Linguistic Situation of South America
The South America has a very great linguistic diversity: one counts nearly 600 languages which belong to 118 linguistic families. For example, the 32 languages of Bolivia are of 15 different families, including 6 isolates. The 68 languages of Colombia belong to 13 different families, of which 10 are isolates. However, contrast is marked between “the great” languages (andénnes and guarani) and the small Amazonian languages. Lastly, the three colonial languages of South America are the Spanish , the Portuguese and the French (in Guyana).
The Indian population, quantified per million, was gradually driven back towards the interior of the continent. Paradoxically, the importance of this population speaker does not guarantee of anything perenniality the Amerindian languages, which for the majority are threatened of extinction.
Great languages of South America
One distinguishes usually the languages from South America according to the listed importance of the population speaker. One counts thus usually four “great” languages:
Amazonian languages
The Amazonian languages are spoken in the nine countries about the Amazonian basin:- the Brazil;
- the Venezuela;
- the Guyana;
- the Guyana;
- the Surinam;
- the Colombia;
- the Ecuador;
- the Peru;
- the Bolivia.
Many of these languages are spoken with horse on the borders, in marginal zones of the countries, for much because the indigenous populations of the coasts and the center, exploited by Europeans, were exterminated. They are as a whole very threatened languages.
The Amazonian area constitutes a linguistic “black hole”, as well as New Guinea. Linguistic work on these languages, which proved to be very interesting in their diversity for the development of linguistics, still is very limited.
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