Mostly within north-central South America, with extensions in the southern Caribbean and in Central America.
Linguistic classification
Je–Tupi–Carib?
Cariban
Glottolog
cari1283
Present location of Cariban languages, c. 2000, and probable extent in the 16th century.
The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to north-eastern 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. Prior 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 or Island Carib—was Carib in name but largely Arawak in substance. The Carib male conquerors took Arawak women as wives, and the latter passed on their own language on to the children. For a time, Arawak was spoken by women and children and Carib by adult men, but as each generation of Carib-Arawak boys reached adulthood, they acquired less Carib until only basic vocabulary and a few grammatical elements were left. That form of Island Carib became extinct in the Lesser Antilles in the 1920s, but it survives as Garífuna, or "Black Carib," in Central America. The gender distinction has dwindled to only a handful of words. Dominica is the only island in the eastern Caribbean to retain some of its pre-Columbian population, descendants of the Carib Indians, about 3,000 of whom live on the island's east coast.
The Caribanlanguages are a family of languages indigenous to north-eastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from...
Guajiboan, Arawakan, Cariban, Barbacoan, and Saliban language families. There are currently about 850,000 speakers of native languages, however its estimated...
communities. A number of Amerindian languages are also spoken by a minority of the population. These include Caribanlanguages such as Macushi, Akawaio and Wai-Wai;...
Kari'nja is classified as a Caribanlanguage, in the Guianan Carib branch. Due to contact with Kari'nja invaders, some languages have Kari'nja words incorporated...
Hixkaryana /ˌhɪʃkæriˈɑːnə/ is one of the Caribanlanguages, spoken by just over 500 people on the Nhamundá River, a tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil...
any case, depending on which language is being considered. On the other hand, some languages, such as the Caribanlanguages, can be said to have a possessed...
languages between living languages and extinct languages: History of Honduras CaribanlanguagesLanguages of Belize Elections in Honduras National Congress...
notion of a mass emigration and conquest; the Kalinago language appears not to have been Cariban, but like that of their neighbors, the Taíno. Irving Rouse...
agglutinating languages, Quechua, Pano-Tacanan languages, or Mapuche are found. Cariban and Tupian languages are slightly fusional, and Chon languages are the...
closely related). Most Caribanlanguages have 100 to 3,000 speakers. Documentation of both the extinct and remaining languages is scant in many cases...
endangered Caribanlanguage that was used by the Akurio people in Suriname until the late 20th century, when the group began using the Trío language. Akuriyo...
Yao (Jaoi, Yaoi, Yaio, Anacaioury) is an extinct Caribanlanguage of Trinidad and French Guiana, attested in a single 1640 word list recorded by Joannes...
Brazil. They speak a Caribanlanguage known as Carib. They may be related to the Island Caribs of the Caribbean, though their languages are unrelated. The...
Eunectes akayima. The species' name akayima comes from the local Caribanlanguages, with akayi meaning "snake" and the suffix -ima describing largeness...
official language. Languages spoken locally by specific ethnic groups include Arawakan and Caribanlanguages, Caribbean Hindustani, Maroon languages, Javanese...
The Pemon language (or Pemón in Spanish), is an indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast...
Waiwai /ˈwaɪwaɪ/ (Uaiuai, Uaieue, Ouayeone) is a Caribanlanguage of northern Brazil, with a couple hundred speakers across the border in southern Guyana...
Panare is a Caribanlanguage, spoken by the Panare, who number 3,000–4,000 and live in Bolivar State in central Venezuela. Their main area is South of...
or a related Caribanlanguage. However, studies in the 20th century determined that the language of the Antillean Caribs was not Cariban, but Arawakan...
Caribbean Island Carib language, or simply Carib, the language of the Island Caribs Caribanlanguages, the wider family of languages that includes Carib...
Arawak mythology Arawakan languagesCaribanlanguages Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas Garifuna language List of indigenous names of...
Parukotoan languages are a subgroup of the Caribanlanguage family. The languages are spoken in Brazil, Suriname, and Guyana. The Parukotoan languages are:...
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