Wayuu language

Wayuu (Wayuu: Wayuunaiki [waˈjuːnaiki]), or Guajiro, is the most widely-spoken Arawakan language, spoken by 400,000 Indigenous Wayuu people in northwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia on the Guajira Peninsula and surrounding Lake Maracaibo.

There were an estimated 300,000 speakers of Wayuunaiki in Venezuela in 2012 and another 120,000 in Colombia in 2008, approximately half the ethnic population of 400,000 in Venezuela (2011 census) and 400,000 in Colombia (2018 census). Smith (1995) reports that a mixed Wayuu—Spanish language is replacing Wayuunaiki in both countries. However, Campbell (1997) could find no information on this.

Recent developments

To promote bilingual education among Wayuu and other Colombians, the Kamusuchiwoꞌu Ethno-educative Center (Spanish: Centro Etnoeducativo Kamusuchiwoꞌu) came up with the initiative of creating the first illustrated Wayuunaiki–Spanish, Spanish–Wayuunaiki dictionary.

In December 2011, the Wayuu Taya Foundation and Microsoft presented the first ever dictionary of technology terms in Wayuunaiki, after having developed it for three years with a team of technology professionals and linguists.

Dialects

The two main dialects are Wüinpümüin and Wopumüin, spoken in the northeast and southwest of the peninsula, respectively. These dialects are mutually intelligible, as they are minimally distinct. The extinct Guanebucan language may actually have been a dialect of Wayuunaiki. The main difference between Wüinpümüin and Wopümüin is that Wüinpümüin uses jia as the 3rd person feminine pronoun, and jaya for the second person plural, while Wopümüin uses shia as the 3rd person feminine, and jia as the second person plural.