Native speakers 13,000 (2000) Glottolog wapi1253 | Ethnicity Wapishana ISO 639-3 wap | |
Language family ArawakanNorthernWapishanan (Rio Branco)Wapixana | ||
Wapishana (Wapixana) is an Arawakan language of Guyana and Brazil.
Kaufman (1994) considered Wapishana, Atorada, and Mapidian to be dialects. Aikhenvald (1999) separates Mawayana/Mapidian/Mawakwa (considered as a single language) from Wapishana, and she includes them in a Rio Branco branch. Ethnologue notes that Atorada has 50% lexical similarity with Wapishana and 20% with Mapidian, and that Wapishana and Mapidian share 10%.
References
Wapishana language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA