Arawakan

Arawakan, also called Maipurean, is one of the largest and most widely spread language families of the Americas, carried by peoples from the eastern slopes of the Andes across the Amazon basin to the Guianas, Venezuela and Colombia, and as far north as Central America and the Caribbean.

Some 2,500 years ago Arawakan speakers reached the Antilles and the Bahamas, where their Caribbean branch, Ta-Arawak, produced Taíno, the language of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. Mainland languages included Lokono, Wayuu and Caquetio, while inland branches included the Campa languages of the pre-Andean foothills.

The family was first recognized in 1782, when the Italian priest Filippo Gilii showed that the Maipure of the Orinoco and the Moxos of Bolivia were related. Its languages are polysynthetic and head-marking, with elaborate verb morphology built mainly through suffixes.