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.
Amuzgo is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca by about 60,000 speakers. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Amuzgo is a tonal language. From syntactical point of view Amuzgo can be considered as an active language. The name Amuzgo is claimed to be a Nahuatl exonym but its meaning is shrouded in controversy; multiple proposals have been made, including 'moss-in'.
The Nukak people live between the Guaviare and Inírida rivers, in the depths of the tropical humid forest, on the fringe of the Amazon basin, in Guaviare Department, Republic of Colombia. They are nomadic hunter-gatherers with seasonal nomadic patterns and practice small-scale shifting horticulture. They were classified as "uncontacted people" until 1981, and have since lost half of their population primarily to disease. Part of their territory has been used by coca growers, ranchers, and other settlers, as well as being occupied by guerrillas, army and paramilitaries. Responses to this crisis include protests, requests for assimilation, and the suicide of leader Maw-be'. An estimated 210–250 Nukak people live in provisional settlements at San José del Guaviare, while about as many live nomadically in the Nukak Reservation (Resguardo).
Tlapanec, or Meꞌphaa, is an indigenous Mexican language spoken by more than 98,000 Tlapanec people in the state of Guerrero. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, it is tonal and has complex inflectional morphology. The ethnic group themselves refer to their ethnic identity and language as Me̱ꞌpha̱a̱.
Barí is a Chibchan language spoken in Northwestern South America by the Barí (Motilon).
Murui Huitoto is an indigenous American Huitoto language of the Witotoan family. Murui is spoken by about 1,100 Murui people along the banks of the Putumayo, Cara-Paraná and Igara-Paraná rivers in Colombia. In Peru it is spoken in the North alongside the Ampiyacu and Napo rivers by some 1,000 people. Some Murui speakers live also outside their territories, for instance the vicinity of Leticia, Amazonas, Colombia.
Santiago Pérez de Manosalbas, was a Colombian educator, lawyer, diplomat, writer, journalist, and statesman who was President of the United States of Colombia between 1874 and 1876.
Coconuco, also known as Coconucan, Guambiano and Misak, is a dialect cluster of Colombia spoken by the Guambiano indigenous people. Though the three varieties, Guambiano, moribund Totoró, and the extinct Coconuco are traditionally called languages, Adelaar & Muysken (2004) believe that they are best treated as a single language.
The Wounaan language, also known as Noanamá and Woun Meu, is a Chocoan language, with around 10,000 speakers on the border between Panama and Colombia.
Guillermo Abadía Morales was a Colombian linguist, academic, anthropologist, folklore researcher and indigenous language expert. Abadía Morales was one of the first to champion the study of indigenous languages in Colombia.
Dʉmʉna is a Chibchan language spoken by the indigenous Wiwa people on the southern and eastern slopes of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. According to Ethnologue, it was spoken by 1,850 people in 2007; however, according to the Colombian Ministry of Culture, there were 13,627 Wiwa people in 2010, of whom some 60% speak Dʉmʉna well.
Kogi (Cogui), or Kagaba (Cágaba), is a Chibchan language of Colombia. It forms a separate Arwako branch along with the Iku and Damana languages. The Kogi people are almost entirely monolingual, and maintain the only unconquered Andean civilization.
The Andaquí are an indigenous people of Colombia, who live in the Upper Caquetá River Basin, the Fragua Valley of Cauca Department, and the Suaza Valley of southwest Huila Department.
Japrería is a Cariban language of Venezuela.
Tisquesusa, also spelled Thisquesuza, Thysquesuca or Thisquesusha was the fourth and last independent ruler (psihipqua) of Muyquytá, main settlement of the southern Muisca between 1514 and his death in 1537. The Spanish pronunciation of his name brought about the Colombian capital Bogotá. Tisquesusa was the ruler of the southern Muisca Confederation at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Muisca, when the troops led by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and his brother entered the central Andean highlands.
Luz Amorocho Carreño was the first Colombian woman to graduate as an architect. She presented one of the first urban plans for Bogotá and worked on both public and private buildings in Bogotá throughout her career. Between 1966 and 1988, she served as the Director of the Planning Department of the National University of Colombia and spent a decade documenting the history of the buildings on the campus of the university.
Elisa Mújica Velásquez was a Colombian writer. She published novels, short stories, essays, books for children as well as interviews, book reviews and columns for local newspapers El Tiempo and El Espectador. She was a member of the Academia Colombiana de la Lengua and the Real Academia Española. In 2018 the award Premio Nacional de Narrativa Elisa Mújica was created in order to recognize the work of unpublished female authors and to honor her 100th birth anniversary.
The indigenous languages of South America are those whose origin dates back to the pre-Columbian era. The subcontinent has great linguistic diversity, but, as the number of speakers of indigenous languages is diminishing, it is estimated that it could become one of the least linguistically diverse regions of the planet.
Juan Camilo Niño Vargas is a Colombian anthropologist and ethnologist whose research focuses on the indigenous populations of northern Colombia, particularly the Ette people and the broader Chibchan-speaking societies of the Isthmo-Colombian area. He is recognized for documenting endangered indigenous languages, examining socio-cosmologies, and contributing to comparative studies of Amerindian peoples.
