Nambikwara

Nambikwara is the chief language of the small Nambikwaran family, spoken by the nomadic Nambikwara peoples of the Mato Grosso and Rondônia interior of western Brazil. The family falls into Sabanê, Northern Nambikwara, also called Mamaindê, and Southern Nambikwara, the dialect cluster usually meant by the name alone, whose varieties are not mutually intelligible.

Europeans heard of the people as early as 1671, but sustained contact began only in 1770, when Portuguese gold-seekers cut a road through their lands between Forte Bragança and Vila Bela. The language long remained unwritten. Nambikwara distinguishes three tones, and its verbs carry suffixes for person, number, aspect and tense combined with evidentiality.