Native speakers 40 (2010) ISO 639-3 rkb | Language family Macro-GêRikbaktsá | |
![]() | ||
Ethnicity 1,140 Rikbaktsa people (2006) |
The Rikbaktsa language, also spelled Aripaktsa, Erikbatsa, Erikpatsa and known ambiguously as Canoeiro, is a language spoken by the Rikbaktsa people of the Mato Grosso, Brazil, that forms its own branch of the Macro-Gê languages.
As in other languages of the area, word endings indicate the gender of the speaker. Rikbaktsa is a subject-object-verb language.
Most Rikbaktsa can speak both Rikbaktsa and Portuguese. Younger individuals tend to speak Portuguese more frequently and fluently than their elders, but older individuals generally struggle with Portuguese and use it only with non-indigenous Brazilians.
References
Rikbaktsa language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA