Arawakan

Arawakan, or Maipurean, is among the most widely spread language families of the Americas, reaching from the Amazon headwaters and the Guiana coast to the Guajira Peninsula, with branches that crossed into Central America and the Caribbean. Its main groups include the Caribbean Ta-Arawak of the Taino and Lokono, the Upper Amazon languages of the Manao and Bare, and the Campa languages led by Ashaninka on the Andean fringe.

The family's dispersal is often linked to the river trade of the tropical lowlands, where related tongues served as lingua francas; its languages are polysynthetic and head-marking, sharing person prefixes such as nu- for the first person.

In 1492 the Taino of the Greater Antilles became the first Americans encountered by Columbus, and in 1782 the Italian priest Gilii gave the family its first comparative name, Maipure, after a Venezuelan language.