Wayuu ( guc, Wayuunaiki ), or Guajiro, is a major

Arawakan language 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. Branch ...

spoken by 305,000 indigenous Wayuu people in northwestern

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

and northeastern

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the ...

on the

Guajira Peninsula The Guajira Peninsula ( es, Península de La Guajira, links=no, also spelled ''Goajira'', mainly in colonial period texts, guc, Hikükariby) is a peninsula in northern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela in the Caribbean. It is the northe ...

. There are 200,000 speakers of Wayuu in Venezuela and 120,000 in Colombia. Smith (1995) reports that a mixed Guajiro–Spanish language is replacing Wayuu in both countries. However, Campbell (1997) could find no information on this.

Recent developments

To promote bilingual education among Wayuu and other Colombians, the Kamusuchiwo’u Ethno-educative Center () came up with the initiative of creating the first illustrated Wayuunaiki–Spanish, Spanish–Wayuunaiki

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologie ...

. In December 2011, the

Wayuu Tayá Foundation The Wayuu (also Wayu, Wayúu, Guajiro, Wahiro) are an Amerindian ethnic group of the Guajira Peninsula in northernmost part of Colombia and northwest Venezuela. The Wayuu language is part of the Maipuran (Arawak) language family. Geography T ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

presented the first ever dictionary of technology terms in the Wayuu language, after having developed it for three years with a team of technology professionals and linguists.

Dialects

The two main dialects are Wüinpümüin and Wopumüin, spoken in the northeast and southwest of the peninsula, respectively. These dialects are

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

, as they are minimally distinct. The extinct Guanebucan language may actually have been a dialect of Wayuu.

Phonology

Note: and are more open than in English. is slightly front of central, and is slightly back of central. All vowels can either occur in short or long versions, since vowel length is distinctive. is a lateral flap pronounced with the tongue just behind the position for the Spanish , and with a more lateral airflow.

Grammar

The

personal pronouns Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...

of Wayuu are

Vocabulary examples

The following are examples of Wayuu. * 'good morning' * 'good afternoon' * 'good night' * 'how are you (singular)?' * 'how are you (plural)?' * 'rabbit' * 'grass' * 'clay jar'

Notes

External links

*
WayuuTribe.com -About the Wayuu People and Wayuu Art

Spanish-Wayuunaiki dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wayuu Language Arawakan languages Indigenous languages of the South American Northeast Languages of Colombia Languages of Venezuela