Wayuu

Wayuunaiki

Wayuu is an Arawakan language spoken in Colombia and Venezuela, by about 300 thousand people. Glottolog rates it threatened.

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Wayuu · 11.4°N 72.2°W

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.

From Wikipedia · Wayuu language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Written down

Naa wayuukana jemeishi süpüla taashi süma wanawa sülu'u nakua'ipa, aka müin yaa epijainjana sünain anajiranawaa a'in nama napüshi.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in Unicode).

Words in Wayuu

Meaning	Word	Romanization
woman	hiérɨ
person	wayu*
name	s3n3lia*
eye	wo7u*
ear	waCe7e*
nose	we7iCi*
tooth	wai*
tongue	waye*
hand	wahap3*
blood	iSa*
bone	weip3se*
skin	wata*
knee	wasapain*
breast	waCira*
liver	s3pana*
water	wüin
fire	siki*
sun	ka7i*
star	holoc3*
stone	ipa*
mountain	nam3na*
tree	wunu7u*
leaf	s3pana*
night	aippa7a*
dog	er3*
fish	hima*
louse	map3i*
one	wane
two	piama*
I	taya*