page_title: Languages of Venezuela
section_title: Other small families
hierarchical_section_title: Languages of Venezuela / Indigenous languages / Other small families
caption_attribution_description: English: Language isolates of the Llanos in Western Venezuela
context_page_description: The languages of Venezuela refers to the official languages and various dialects spoken in established communities within the country. In Venezuela, Castillan is the official language and is the mother tongue of the majority of Venezuelans. Although there is an established official language, there are countless languages of indigenous villages spoken throughout Venezuela, and various regions also have languages of their own.
  There are at least forty languages spoken or used in Venezuela, but Spanish is the language spoken by the majority of Venezuelans. The 1999 Constitution of Venezuela declared Spanish and languages spoken by indigenous people from Venezuela as official languages. Deaf people use Venezuelan Sign Language.
  Chinese, Portuguese and Italian, are the most spoken languages in Venezuela after the official language of Spanish. Wayuu is the most spoken indigenous language with 170,000 speakers.
context_section_description: Timote-cuica languages at the start of the Conquest
  The Jirajarana family or Jirajirana is a group of extinct languages spoken in the western regions of Venezuela, Falcon and Lara. It is believed that the languages went extinct at the start of the 20th century. The Jirajara languages are considered to be semi-isolates. Adelaar and Muysken point out certain lexical similarities with Timote-Cuica languages, and typological similarities with Chibcha languages. But the limited data does not allow validity to any similarities between the Jirajarana and Betol languages, particularly for the similarities of the ethnonyms.
  The arutani-sapé family hypothetically would have been formed by the Sapé and the Uruak, which some authors considered it unclassified - isolated languages.
  Isolated, unclassified, and doubtfully classified languages
  Some languages have yet to be classified because they fall under a larger family, these are called “unclassified languages”. For some of these said languages, there exists some oral evidence, but oral history is not convincing enough. For other languages, that are studied and not classified, they fall under the “language isolates” category, meaning that they are considered to be the only member of that family. Here is the list of unclassified languages that fall under larger families:
  Maku (mako) (266)
  Pumé (4.061)
  Sapé (25) (arutani-sapé languages ?)
  Uruak (39) (arutani-sapé languages ?)
  Warao (18.696): This language is mainly spoken in the Delta of Orinoco area and some Cercanas regions. It is one of the indigenous languages in Venezuela with the most speakers, after Wayúu and Pemón.
  Guamontey : Extinct language from central Venezuela.
  Otomaco : Extinct language from the central and southern regions of Venezuela.
  Below is a non-exhaustive list of the indigenous languages.
caption: Isolated Languages already extinct from the center and southeast parts of Venezuela. Only yaruro (pumé) is still spoken. The last speakers of Otomaco and Guamo lived in the early 20th century.
exif: {}