Guajiboan (also Guahiban, Wahívoan, Guahiboan) is a language family spoken in the Orinoco River region in eastern Colombia and southwestern Venezuela, a savanna region known as the Llanos.

Family division

Guajiboan consists of 5 languages: Churuya is now extinct. It was formerly spoken in Meta, Colombia. Macaguane is listed as a dialect of Guajibo in Kaufman (1994) and Campbell (1997). Gordon (2005) lists Playero (also Rio Arauca Guahibo), a dialect of Guajibo, as a separate language with a "low intelligibility of other Guahibo". Guajibo and Cuiva form a dialect continuum. Guajibo has the most speakers (over 23,000) and is the largest indigenous group in eastern Colombia. Approximately 9,000 in Venezuela. Guayabero is the most divergent language of the family.

Genetic relations

Guajiboan has often been grouped together with Arawakan, Arauan, and Candoshi by many classifiers. However, this now seems unlikely as the similarity between Guajiboan and Arawakan has been attributed to language contact.

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Yanomami, Arawak, Nadahup, Puinave-Kak, Bora-Muinane, and Choko language families due to contact. Meléndez-Lozano (2014) has also noted that Guahiban has borrowed from Arawakan languages, especially the Achagua and Piapoco languages. An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013) found that there are apparent lexical similarities with Yanomami and Ticuna-Yuri. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the similarities could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing, genetic inheritance, or chance resemblances.

Proto-language

Below are Proto-Guahiban reconstructions by Christian and Matteson (1972):