Today, European languages dominate South America, with Spanish official in most countries on the continent, with the notable exception of Brazil, where Portuguese reigns supreme. In Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, the official languages are English, Dutch, and French, respectively. But that wasn’t always the case—before Europeans discovered the continent, thousands of ethnic groups spoke their diverse native languages. Though European languages have ravaged the indigenous linguistic makeup of South America, many Amerindian languages are still proudly spoken on the continent today, with Arawakan languages present in most South American countries.
Arawakan isn’t a single language—rather, it’s a large language family with around 40 to 60 extant members still spoken today, spread out all across the northern half of South America. There are thousands of native speakers of Arawakan languages today, though it’s not possible to ascertain an exact figure among the dozens of languages in the family. Wayuu, one of the biggest Arawakan languages, boasts an impressive 420,000 speakers, but unfortunately, most Arawakan languages are significantly smaller, poorly attested, and in serious danger of extinction, which means there aren’t a lot of translation resources available for them, either. Here at TranslationServices.com, we’re proud to offer translation services for as many Arawakan languages as possible.
Contact us today for a free quote for our Arawakan translation services, specifying the exact language you’re targeting!
Arawakan: a major language family in South America
South America boasts considerable linguistic diversity in its autochthonous tongues, with dozens of language families native to the continent, but the Arawakan family is one of the biggest. In fact, Arawakan languages are spoken in nearly every South American county: Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. This leaves Ecuador, Chile, and Uruguay as the only South American countries with no native Arawakan languages.
Some of the biggest Arawakan languages include Wayuu, Arawak, Terêna, Asháninka, Ashéninka, Nomatsiguenga, Yanesha’, Yine, and Piapoco, each boasting thousands of native speakers in different parts of South America. While the languages can differ substantially from one another, they share a grammatically complex nature, with heavy inflection particularly on verbs. Arawakan languages make a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession (i.e., things that are inherently part of someone, such as body parts, versus optional possessions), with inalienable nouns obligatorily used with possessive suffixes. Most Arawakan languages also make use of a classifier system for nouns, which assigns certain suffixes to nouns based on their semantic category.
We’re ready to handle your Arawakan translation needs.
Tackling the translation needs of the Arawakan language family is a big task, but we at TranslationServices.com are up for the challenge. Sadly, it’s not possible to offer translation services for every Arawakan language, but we’ve done our best to source skilled translators for as many as possible, with a particular focus on the big ones, like Wayuu, Arawak, and Terêna. We’ve selected translators from all over the vast continent of South America, covering as many dialects of Arawakan languages as we can, and whether you need translation services into an Arawakan language or from one, we accommodate both translation directions.
What kind of content are you looking to translate? We’ve done our best to build a flexible team of Arawakan translators, ready to handle different types of content—from business papers, to pedagogical materials, to literary works, to digital media. Depending on the subject matter of your text, we may even be able to set you up with a translator who’s knowledgeable in your field, resulting in a more accurate, higher-quality translation. Of course, the scope of our Arawakan translation services may be limited by the small speaker communities and poor resources of many Arawakan languages, but we strive to be the foremost translation team for Arawakan languages on the web.
For any type of content and almost any Arawakan language, our translation team is ready to help. Tell us in a message what you need, including the specific language, so we can get started!