Kadiwéu language

Kadiwéu is a Guaicuruan language spoken by the Kadiweu people of Brazil, and historically by other Mbayá groups. It has around 1,200-1,800 people in Brazil. It is mainly a subject–verb–object language.

The name Kadiweu has variants such as Kaduveo, Caduveo, Kadivéu, and Kadiveo. This language is spoken near the Brazil-Paraguay border in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. The nearest town is Bodoquena, which is 60 kilometers away. According to data collected in 1999 by FUNAI, the total population of the Kadiwéu is 1,014; however, more recent data collected in 2014 shows that the population increased to 1,413 over the past couple of years, while the most recently researched data (from 1976) showed that there were 500 speakers of the language. None of the works on Kadiweu discussed the level of endangerment.

In terms of the linguistic literature on Kadiweu, linguists Glyn and Cynthia Griffiths published an entire Kadiweu–Portuguese dictionary in 2002. Glyn Griffiths also translated the Old and New Testament of the Bible into Kadiweu. Linguist Filomena Sandalo, who worked with the Kadiweu people for a couple of years, offers an extensive analysis of the morphological components of the language.

Projects that began working with Kadiweu were created in the mid 1950s. However, they were short lived due to unexplained reasons. However, in 1968 the Griffiths partnered with SIL (Sociedade Internacional de Lingüística), which led to the documentation of the Kadiweu language. Their book Aspectos da Língua Kadiweu discussed the formation and grammatical structure of the language. Moreover, an influential source according to Povo Indigenas no Brazil is the 18th-century ethnographic account of Kadiwéu by F. José Sanchez-Labrador. These are just some of the many writings on the language that uncover the vast and complex language that is Kadiweu.