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Very little people speak this language in Oklahoma.

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There are more than 20 different languages.  In Taiwan, many of these languages have already been lost, and many of the other aboriginal languages are extremely endangered due to pressure to speak larger languages. -aneesa davis

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This Hotspot falls on top of a number of political boundaries, placing a small area inside five different countries. The dominant languages are Cantonese, Vietnamese, Lao, Thai, and Burmese, depending on the country.

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The Euchee were forced by the U.S. government to move from Tennessee to Oklahoma in the early 1800s.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yucatec Maya writing in the Dresden Codex, ca. 11-12th century, Chichen Itza

The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now extinct. The Indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other, instead they 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 due to the lack of information on them.

Many proposals have been made to relate some or all of these languages to each other, with varying degrees of success. The most widely reported is Joseph Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis,[1] which, however, nearly all specialists reject because of severe methodological flaws; spurious data; and a failure to distinguish cognation, contact, and coincidence.[2]

According to UNESCO, most of the Indigenous languages of the Americas are critically endangered, and many are dormant (without native speakers but with a community of heritage-language users) or entirely extinct.[3][4] The most widely spoken Indigenous languages are Southern Quechua (spoken primarily in southern Peru and Bolivia) and Guarani (centered in Paraguay, where it shares national language status with Spanish), with perhaps six or seven million speakers apiece (including many of European descent in the case of Guarani). Only half a dozen others have more than a million speakers; these are Aymara of Bolivia and Nahuatl of Mexico, with almost two million each; the Mayan languages Kekchi, Quiché, and Yucatec of Guatemala and Mexico, with about 1 million apiece; and perhaps one or two additional Quechuan languages in Peru and Ecuador. In the United States, 372,000 people reported speaking an Indigenous language at home in the 2010 census.[5] In Canada, 133,000 people reported speaking an Indigenous language at home in the 2011 census.[6] In Greenland, about 90% of the population speaks Greenlandic, the most widely spoken Eskaleut language.

Over a thousand known languages were spoken by various peoples in North and South America prior to their first contact with Europeans. These encounters occurred between the beginning of the 11th century (with the Nordic settlement of Greenland and failed efforts in Newfoundland and Labrador) and the end of the 15th century (the voyages of Christopher Columbus). Several Indigenous cultures of the Americas had also developed their own writing systems,[7] the best known being the Maya script.[8] The Indigenous languages of the Americas had widely varying demographics, from the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guarani, and Nahuatl, which had millions of active speakers, to many languages with only several hundred speakers. After pre-Columbian times, several Indigenous creole languages developed in the Americas, based on European, Indigenous and African languages.

The European colonizing nations and their successor states had widely varying attitudes towards Native American languages. In Brazil, friars learned and promoted the Tupi language.[9] In many Spanish colonies, Spanish missionaries often learned local languages and culture in order to preach to the natives in their own tongue and relate the Christian message to their Indigenous religions. In the British American colonies, John Eliot of the Massachusetts Bay Colony translated the Bible into the Massachusett language, also called Wampanoag, or Natick (1661-1663); he published the first Bible printed in North America, the Eliot Indian Bible.

The Europeans also suppressed use of Indigenous languages, establishing their own languages for official communications, destroying texts in other languages, and insisting that Indigenous people learn European languages in schools. As a result, Indigenous languages suffered from cultural suppression and loss of speakers. By the 18th and 19th centuries, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and Dutch, brought to the Americas by European settlers and administrators, had become the official or national languages of modern nation-states of the Americas.

Many Indigenous languages have become critically endangered, but others are vigorous and part of daily life for millions of people. Several Indigenous languages have been given official status in the countries where they occur, such as Guaraní in Paraguay. In other cases official status is limited to certain regions where the languages are most spoken. Although sometimes enshrined in constitutions as official, the languages may be used infrequently in de facto official use. Examples are Quechua in Peru and Aymara in Bolivia, where in practice, Spanish is dominant in all formal contexts.

In the North American Arctic region, Greenland in 2009 elected Kalaallisut[10] as its sole official language. In the United States, the Navajo language is the most spoken Native American language, with more than 200,000 speakers in the Southwestern United States. The US Marine Corps recruited Navajo men, who were established as code talkers during World War II.

In American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America (1997), Lyle Campbell lists several hypotheses for the historical origins of Amerindian languages.[11]

A single, one-language migration (not widely accepted)

A few linguistically distinct migrations (favored by Edward Sapir)

Multiple migrations

Multilingual migrations (single migration with multiple languages)

The influx of already diversified but related languages from the Old World

Extinction of Old World linguistic relatives (while the New World ones survived)

Migration along the Pacific coast instead of by the Bering Strait

Roger Blench (2008) has advocated the theory of multiple migrations along the Pacific coast of peoples from northeastern Asia, who already spoke diverse languages. These proliferated in the New World.[12]

Countries like Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Guyana recognize all or most Indigenous languages native to their respective countries, with Bolivia and Venezuela elevating all Indigenous languages to official language status according to their constitutions. Colombia delegates local Indigenous language recognition to the department level according to the Colombian Constitution of 1991. Countries like Canada, Argentina, and the United States allow their respective provinces and states to determine their own language recognition policies. Indigenous language recognition in Brazil is limited to their localities.

Bullet points represent minority language status. Political entities with official language status are highlighted in bold.

Language

Number of speakers

Official Recognition

Area(s) Language is spoken

Source

Guaraní

6,500,000

Paraguay (Official Language)

Bolivia

Corrientes, Argentina

Tacuru, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

Mercosur

Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil

[13]

Southern Quechua

5,000,000 (outdated figure)

Bolivia (Official Language)

Peru (Official Language)

Jujuy, Argentina

Comunidad Andina

Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Chile

[13]

Aymara

1,700,000

Bolivia (Official Language)

Peru (Official Language)

Comunidad Andina

Bolivia, Peru, Chile

[13]

Qʼeqchiʼ

1,100,000

Guatemala

Belize

Mexico

Guatemala, Belize, Mexico

[13]

Mam

600,000

Guatemala

Mexico

Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (De facto), Mexico

Guatemala & Mexico

Kichwa

450,000

Ecuador

Colombia ( Cauca, Nariño, Putumayo)

[13]

Wayuu (Guajiro)

420,000

Venezuela

La Guajira, Colombia

Venezuela & Colombia

Mapuche

260,000

Cautín Province, La Araucanía, Chile (Galvarino, Padre Las Casas)

Cautín Province, La Araucanía, Chile ( Galvarino, Padre Las Casas)

[13]

Navajo

170,000

Navajo Nation, United States

Southwestern United States

[13]

Miskito

140,000 (outdated figure)

North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, Nicaragua

Honduras ( Gracias a Dios)

Nicaragua, Honduras

Cree

96,000 [incl. Naskapi, Montagnais]

Northwest Territories, Canada

Canada

[30]

Kalaallisut (Greenlandic)

57,000

Greenland

Greenland

[31]

Tojolabʼal

51,733

Mexico

Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (De facto), Mexico

Mexico

Garífuna

50,000 (circa; outdated figure)

Guatemala

Belize

North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, Nicaragua

Honduras ( Atlántida, Colón, Gracias a Dios)

Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras

[13]

Tikuna

47,000

Amazonas regions of Brazil and Colombia

[32]

Inuktitut

39,475

Nunavut, Canada

Northwest Territories, Canada

Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Quebec and Labrador, Canada

[33]

Wichi

36,135

Chaco, Argentina

Chaco, Argentina

Shuar

35,000

Ecuador

Ecuador

[34]

Sikuani

34,000

Colombia ( Meta, Vichada, Arauca, Guainía, Guaviare)

Colombia ( Meta, Vichada, Arauca, Guainía, Guaviare)

Kom

31,580

Chaco, Argentina

Chaco, Argentina

Sioux

25,000

South Dakota, United States

US

[36]

Oʼodham

23,313

Tohono Oʼodham Nation, United States

Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, United States

Mexico

Arizona, United States

Yanomamö

20,000

Venezuela

Brazil & Venezuela

[32]

Nheengatu

19,000

São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil

Venezuela

Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela

[36]

Yup'ik (Central Alaskan) & (Siberian)

18,626

Alaska, United States

Alaska, United States

Western Apache

14,012

San Carlos Apache Nation, United States

Fort Apache Indian Reservation, United States

Arizona, United States

Karu

12,000

Venezuela

Guaviare Department, Colombia

São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil, ( Baníwa language)

Awakatek

11,607

Guatemala

Mexico

Guatemala

Mexico

Chipewyan

11,325

Northwest Territories, Canada

Northwest Territories, Canada

[38]

Choctaw

9,600

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, United States

Oklahoma & Mississippi, United States

[39]

Tukano

7,100

São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil
Mitú, Vaupés, Colombia

Amazonas, Brazil & Vaupés, Colombia

[35]

Kayapo

6,200

Brazil ( Pará & Mato Grosso)

[35]

Yukpa

6,000

Venezuela

Cesar, Colombia

Venezuela, Colombia

Timbira

5,100

[42]

Sanumá

5,100

Venezuela

Brazil & Venezuela

[43]

Muscogee

5,072

Muscogee (Creek) Nation, OK, United States

[39]

Crow

3,862

Montana, United States

Mohawk

3,875

Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, Canada

Canada (Ontario & Quebec) and United States (New York)

[45][46]

Munduruku

3,563

Pará & Amazonas, Brazil

[43]

Wapishana

3,154

Bonfim, Roraima, Brazil

Guyana

Bonfim, Roraima, Brazil

Guyana

[47][43]

Mocoví

3,000

Chaco, Argentina

Chaco, Argentina

Iñupiaq

3,000

Alaska, United States & Northwest Territories, Canada

Puinave

3,000

Guainía, Colombia

Venezuela

Guainía, Colombia & Venezuela

Tupi-Mondé

2,886

Rondônia, Brazil

[43]

Fox (Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo)

2,288

Sac and Fox Nation, United States

Mexico

US & Mexico

Cherokee

2,320

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, North Carolina, United States

Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, United States

US ( Oklahoma & North Carolina)

Seneca

1,453

Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, Canada

Ontario, Canada

[36]

Inuinnaqtun

1,310

Kiowa

1,274

Oklahoma, United States

Gwichʼin

1,217

Alaska, United States & Northwest Territories, Canada

Inuvialuktun

1,150

Nunavut, Canada & Northwest Territories, Canada

Maricopa/Piipaash

800

Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, AZ, United States

Arizona, United States

Oneida

574

Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, Canada

Oneida Nation of the Thames, Ontario, Canada

Ontario, Canada

[49][50][51]

Havasupai-Hualapai

445

Havasupai Indian Reservation, AZ, United States

Arizona, United States

[53]

Kumeyaay

427 (525 including Ipai and Tiipai languages)

Mexico

Baja California, Mexico & California, United States

[54][55]

Guajá

365

Maranhão, Brazil

Mikasuki

290

United States ( Florida, Georgia (Historical), Alabama (Historical), Oklahoma (Historical)

[39]

Quechan

290

California & Arizona, United States

[56]

Haida

168

Alaska, United States and British Columbia, Canada

Cayuga

61

Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, Canada

Cattaraugus Reservation, New York, United States

Ontario, Canada, and New York, United States

[59]

Onondaga

50

Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, ON, Canada

Ontario, Canada

[36]

Nonuya

0

Amazonas, Colombia

Colombia, Peru

Tuscarora

0

Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, Canada
Tuscarora Reservation, New York, United States

Ontario, Canada, and New York, United States

[62]

Notes:

Extinct languages or families are indicated by: †.

The number of family members is indicated in parentheses (for example, Arauan (9) means the Arauan family consists of nine languages).

For convenience, the following list of language families is divided into three sections based on political boundaries of countries. These sections correspond roughly with the geographic regions (North, Central, and South America) but are not equivalent. This division cannot fully delineate Indigenous culture areas.

Northern America

Pre-contact: distribution of North American language families, including northern Mexico

Bilingual stop sign in English and the Cherokee syllabary (transcription: ᎠᎴᏫᏍᏗᎭ - "alehwisdiha"), Tahlequah, Oklahoma

There are approximately 296 spoken (or formerly spoken) Indigenous languages north of Mexico, 269 of which are grouped into 29 families (the remaining 27 languages are either isolates or unclassified).[citation needed ] The Na-Dené, Algic, and Uto-Aztecan families are the largest in terms of number of languages. Uto-Aztecan has the most speakers (1.95 million) if the languages in Mexico are considered (mostly due to 1.5 million speakers of Nahuatl); Na-Dené comes in second with approximately 200,000 speakers (nearly 180,000 of these are speakers of Navajo), and Algic in third with about 180,000 speakers (mainly Cree and Ojibwe). Na-Dené and Algic have the widest geographic distributions: Algic currently spans from northeastern Canada across much of the continent down to northeastern Mexico (due to later migrations of the Kickapoo) with two outliers in California ( Yurok and Wiyot); Na-Dené spans from Alaska and western Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California to the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico (with one outlier in the Plains). Several families consist of only 2 or 3 languages. Demonstrating genetic relationships has proved difficult due to the great linguistic diversity present in North America. Two large (super-) family proposals, Penutian and Hokan, look particularly promising. However, even after decades of research, a large number of families remain.

North America is notable for its linguistic diversity, especially in California. This area has 18 language families comprising 74 languages (compared to five families in Europe: Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic, Kartvelian, and Afroasiatic and one isolate, Basque).[63]

Another area of considerable diversity appears to have been the Southeastern Woodlands;[citation needed ] however, many of these languages became extinct from European contact and as a result they are, for the most part, absent from the historical record.[citation needed ] This diversity has influenced the development of linguistic theories and practice in the US.

Due to the diversity of languages in North America, it is difficult to make generalizations for the region. Most North American languages have a relatively small number of vowels (i.e. three to five vowels). Languages of the western half of North America often have relatively large consonant inventories. The languages of the Pacific Northwest are notable for their complex phonotactics (for example, some languages have words that lack vowels entirely).[64] The languages of the Plateau area have relatively rare pharyngeals and epiglottals (they are otherwise restricted to Afroasiatic languages and the languages of the Caucasus). Ejective consonants are also common in western North America, although they are rare elsewhere (except, again, for the Caucasus region, parts of Africa, and the Mayan family).

Head-marking is found in many languages of North America (as well as in Central and South America), but outside of the Americas it is rare. Many languages throughout North America are polysynthetic ( Eskaleut languages are extreme examples), although this is not characteristic of all North American languages (contrary to what was believed by 19th-century linguists). Several families have unique traits, such as the inverse number marking of the Tanoan languages, the lexical affixes of the Wakashan, Salishan and Chimakuan languages, and the unusual verb structure of Na-Dené.

The classification below is a composite of Goddard (1996), Campbell (1997), and Mithun (1999).

The Indigenous languages of Mexico that have more than 100,000 speakers

The Mayan languages

The Chibchan languages

In Central America the Mayan languages are among those used today. Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight more. The Mayan language family is one of the best documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages descend from Proto-Mayan, a language thought to have been spoken at least 4,000 years ago; it has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method.

Some of the greater families of South America: dark spots are language isolates or quasi-isolate, grey spots unclassified languages or languages with doubtful classification. (Note that Quechua, the family with most speakers, is not displayed.)

A Urarina shaman, 1988

Although both North and Central America are very diverse areas, South America has a linguistic diversity rivalled by only a few other places in the world with approximately 350 languages still spoken and several hundred more spoken at first contact but now extinct. The situation of language documentation and classification into genetic families is not as advanced as in North America (which is relatively well studied in many areas). Kaufman (1994: 46) gives the following appraisal:

Since the mid 1950s, the amount of published material on SA [South America] has been gradually growing, but even so, the number of researchers is far smaller than the growing number of linguistic communities whose speech should be documented. Given the current employment opportunities, it is not likely that the number of specialists in SA Indian languages will increase fast enough to document most of the surviving SA languages before they go out of use, as most of them unavoidably will. More work languishes in personal files than is published, but this is a standard problem.

It is fair to say that SA and New Guinea are linguistically the poorest documented parts of the world. However, in the early 1960s fairly systematic efforts were launched in Papua New Guinea, and that area - much smaller than SA, to be sure - is in general much better documented than any part of Indigenous SA of comparable size.

As a result, many relationships between languages and language families have not been determined and some of those relationships that have been proposed are on somewhat shaky ground.

The list of language families, isolates, and unclassified languages below is a rather conservative one based on Campbell (1997). Many of the proposed (and often speculative) groupings of families can be seen in Campbell (1997), Gordon (2005), Kaufman (1990, 1994), Key (1979), Loukotka (1968), and in the Language stock proposals section below.

Hypothetical language-family proposals of American languages are often cited as uncontroversial in popular writing. However, many of these proposals have not been fully demonstrated, or even demonstrated at all. Some proposals are viewed by specialists in a favorable light, believing that genetic relationships are very likely to be established in the future (for example, the Penutian stock). Other proposals are more controversial with many linguists believing that some genetic relationships of a proposal may be demonstrated but much of it undemonstrated (for example, Hokan-Siouan, which, incidentally, Edward Sapir called his "wastepaper basket stock").[65] Still other proposals are almost unanimously rejected by specialists (for example, Amerind). Below is a (partial) list of some such proposals:

Good discussions of past proposals can be found in Campbell (1997) and Campbell & Mithun (1979).

Amerindian linguist Lyle Campbell also assigned different percentage values of probability and confidence for various proposals of macro-families and language relationships, depending on his views of the proposals' strengths.[66] For example, the Germanic language family would receive probability and confidence percentage values of +100% and 100%, respectively. However, if Turkish and Quechua were compared, the probability value might be −95%, while the confidence value might be 95%.[clarification needed ] 0% probability or confidence would mean complete uncertainty.

Language Family

Probability

Confidence

Eskaleut,
Chukotan[67]

−25%

20%

Macro-Mayan[68]

+30%

25%

Macro-Siouan[69]

−20%

75%

Takelman[70]

+80%

60%

It has long been observed that a remarkable number of Native American languages have a pronominal pattern with first-person singular forms in n and second-person singular forms in m. (Compare first-person singular m and second-person singular t across much of northern Eurasia, as in English me and thee, Spanish me and te, and Hungarian -m and -d.) This pattern was first noted by Alfredo Trombetti in 1905. It caused Sapir to suggest that ultimately all Native American languages would turn out to be related. In a personal letter to A. L. Kroeber he wrote (Sapir 1918):[71]

Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Great simplifications are in store for us.

The supposed "n/m - I/you" pattern has attracted attention even from those linguists who are normally critical of such long-distance proposals. Johanna Nichols investigated the distribution of the languages that have an n/m pattern and found that they are mostly confined to the western coast of the Americas, and that similarly they exist in East Asia and northern New Guinea. She suggested that they had spread through diffusion.[72] This notion was rejected by Lyle Campbell, who argued that the frequency of the n/m pattern was not statistically elevated in either area compared to the rest of the world. Campbell also showed that several of the languages that have the contrast today did not have it historically and stated that the pattern was largely consistent with chance resemblance, especially when taking into consideration the statistic prevalence of nasal consonants in all the pronominal systems of the world.[73] Zamponi found that Nichols's findings were distorted by her small sample size, and that some n-m languages were recent developments (though also that some languages had lost an ancestral n-m pattern), but he did find a statistical excess of the n-m pattern in western North America only. Looking at families rather than individual languages, he found a rate of 30% of families/protolanguages in North America, all on the western flank, compared to 5% in South America and 7% of non-American languages - though the percentage in North America, and especially the even higher number in the Pacific Northwest, drops considerably if Hokan and Penutian, or parts of them, are accepted as language families. If all the proposed Penutian and Hokan languages in the table below are related, then the frequency drops to 9% of North American families, statistically indistinguishable from the world average.[74]

Below is a list of families with both 1sg n and 2sg m, though in some cases the evidence for one of the forms is weak.[74]

Family

1sg

2sg

Penutian families

Plateau
Penutian

Klamath

ni 'I', ni-s 'my'

mi-s 'you' (object), mi 'your'

Yok-
utian

Proto-Yokutsan

*naʔ 'I', *nan 'me', *nam ~ *nim 'my'

*maʔ 'you', *man 'you' (obj), *mam ~ *min 'your'

Proto-Utian

*ka·ni 'I', *ka(·)na 'my'[75]

*mi·(n)

Hokan families

Other North America

South America

? Puelche

nɨ-, -ɨn ~ -an[76]

(kɨ-)ma-w, mu- ~ mɨ-

? Proto-Timotean

Timote-Cuica an,
Mucuchí-Maripú unknown

Mucuchí-Maripú ma,
Timote-Cuica ih

Other scattered families may have one or the other but not both.

Besides Proto-Eskaleut and Proto-Na-Dene, the families in North America with neither 1sg n or 2sg m are Atakapan, Chitimacha, Cuitlatec, Haida, Kutenai, Proto-Caddoan, Proto-Chimakuan, Proto-Comecrudan, Proto-Iroquoian, Proto-Muskogean, Proto-Siouan-Catawba, Tonkawa, Waikuri, Yana, Yuchi, Zuni.

There are also a number of neighboring families in South America that have a tʃ-k pattern (the Duho proposal, plus possibly Arutani-Sape), or an i-a pattern (the Macro-Jê proposal, including Fulnio and Chiquitano, plus Matacoan,[77] Zamucoan and Payaguá).[74]

Several languages are only known by mention in historical documents or from only a few names or words. It cannot be determined that these languages actually existed or that the few recorded words are actually of known or unknown languages. Some may simply be from a historian's errors. Others are of known people with no linguistic record (sometimes due to lost records). A short list is below.

Loukotka (1968) reports the names of hundreds of South American languages which do not have any linguistic documentation.

Various miscellaneous languages such as pidgins, mixed languages, trade languages, and sign languages are given below in alphabetical order.

1. American Indian Pidgin English

2. (also known as Micmac-Basque Pidgin, Souriquois; spoken by the Algonquian-Basque pidgin Basques, Micmacs, and Montagnais in eastern Canada)

3. Broken Oghibbeway (also known as Broken Ojibwa)

4. Broken Slavey

5. Bungee (also known as Bungi, Bungie, Bungay, or the Red River Dialect)

6. (also known as Machaj-Juyai, Callahuaya Kallawaya, Collahuaya, Pohena, Kolyawaya Jargon)

7. Carib Pidgin (also known as Ndjuka-Amerindian Pidgin, Ndjuka-Trio)

8. Carib Pidgin-Arawak Mixed Language

9. Catalangu

10. Chinook Jargon

11. Delaware Jargon (also known as Pidgin Delaware)

12. Eskimo Trade Jargon (also known as Herschel Island Eskimo Pidgin, Ship's Jargon)

13. Greenlandic Pidgin (West Greenlandic Pidgin)

14. Guajiro-Spanish

15. Güegüence-Nicarao

16. Haida Jargon

17. Inuktitut-English Pidgin (Quebec)

18. Jargonized Powhatan

19. Keresan Sign Language

20. Labrador Eskimo Pidgin (also known as Labrador Inuit Pidgin)

21. Lingua Franca Apalachee

22. Lingua Franca Creek

23. Lingua Geral Amazônica (also known as Nheengatú, Lingua Boa, Lingua Brasílica, Lingua Geral do Norte)

24. Lingua Geral do Sul (also known as Lingua Geral Paulista, Tupí Austral)

25. Loucheux Jargon (also known as Jargon Loucheux)

26. Media Lengua

27. Mednyj Aleut (also known as Copper Island Aleut, Medniy Aleut, CIA)

28. Michif (also known as French Cree, Métis, Metchif, Mitchif, Métchif)

29. Mobilian Jargon (also known as Mobilian Trade Jargon, Chickasaw-Chocaw Trade Language, Yamá)

30. Montagnais Pidgin Basque (also known as Pidgin Basque-Montagnais)

31. Nootka Jargon (spoken during the 18th-19th centuries; later replaced by Chinook Jargon)

32. Ocaneechi (also known as Occaneechee; spoken in Virginia and the Carolinas in early colonial times)

33. Pidgin Massachusett

34. Plains Indian Sign Language

While most Indigenous languages have adopted the Latin script as the written form of their languages, a few languages have their own unique writing systems after encountering the Latin script (often through missionaries) that are still in use. All pre-Columbian Indigenous writing systems are no longer used.

Writing System

Type

Language(s)

Region(s)

Date in usage

Status

Inventor

Quipu

N/A (string) Possibly Logogram

Andean civilizations (Western South America)

3rd millennium BCE - 17th century

Extinct

Olmec hieroglyphs

Logogram

Mixe-Zoque languages

Isthmus of Tehuantepec

1500 BCE - 400 BCE

Extinct

Zapotec script

Logogram

Zapotecan languages

Oaxaca

500 BCE - 700 CE

Extinct

Epi-Olmec script

Logogram Syllabogram

Zoque languages

Isthmus of Tehuantepec

400 BCE - 500 CE

Extinct

Izapan scripts

Logogram

unknown Mixe-Zoquean language

Southern Guatemala

Late Preclassic

Extinct

Maya script

Logogram Syllabogram

Mayan languages

Maya civilization: Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Guatemala, & Belize

3rd century BCE - 17th century CE

Extinct

Teotihua script

Logogram

Nahuatl, other

Central Mexico

100 BCE - 750 CE

Extinct

Mixtec script

Logogram

Mixtecan languages

13th century - 17th century CE

Extinct

Aztec script

Logogram Syllabogram

Nahuatl

Central Mexico

14th century - 17th century CE

Extinct

Komqwejwi'kasikl (Miꞌkmaw Hieroglyphs)

Logogram

Mi'kmaq

17th-19th century

Extinct

Father Le Clercq

Cherokee syllabary

Syllabary

Cherokee

Cherokee Nation, United States

1820s-present

Active

Sequoyah ᏍᏏᏉᏯ

Canadian Aboriginal syllabics

Abugida

Algonquian languages ( Cree, Naskapi, Ojibwe/ Chippewa, & Blackfoot (Siksika))

Eskaleut languages ( Inuktitut & Inuinnaqtun)

Athabaskan languages ( Dane-zaa, Slavey, Chipewyan (Denesuline)/ Sayisi, Carrier (Dakelh), & Sekani)

Canada

1840s-present

Active

James Evans ᒉᐃᒻᔅ ᐁᕙᓐᔅ

Yugtun script

Syllabary

Central Alaskan Yup'ik

Alaska

1900-present

Endangered

Uyaquq

Afaka syllabary

Syllabary

Ndyuka

Suriname, French Guiana

1910-present

Endangered

Afáka Atumisi

Osage script

Alphabet

Osage

Osage Nation, United States

2006-present

Active

Herman Mongrain Lookout

1. ^ Greenberg, Joseph (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1315-3.

2. ^ Campbell, Lyle (2000). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford University Press. p. 253. ISBN 978-0-19-534983-2.

3. ^ Gordon, Raymond G. Jr., ed. (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (15th ed.). Dallas: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X.. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com)

4. ^ Schwartz, Saul (2018). "The predicament of language and culture: Advocacy, anthropology, and dormant language communities". Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 28 (3): 332-355. doi:10.1111/jola.12204. S2CID 150209288.

5. ^ "Population by Aboriginal mother tongue, Aboriginal language spoken most often at home and Aboriginal language spoken on a regular basis at home, for Canada, provinces and territories".

6. ^ Premm, Hanns J.; Riese, Berthold (1983). Coulmas, Florian; Ehlich, Konrad (eds.). "Autochthonous American writing systems: The Aztec and Mayan examples". Writing in Focus. Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs. Berlin: Mouton Publishers. 24: 167-186. doi:10.1515/9783110822830.167. ISBN 978-90-279-3359-1.

7. ^ Wichmann, Soren (2006). "Mayan Historical Linguistics and Epigraphy: A New Synthesis". Annual Review of Anthropology. 35: 279-294. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123257.

8. ^ Shapiro, Judith (1987). "From Tupã to the Land without Evil: The Christianization of Tupi-Guarani Cosmology". American Ethnologist. 1 (14): 126-139. doi:10.1525/ae.1987.14.1.02a00080.

9. ^ Campbell, Lyle (1997). "The Origin of American Indian Languages". American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 90-106. ISBN 0-19-509427-1..

10. ^ Blench, Roger (2008). "Accounting for the Diversity of Amerindian Languages: Modelling the Settlement of the New World" (PDF). Paper presented at the Archaeology Research Seminar, RSPAS, Canberra, Australia.

11. ^ Ethnologue (2021)

12. ^ "Language Highlight Tables, 2016 Census - Aboriginal mother tongue, Aboriginal language spoken most often at home and Other Aboriginal language(s) spoken regularly at home for the population excluding institutional residents of Canada, provinces and territories, 2016 Census - 100% Data". Canada Statistics. 2017-08-02.

13. ^

14. ^ "Census in Brief: The Aboriginal languages of First Nations people, Métis and Inuit". Statistics Canada. 25 October 2017.

15. ^ "The Blackfoot Language Resources and Digital Dictionary project: Creating integrated web resources for language documentation and revitalization" (PDF). p. 277. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-06-11.

16. ^ Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

17. ^ Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018)

18. Hofling, ^ Mopan Maya-Spanish-English Dictionary, 1.

19. ^ "PROTO-MACRO-JÊ: UM ESTUDO RECONSTRUTIVO" (PDF).

20. ^ "IBGE - Indigenous languages census" (PDF).

21. ^

22. ^ "Idiomas indígenas Macuxi e Wapixana são oficializados em município de Roraima - Amazônia.org" (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 2019-05-26.

23. ^

24. ^ INALI (2012) México: Lenguas indígenas nacionales

25. "Kumiai". ^ Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-04-14.

26. If the ^ Caucasus is considered to be a part of Europe, Northwest Caucasian and Northeast Caucasian would be included resulting in five language families within Europe. Other language families, such as the Turkic, Mongolic, Afroasiatic families have entered Europe in later migrations.

27. Ruhlen, Merritt. (1991 [1987]). ^ A Guide to the World's Languages Volume 1: Classification, p.216. Edward Arnold. Paperback: ISBN 0-340-56186-6.

28. Campbell, Lyle (1997). ^ American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Ch. 8 Distant Genetic Relationships, pp. 260-329. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.

29. ^ Zamponi, Raoul (2017). "First-person n and second-person m in Native America: a fresh look" (PDF). Italian Journal of Linguistics. 29 (2): 189-230. doi:10.26346/1120-2726-113.

30. Proto-Chonan proper, ^ sans Puelche, has only 2sg *maː

31. ^ Guaicuruan has 1sg i only

Brinton, Daniel G (1891). The American race. New York: D. C. Hodges.

Campbell, Lyle; Mithun, Marianne, eds. (1979). The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Indigenous languages of the Americas - Wikipedia

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now extinct.

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This Hotspot includes languages originally spoken in the area as well as the languages of tribes from farther east that were forcibly relocated onto reservations in Oklahoma during the 1800s. Many of these languages are highly endangered as the younger generations shift to speaking English.

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eastern Melanesia is made up of a bunch of small islands

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One small language is Aché, spoken in eastern Paraguay. This language is related to Guaraní, which is one of the two official languages of Paraguay; the other official language is Spanish.

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Languages started from tribes farther East and relocated in the 1800's.Younger genereations are starting to just speak english

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The Central Siberia hotspot contains few languages compared to other hotspots. One moribund language of the area is Tofa, which is now spoken by fewer than 30 people.

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Geographic Languages -  Angola, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa
Number of languages - 65
Description:
The Southern Africa hotspot covers a sparsely populated area, but one that is full of diverse languages. This area includes dry savannas, mountains, the Namib Desert, and the Kalahari Desert.  Languages and knowledge systems in the area are endangered because of the dramatic changes in the way of life of groups throughout the area in the last 50 years.

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Northern and Central Australia - Irshad Zahidi

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Northern and Central Australia - Irshad Zahidi

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11 rare languages are still spoken in Australia. These languages are some of the rarest in the world.

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Contains very few languages compared to other hotspots. Government policies and other pushes have gotten Siberian languages to the extinction. One language in this area is Mednyj Aleut, also called Copper Island Aleut. It is a mixed language like English and has two parent languages, Russian and Aleut.

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However, it holds ten genetic units, with very few living languages in most of the genetic units. It is notable, therefore, for its genetic diversity, and for its extreme endangerment. Many Siberian languages have been lost in the last few generations due to government policies that force speakers of minority languages to use the national language

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Aboriginal groups are small and scattered because of a history of conflict between white settlers and aboriginal groups. Many aboriginal groups did not survive this contact, while many others only barely survived and struggle to maintain language and culture.

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Many of the languages in this hotspot are spoken by only a few hundred people skthe level of endangerment is not as severe as in many other hotspots. Many children learn their ancestral language along with a national language and speakers maintain their language as part of their cultural identity.

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Many of the other aboriginal languages are extremely endangered due to pressure to speak larger languages. In the Philippines, indigenous languages are threatened by the more prestigious Tagalog and Filipino languages.

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Geographic Location Includes:  Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina
-Lots of languages are threatened by government policies that force tribes to leave traditional ways of life

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Small groups scattered because if conflict between white settlers and original groups.

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Speakers of different languages have been in contract for so long that the languages have started to blend together. Many native languages have started to borrow words from other, more dominate languages spoken.

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Endangered languages include :
-Archi
-Bagvalal

-Bohtan Neo-Araimac

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People switching to speaking English, native tongue is gone -Asif

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Aboriginal groups scattered history conflicts between white settlers and aboriginal groups. Some groups did not survive and others struggled to maintain languages and culture. There are 153 languages in total and there are about 11 languages endangered.

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In Nigeria, Yangkam is one of the many languages that are being lost in time. With less than a 100 speakers (who are also over 50), this language is not being passed down at all. Everyone else is starting to use Hausa, a more common African language. Also, the few Yangkam speakers do not even consider their language of cultural importance, signifying that their language will die very soon.

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Soviet attempted to force Caucasians to speak Russian.