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Glite Dictionary
🌎 Related to Arawak 🗣️ A language family 👥 An Indigenous group
Arawakan

Arawakan

9.9
A language of a large family once spoken in northern South America
  • noun
  • /ˌærəˈwɑːkən/
translation icon : idioma arahuaco
  • They spoke a language (called Taino) of the Arawakan family, one of the most widely dispersed languages in South America.

Examples

  • His vast repertoire of songs, spells, and incantations included many in Arawakan that were not understood by the Wanano.

    Academic text (1996)

  • Much later, when I played these chants for Jonathan Hill, he noticed that many of Ricardo's chants were in Arawakan and similar to those he had collected among Arawakan speakers in Venezuela.

    Academic text (1996)

  • His power and reputation among his own people rested upon an enormous repertoire of songs, incantations, and charms accumulated in his travels, many in Arawakan languages not understood by the Tukanoan Wanano.

    Academic text (1996)

  • The linguist studied several Indigenous languages, focusing on the Arawakan family spoken by communities in the Amazon region.

  • In the botanical garden, the guide explained how the Arawakan peoples used various plants for medicinal purposes.

  • The Arawakan language family includes several dialects that were once widely spoken across much of northeastern South America.

Surface Forms

Arawakan singular
Arawakans plural

Morphology

Arawakan = Arawak (transparent) = Arawak + an

The noun referring to a language or member of the group is formed by the productive suffix '-an' on the ethnonym 'Arawak'.

Etymology

Arawakan names a large family of Indigenous 'languages' and it is taken from the name of the Arawak people who spoke them. So an Arawakan language is one that belongs to that group and was once spoken across northern South America and the Caribbean.