The
Cariban languages are an indigenous
language family of
South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the
Amazon River to the
Colombian Andes, but also appear in central Brazil. Cariban languages are relatively closely related, and number two to three dozen, depending on what is considered a dialect. Most are still spoken, though often by only a few hundred speakers; the only one with more than a few thousand is
Macushi, with 30,000. The Cariban family is well known in the linguistic world partly because
Hixkaryana has a default object–verb–subject
word order, previously thought not to exist in human language.