SOUTH AMERICAN LANGUAGES. The languages of South America are for the most part still very imperfectly known, and the number of linguistic stocks considered independent of and unrelated to any linguistic family in the New or Old World is reckoned at 75. For many of them we have only vocabularies, often very scanty and of doubtful accuracy. Grammars are rare and nearly all compiled on the model of Latin by missionaries who did not realise that the methods of Latin are totally unsuited for describing languages with essentially different structure and syn tax. Finally for most of the languages we have no ancient mate rial. On the Pacific side the main languages are as under: Chibcha was once spoken almost all over Colombia up to the frontier of Nicaragua and northern Costa Rica, with repre sentatives as far as the latitude of Guayaquil in Ecuador, prior to the Inca invasion, when Chibcha speech was ousted by Kichua on the Andean Ecuadorian plateau.
The language of the Inca, Kichua or Runa-Simi, is still spoken by Indians on the high plateau of Ecuador and Peru, in Bolivia (Cochabamba, Chuquisaca and Potosi), in the north-west of the Argentine (Jujuy, Santiago del Estero). It is the only language in America which was an element of civilization before the Discovery, when it was the instrument of an invading culture brought by an organized conquering people. Inca imperial ism forced it on the vanquished peoples, then the Catholic mis sionaries continued and completed the work of the overlords of Cuzco.
Speakers of Aymara exist in Peru in two provinces of the department of Puno, in the departments of Arequipa and Moquegua, in Bolivia. Before the spread of Kichua it was more widely diffused and the builders of the famous monuments of Tiahuanaco almost certainly spoke it.
This language still exists in Chile between the Pacific and the Andes, between the 27th and 43rd degrees of lati tude and in the Argentine up to Buenos Ayres.
was spoken on the Pacific side between eight and four degrees North and Esmeralda on the north coast of Ecuador.
On the Atlantic side at the time of the Discovery the people were at a low level of civilization and we find there several large language families and a great number of small independent groups: Tupi-Guarani.—In the north this language was spoken in Guiana (Oyampi and Emerillon), in the west up to the slopes of the Andes and in the plains west of the Bolivian Grand Chaco (Chiriguano). Southwards it is still spoken throughout Paraguay. In the east, tribes of this speech, at the time of the Discovery, occupied the largest portion of the Brazilian coast up to the mouths of the Amazon.
Old Tupi or Abaneenga had two dialects, that of the south or Guarani, the parent of modern Guarani, as still spoken in Para guay and adjoining territories, and the northern, Tupi, the fore runner of modern Tupi or Neefigatu, the "lingoa geral" used in commerce and missionary work throughout the Amazon basin.
A wider area was covered by the Carib, whose place of origin is thought to have been the region between the Upper Xingu and the Tapajoz, whence they spread northwards to the Lesser Antilles and to the southernmost point of Florida. They reached the Andes on the west and small groups entered Colom bia (Motilon, Opon and Carare Indians) and Peru in the Jaen area (Patagon). On the east they found the coast at Guiana (Oyana, Rukuyen, Kalifia, Galibi, etc.).
The Arawak area is almost identical with that of the Caribs, and in some cases they seem to have migrated together. Their centre of dispersion was somewhere in the Venezuelan Brazilian area, about the basins of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro. Arawaks were found in Florida and southwards in Paraguay, in Peru (Uru and Pukina) and in the east at the mouths of the Amazon (Araua). So far this form of speech is the earliest of the forms found in the Peruvian-Bolivian area, being earlier than Aymara, which was ousted by Kichua.