Amazonia: the last surviving Amazonian indigenous languages

Abstract

In this article, we present the last surviving Amazonian indigenous languages after more than four centuries of colonization in Brazilian Amazonia. To expand the study, we divided the languages into five categories: alive, extinct, dead, weakened and revitalized. The methodologies used were the quali-quanti approach and ethnographic and descriptive research. The techniques employed were meta-research with a focus on bibliographic data and field study. The study found that of the 495 indigenous languages of Brazilian Amazonia, only 27 still survive and are spoken fluently, 265 have become extinct, 3 are dead and have only written records, 195 are weakened and are spoken by people over 40 and 5 have been revitalized and reintroduced into the practice of interaction and communication in the linguistic community. We also approach the concept of each of these categories of indigenous languages and the situation in which each language is within the context of these language categories.