Cariban

The Cariban languages form a family of about three dozen closely related tongues Indigenous to north-eastern South America, spoken from the mouth of the Amazon across the Guiana Highlands to the Colombian Andes. They descend from a reconstructed Proto-Cariban, whose homeland probably lay in the lower Amazon basin.

From there Cariban-speaking peoples spread into the Guianas, while some branches moved south into the upper Xingu. When Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, the Kalina, or Caribs, of the Guiana coast gave the region its name, the Spanish calling them Caribes.

The Island Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, although they mainly spoke an Arawakan tongue, used a Cariban pidgin kept alive above all by men. In the following centuries a Carib-based lengua general served as a common tongue in missions.