Pemon language

Pemon
Arecuna
Ingarikó, Kapon
Native toVenezuela, Brazil, Guyana
EthnicityPemon
Native speakers
(6,000 cited 1990–2006)[1]
Cariban
  • Venezuelan Carib
    • Pemóng–Panare
      • Pemóng
        • Pemon
Dialects
  • Camaracoto
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3aoc
Glottologpemo1248
ELPPemón
Lino Figueroa, a Pemon, author of Makunaima, demonstrating the Pemon Language.

The Pemon language (or Pemón in Spanish) is an indigenous language of the Cariban family spoken by some 30,000 Pemon people, in Venezuela's Southeast, particularly in the Canaima National Park, in the Roraima State of Brazil and in Guyana.

It covers several dialects, including Arecuna (or Arekuna), Camaracota, Camaracoto, Ingariko (or Ingarikó), Taulipang, and Taurepan (Camaracoto may be a distinct language). The Pemon language may also be known and designated informally by one of the two dialects Arecuna (or Arekuna) or Ingariko (or Ingarikó), or incorrectly under the name Kapon which normally designates another closely related small group of languages.

Pemon is one of several other closely related Venezuelan Cariban languages which also include the Macushi and Kapon (or Kapong, also sometimes used by natives to name the Pemon language itself, even if Kapon strictly covers only the two Akawaio and Patamona languages). These four languages (including Macushi) form the group of Pemongan (or Pemóng) languages. The broad Kapon (or Kapong) and selective Ingariko (or Ingarikó) terms are also used locally as a common ethnonym grouping Pemón, Akawaio, and Patamono peoples (and sometimes as well the Macushi people), and may be used as well to refer to the group of the four Pemongan (or Pemóng) languages that they speak.

  1. ^ Pemon at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)