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Languages Of Guyana
English is the official language of Guyana, which is the only South American country with English as the official language. Guyanese Creole (an English-based creole with African, Indian, and Amerindian syntax) is widely spoken in Guyana. Guyanese Hindustani is retained and spoken by some Indo-Guyanese for cultural and religious reasons. Guyanese Bhojpuri may be used by older generations, folk songs, or in a limited way at home, while standard Hindi is used in religious service, writing, and passively through the consumption of Hindi film exports from India. A number of Amerindian languages are also spoken by a minority of the population. These include Cariban languages such as Macushi, Akawaio and Wai-Wai; and Arawakan languages such as Arawak (or Lokono) and Wapishana. Second and third languages Due to the growing presence of Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, Spanish is heard more and more frequently, especially in Georgetown and Region 1. Portuguese is increa ...
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English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8 ...
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Caribbean Hindustani
Caribbean Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is mainly based on the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. These Hindustani dialects were the most spoken dialects by the Indians who came as immigrants to the Caribbean from India as indentured laborers. It is closely related to Fiji Hindi and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in Mauritius and South Africa. Because a majority of people came from the Bhojpur region in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, and the Awadh region in Uttar Pradesh, Caribbean Hindustani is most influenced by Bhojpuri, Awadhi and other Eastern Hindi- Bihari dialects. Hindustani (Standard Hindi- Standard Urdu) has also influenced the language due to the arrival of Bollywood films, music, and other media from India. It also has a minor influence from Tamil and other Dravidian languages. The language has also borrowed many words from Dutch and English in Suriname and Guyana, and English and French in Trini ...
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Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population, seventh most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and List of cities in Brazil by population, its most populous city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 States of Brazil, states and the Federal District (Brazil), Federal District. It is the largest country to have Portuguese language, Portuguese as an List of territorial entities where Portuguese is an official language, official language and the only one in the Americas; one of the most Multiculturalism, multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass Immigration to Brazil, immigration from around the world; and the most populous Catholic Church by country, Roman Catholic-major ...
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Second Language
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which is the language a speaker uses most or is most comfortable with, is not necessarily the speaker's first language. For example, the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as "the first language learned in childhood and still spoken", recognizing that for some, the earliest language may be lost, a process known as language attrition. This can happen when young children start school or move to a new language environment. Second-language acquisition The distinction between acquiring and learning was made by Stephen Krashen (1982) as part of his Monitor Theory. According to Krashen, the ''acquisition'' of a language is a natural process; whereas ''learning'' a language ...
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Wapishana Language
Wapishana (Wapixana) is an Arawakan language of Guyana and Brazil. It is spoken by over 6,000 people on both sides of the Guyana-Brazil border. In Brazil the highest concentration of Wapishana speakers are in the municipalities of Cantá and Bonfim, the Serra da Lua region, where it has been recognized as an official language since 2014. External pressures have diminished the use of Wapishana among younger generations, and it wasn't until 1987 that Wapishana was used as the teaching language in Indigenous schools of the language community. In 2009, Roraima Federal University created an extension program for learning Wapishana. In Guyana, there are organizations for language preservation, such as Wapichan Wadauniinao Ati'o Cultural importance Many plants and animals endemic to the region are only known in Wapishana, and the language has a distinct system of taxonomy. An example is the three classes of plants, ''karam’makau'', ''wapaurib bau'' and ''wapananinau,'' which a ...
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Arawak Language
Arawak (, ), also known as Lokono (Lokono Dian, literally "people's talk" by its speakers), is an Arawakan language spoken by the Lokono (Arawak) people of South America in eastern Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. It is the eponymous language of the Arawakan language family. Lokono is an active–stative language. History Lokono is a critically endangered language. The Lokono language is most commonly spoken in South America. Some specific countries where this language is spoken include Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and Venezuela. The percentage of living fluent speakers with active knowledge of the language is estimated to be 5% of the ethnic population. There are small communities of semi-speakers who have varying degrees of comprehension and fluency in Lokono that keep the language alive. It is estimated that there are around 2,500 remaining speakers (including fluent and semi-fluent speakers). The decline in the use of Lokono as a language of communica ...
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Arawakan Languages
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branches migrated to Central America and the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, including what is now the Bahamas. Almost all present-day South American countries are known to have been home to speakers of Arawakan languages, the exceptions being Ecuador, Uruguay, and Chile. Maipurean may be related to other language families in a hypothetical Macro-Arawakan stock. Name The name ''Maipure'' was given to the family by Filippo S. Gilij in 1782, after the Maipure language of Venezuela, which he used as a basis of his comparisons. It was renamed after the culturally more important Arawak language a century later. The term ''Arawak'' took over, until its use was extended by North American scholars to the broader Macro-Arawakan ...
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Waiwai Language
Waiwai (Uaiuai, Uaieue, Ouayeone) is a Cariban language of northern Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ..., with a couple hundred speakers across the border in southern Guyana and Suriname. Phonology Consonants Vowels * /o/ can be heard as �when following palatal consonants /tʃ, ʃ/. * /a/ can be heard as �when preceded by sounds /j, tʃ/, and followed by sounds /w, m, s/. References External links *Waiwai Collectionof Niels Fock from the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, containing audio recordings of ceremonial chants and photographs made in the 1950s.Wai Wai( Intercontinental Dictionary Series) Languages of Brazil Cariban languages Languages of Guyana {{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub ...
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Akawaio Language
Akawaio may refer to: * Akawaio people, an indigenous people of South America * Akawaio language, the language of the Akawaio people * ''Akawaio'' (fish), a genus of fish {{Disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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Macushi Language
Macushi is an indigenous language of the Carib family spoken in Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. It is also referred to as ''Makushi'', ''Makusi'', ''Macuxi'', ''Macusi,'' ''Macussi,'' ''Teweya'' or ''Teueia''. It is the most populous of the Cariban languages. According to Instituto Socioambiental, the Macushi population is at an estimated 43,192, with 33,603 in Brazil, 9,500 in Guyana and 89 in Venezuela. In Brazil, the Macushi populations are located around northeastern Roraima, Rio Branco, Contingo, Quino, Pium and Mau rivers. Macuxi speakers in Brazil, however, are only estimated at 15,000. Crevels (2012:182) lists Macushi as “potentially endangered”, while it is listed on the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger as “vulnerable”. Its language status is at 6b (Threatened). The Macushi communities live in areas of language contact: Portuguese in Brazil, English in Guyana and Wapixana (another indigenous language). Abbott (1991) describes Macushi as having O ...
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Cariban Languages
The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pockets of central Brazil. The languages of the Cariban family are relatively closely related. There are about three dozen, but most are spoken only by a few hundred people. Macushi is the only language among them with numerous speakers, estimated at 30,000. The Cariban family is well known among linguists partly because one language in the family— Hixkaryana—has a default word order of object–verb–subject. Previous to their discovery of this, linguists believed that this order did not exist in any spoken natural language. In the 16th century, Cariban peoples expanded into the Lesser Antilles. There they killed or displaced, and also mixed with the Arawak peoples who already inhabited the islands. The resulting language— Kalhíphona ...
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Amerindian Language
Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large number of language isolates), as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified because of a lack of data. Many proposals have been made to relate some or all of these languages to each other, with varying degrees of success. The most notorious is Joseph Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which however nearly all specialists reject because of severe methodological flaws; spurious data; and a failure to distinguish cognation, contact, and coincidence. Nonetheless, there are indications that some of the recognized families are related to each other, such as widespread similarities in pronouns (e.g., ''n''/''m'' is a common pattern for 'I'/'you' across western North America, and ''ch''/''k''/''t'' for 'I'/'you'/'we' is similarly found ...
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