of the catuquina family, or another language of the Pano-Tacanan family, even Catuquinarú language seems to have been a group that spoke a

Tupian language The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani. Homeland and ''urheimat'' Rodrigues (2007) considers the Proto-Tupian urheimat to be somewhere between ...

. Similarly, the terms "

tapuya The Pira-tapuya, or variations like Pira-Tapuia, Piratapuyo, etc., or Tapuya for short, are an indigenous people of the Amazon regions. They live along the Vaupés River in Colombia and in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. Languages The Pira-tapuy ...

", a Tupian term for "enemy", has been applied to many unrelated languages. The lack of orthographic standardization and the multiplicity of names for the same language sometimes make it difficult to compare among classifications of different authors.

Important classifications

The first well-founded classification that used proper linguistic data is that of the American anthropologist D. G. Brinton (1891), which recognized 73 families on the basis of grammatical similarities and a brief list of vocabulary. In 1913, another anthropologist, Alexander Chamberlain, published a very influential classification that for many years was considered as a basic reference, although that classification did not provide enough details about its foundation. The classification of the French anthropologist

Paul Rivet Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 21 March 1958) was a French ethnologist known for founding the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. In his professional work, Rivet is known for his theory that South America was originally populated in pa ...

(1924) far surpassed all previous ones, providing a large amount of linguistic data and evidence that had been unpublished until then; that classification recognized 77 families and was based on lexical similarities. The Czech American

Čestmír Loukotka Čestmír Loukotka (12 November 1895 – 13 April 1966) was a Czechoslovak linguist. His daughter was Jarmila Loukotková. Career Loukotka proposed a classification for the languages of South America based on several previous works. This ...

contributed two more classifications (1935, 1944). Along the lines of Rivet, the first one extended the number of families to 94, and the second revised the previous one and recognized 114 families. The largest number of families in Loukotka's classifications was due to the discovery of new languages, and because he separated some of the more uncertain groups in Rivet's classification into different families. Rivet and Loukotka worked together on a new classification (1952) that proposed 108 families. During much of the second half of the 20th century, the reference classification was a later revision of Loukotka (1968) that set the number of families to 117. Other existing classifications are those of

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

(1956), revised later (1987), Morris Swadesh's (1964) and one by Jorge Suárez(1973). These propose a reduction in the number of subgroups and, at least the first two authors, accept the Amerind hypothesis; that ultimately all of the families of America (except Eskimo-Aleut and

Na-Dene Na-Dene (; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included, but is now considered ...

) are related. These classifications have been criticized by most Americanists, who prefer the more conservative and less certain classifications, even if they do include a large number of families. More recently,

Terrence Kaufman Terrence Kaufman (1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguisti ...

(1994) and

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeri ...

(1997) have proposed their own classifications, the first one more in line with Greenberg and Swadesh ("mergers") and the second more in line with Loukotka ("splitters"). One committed classification divides the South American languages into about 40 families formed by several elements and a significant number of isolated languages. Among the well-established families are: The isolated or

s include:

Languages by geographic region

Below is a list of South American language families and isolates grouped by geographic region. The inventory of language families and isolates is partly based on Campbell (2012). Each region is higlighted in bold, while language isolates and individual languages are highlighted in ''italics''. * Arawakan * Je–Tupi–Carib ** Cariban **

Tupian The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani. Homeland and ''urheimat'' Rodrigues (2007) considers the Proto-Tupian urheimat to be somewhere between ...

** Macro-Jê *** Jê *** Jabutian *** Kamakã *** Karajá *** Krenakan *** Maxakalian ***'' Jaikó'' ***'' Ofayé'' ***'' Rikbaktsá'' ***''

Chiquitano The Chiquitano or Chiquitos are an indigenous people of Bolivia, with a small number also living in Brazil. The Chiquitano primarily live in the Chiquitania tropical savanna of Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia, with a small number also living in ...

'' ***'' Guató'' ? *Eastern Brazil ** Karirian ** Purían **'' Taruma'' **'' Gamela'' **'' Baenan'' **'' Katembri'' **'' Natú'' **'' Pankararú'' **'' Tarairiú'' **'' Tuxá'' **'' Wamoé'' **'' Xokó'' **'' Xukurú'' **''

Yaté Yaté is a commune in the South Province of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. The Yaté Dam and Blue River Provincial Park are located within the commune. Geography Climate Yaté has a tropical rainforest ...

'' **'' Otí'' * Orinoco (

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

) ** Yanomaman ** Arutani–Sape ? ***'' Arutani'' ***'' Sapé'' ***'' Máku'' (Jukude) **'' Warao'' **''

Guamo Guamo is a town and municipality in the Tolima department of Colombia. The population of the municipality was 30,516 as of the 2018 census. References Municipalities of Tolima Department {{Tolima-geo-stub ...

'' ** Otomacoan **''

Yaruro The Yaruro people (or Pumé, according to their self-determination) are a Circum-Caribbean indigenous people, native to the ecoregion of Llanos in Venezuela, located west of the Orinoco River.

'' ** Duho ? *** Sáliban ***'' Betoi'' ***''

Hodï The Hodï or Jotï (from the Hodï word for "people") are a small group of indigenous people who live in the Amazon rainforest in Venezuela. The last census held in Venezuela, in 2011, registered 982 individuals identifying as Hodï; a 2016 estima ...

'' *** Ticuna–Yuri *Andes (Colombia and Venezuela) **'' Cofán'' **'' Camsá'' **'' Andaquí'' **

Paezan Paezan (also Páesan, Paezano, Interandine) may be any of several hypothetical or obsolete language-family proposals of Colombia and Ecuador named after the Paez language. Proposals Currently, Páez (Nasa Yuwe) is best considered either a langu ...

** Tiniguan ** Timotean ** Jirajaran *Amazon ( Colombia, Japurá– Vaupés area) **

Tucanoan Tucanoan (also Tukanoan, Tukánoan) is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. Language contact Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Arutani, Paez, Sape, Taruma, Witoto-Okaina, Saliba-Hodi, ...

** Bora–Witoto ? ***

Boran Boran (also spelled Buran, Middle Persian: ; New Persian: پوران‌دخت, ''Pūrāndokht'') was Sasanian queen (or ''banbishn'') of Iran from 630 to 632, with an interruption of some months. She was the daughter of king (or '' shah'') Khos ...

*** Witotoan ** Andoque–Urequena ** Guajiboan ** Nadahup **'' Puinave'' *Pacific coast ( Colombia and Ecuador) **

** Chocoan ** Barbacoan **'' Yurumanguí'' **'' Esmeralda'' *Pacific coast (

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = National seal , national_motto = "Firm and Happy f ...

) ** Sechura–Catacao ** Chimuan ? *** Cañari–Puruhá ***'' Mochica'' *Amazon (

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = National seal , national_motto = "Firm and Happy f ...

) ** Pano–Tacanan ** Hibito–Cholon ** Cahuapanan ** Jivaroan **'' Candoshi'' **'' Omurano'' **'' Munichi'' **''

Waorani The Huaorani, Waorani, or Waodani, also known as the Waos, are an Indigenous people from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador ( Napo, Orellana, and Pastaza Provinces) who have marked differences from other ethnic groups from Ecuador. The alternate ...

'' **'' Taushiro'' **''

'' **'' Tequiraca'' ** Saparo–Yawan ? *** Peba–Yagua *** Zaparoan *Amazon ( Amazonas and Mato Grosso) **Arawan–Harákmbut–Katukinan ? *** Arawan *** Harákmbut–Katukinan **Mura–Matanawí? *** Muran ***'' Matanawí'' **'' Trumai'' * Mamoré–Guaporé **

Chapacuran The Chapacuran languages are a nearly extinct Native American language family of South America. Almost all Chapacuran languages are extinct, and the four that are extant are moribund. They are spoken in Rondônia in the southern Amazon Basin of ...

**'' Mure'' ** Nambikwaran ** Bororoan **'' Cayuvava'' **'' Itonama'' **'' Movima'' **'' Canichana'' ** Mosetenan **'' Yuracaré'' **'' Leco'' **'' Aikanã'' **''

Kanoê The Kanoê (also as the Canoe, Kapixaná and Kapixanã) are an indigenous people of southern Rondônia, Brazil, near the Bolivian border. There are two major groups of Kanoê: one residing in the region of the Guaporé River and another in the Ri ...

'' **'' Kwazá'' **'' Irantxe'' *Andes (Peru, Bolivia, and Chile) **'' Culle'' ** Quechumaran ? ***

***

Aymaran Aymaran (also Jaqi or Aru) is one of the two dominant language families in the central Andes alongside Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru and Kawki languages of Peru. Hardman (1978) prop ...

**'' Puquina'' ** Uru–Chipaya **'' Kunza'' **'' Mapudungun'' * Chaco–Pampas ** Mataco–Guaicuru ? *** Matacoan *** Guaicuruan ***'' Guachí'' ***''

Payaguá The Payaguá people, also called Evueví and Evebe, were an ethnic group of the Guaycuru peoples in the Northern Chaco of Paraguay. The Payaguá were a river tribe, living, hunting, fishing, and raiding on the Paraguay River. The name ''Pa ...

'' ** Mascoyan ** Zamucoan ** Charruan ** Huarpean ** Lule–Vilelan ** Chonan *Far South ** Qawasqaran **'' Yaghan'' **'' Chono''

Linguistic areas

There are at least two large areas with clearly different characteristics separated by a transition zone; these are the

Andean The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S l ...

and the

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

area. Although there are more frequent features in each of these areas, the two areas harbor a great linguistic diversity, the differences being basically in the frequency with which certain features appear in each of them. Below are historical linguistic spheres of influence in South America as listed by Jolkesky (2016): : Language families in South America have had extensive contact with other over millennia. Jolkesky (2016) has found lexical parallels among the following language families, most of which are due to borrowing and contact rather than inheritance:

Linguistic characteristics

The languages of South America are enormously diverse. There are no common characteristics to all of them since they belong to different linguistic families, and as a whole do not form a linguistic area where there has been convergence to certain common features. The more frequent common characteristics are similar to those found in the rest of the world, so there are no peculiarities of the languages of South America.

Grammar

As is the case worldwide, the majority of South American languages, such as Andean languages and

Bora–Witoto languages Bora–Witóto (also Bora–Huitoto, Bora–Uitoto, or, ambiguously, Witotoan) is a proposal to unite the Boran languages, Boran and Witotoan languages, Witotoan language families of southwestern Colombia (Amazonas Department, Colombia, Amazonas ...

, predominantly use suffixes. It is also common to find

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to r ...

s that use many suffixes and a few prefixes, as is the case with Arawakan and Pano-Tacanan languages. Some language families use prefixes and suffixes, but only a few per word as in Cariban,

, and Macro-Jê (it has been proposed that these three families could form a Je-Tupi-Carib superfamily). A few languages extensively use prefixes and even more suffixes, like Hibito–Cholon languages. No languages have been found that use prefixes exclusively to mark grammatical relations.

Isolating language An isolating language is a type of language with a morpheme per word ratio close to one, and with no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme. Examples of widely spoken isolating language ...

s, which practically lack affixes, such as Shelknam and Tehuelche, are quite rare in South America. The morphological complexity of words varies enormously; in Guarani (Tupian), the average is three morphemes, while in Piro (Arawakan), it is six morphemes. In Yuracaré, many words are formed by reduplication, a procedure also used systematically in Tupian languages. The composition is very frequent, just like in the rest of the world, although it is a rare procedure in Chonan languages that are highly isolating. Nominal incorporation in the verb is also frequent in America. As for the classical morphological types, among the agglutinating languages, Quechua, Pano-Tacanan languages, or Mapuche are found. Cariban and Tupian languages are slightly

fusional Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. For e ...

, and Chon languages are the clearest case of isolating languages. Guaicuru languages (Mataco–Guaicuru) have a grammatical gender distinction in the noun, although other languages have special morphemes to differentiate masculine and feminine in the markings of a person of the verb (Arawakan, Witoto,

). Languages without a

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

distinction are the most numerous, just like in the rest of the world. Regarding

grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages pres ...

, distinction between singular and plural is optional in the third person of many Cariban and Tupian languages, whereas

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who s ...

and Yaghan obligatorily distinguish the singular from the dual and the plural.

Grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

is usually indicated by suffixes or post-positions more often than with prepositions. Nominal classifiers that classify nouns according to the shape of the object or the way they appear naturally are frequent in Chibchan, Tucanoan, and Yanomaman languages. It is also common in some languages (Guaicuru, Mataco, Cocama) for some words to have different forms if the speaker is male or female. In

personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...

s, the distinction of

clusivity In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...

in the first person of the plural form is used frequently. It is also common to mark, in the third person, if the referent is present or absent, sitting or standing, and other distinct incidental similarities ( Movima, Guaicuru). Possession is indicated by prefixes or suffixes. The systems that mark possession of the noun coincide with the markings of subject of the intransitive verbs quite frequently. On the verb, it is common to mark both the person of the subject, the person of the object, and the negation within the same verbal form. Grammatical aspect and grammatical tense are recorded in virtually all languages, although its realization varies greatly from one language to others: in Aguaruna, there is a future verb form, along with three past verb forms that differ according to the relative distance in time, while Guarani differentiates future forms from non-future forms. Other languages, like Jébero, basically express the grammatical mood, making the other verbal categories less important. It is also very common to use directionals or affixes that indicate movement with respect to the speaker, or the listener, or the location in the verbal action (Quechua, Záparo, Itonama). Other affixes that are given are "manners" of how the action is carried out (hitting, biting, walking, ...); these appear in Jébero or

Ticuna The Ticuna (also Magüta, Tucuna, Tikuna, or Tukuna) are an indigenous people of Brazil (36,000'')'', Colombia (6,000), and Peru (7,000). They are the most numerous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon. History The Ticuna were originally a tribe that ...

. Cariban languages also indicate whether an action was carried out collectively or individually. For the grammatical modifier, the use of equations is frequent, formed by the simple juxtaposition of subject, features that are common in many languages. This contrasts with European languages that frequently use

linking verb In traditional grammar and guide books, a linking verb is a verb that describes the subject by connecting it to a predicate adjective or predicate noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of obj ...

s in this type of predication.

Phonology

As with grammar, there are no characteristics common to the languages of South America. There is a lot of variation in the number of

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s: in

Jaqaru Jaqaru (''Haq'aru'') is a language of the Aymaran family. It is also known as Jaqi and Aru. It is spoken in the districts of Tupe and Catahuasi in Yauyos Province, Lima Region, Peru. Most of the 2000 ethnic Jaqaru have migrated to Lima. Kawki, ...

(

), 42 segmental phonemes are distinguished, while in Campa (Arawakan), only 17 are distinguished. Jaqaru has 36 consonants, while Makusi (Cariban) has only 11. Some Quechua varieties have only three vowels, while Apinayé (Jê) has ten oral vowels and seven nasal vowels. A dialect of Tucanoan distinguishes only three points of articulation, while Uru–Chipaya distinguishes nine points of articulation. The voiceless stops /p, t, k/ appear in virtually all languages, while the corresponding sounds /b, d, g/ are frequently absent, and fricatives like /f, v, z/ may most often be missing. Glottalized stops appear in Andean and Chibchan languages. Aspirated stops are used in Quechua and Aymaran languages, but in general they are rare. Also, palatalized consonants as in the Puinave language are not very frequent. A contrast between velars and post-velars is used in Quechua, Aymaran, and Chonan, while velars and labiovelars are contrasted in Tacana and Siona.

Retroflex A retroflex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal (Help:IPA/English, /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated betw ...

consonants are somewhat rare, although they appear in Pano-Tacanan and Uru-Chipaya languages. Vowel systems with nasal vowels are frequent (Macro-Jê and Saliban), but in many languages nasality is not a property of the vowel; instead it is a suprasegmental phoneme of the word (Tupian and Yanomaman). Front rounded vowels ( � are virtually absent, although central vowels are common ( �, as are back unrounded vowels ( �. Long and short vowels are contrasted in the Cariban and Uru–Chipaya families. Glottalized vowels appear in Tikuna and the Chonan family. Tone and

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...

are very common in South America. In any case, the tonal languages of South America have simple systems; the most complex systems are those of Acaricuara (three tones), Mundukurú (four tones), and Ticuna (five tones).

List of languages

Languages by country

References

External links

* *
South American Indigenous Language StructuresSAPhon – South American Phonological InventoriesSound comparisons for various South American languagesDiachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics (DiACL)
*Aguilar Panchi, Evelyn Michelle, Saetbyul Lee, Evgenia Brodetsky, and Matthias Urban (eds.). 2022.
CINWA - Database of Cultivated plants and their names in the indigenous languages of South America
'. Version 1.0. {{South American languages * Indigenous languages of the Americas Languages of South America Indigenous languages