Wai Wai language (Karib) documentation project
- V. 24, N. 2 (2025)
- Submitted: Dec 8, 2025
- Published: Jun 16, 2026
- DOI 10.25189/rabralin.v24i2.2404
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to present and discuss the actions already carried out in the ongoing project of Documentation and Description of the Wai Wai (Karib) Language and to indicate future activities, aiming at the safeguarding of the language and its possibilities of development. The methodology employed includes a field trip to audiovisually record various types of communicative events relating to the indigenous group's material and non-material culture and its related knowledge. The primary data already collected has been organized into sessions, labeled, transcribed, and translated into Portuguese, with the support of community members. The main software programs used in these textual annotation processes were Elan (Linguistic Annotator) and FLEx (Fieldwork Language Explorer). As initial results, we can list the recording of approximately 35 hours of primary data, distributed in: 17 hours of communicative events: interviews, life stories, procedural texts and traditional narratives; and 18 hours of elicited data on different grammatical aspects of language. Until now, six traditional narratives have been fully transcribed and translated, moreover four other narratives and two life stories were transcribed and are still awaiting translation. The project also includes a lexical database, fed into FLEx, with 350 entries (words and morphemes) and 1,000 photographic files. The results aim to contribute to the strengthening of the Wai Wai language within its speaking community and to broaden knowledge about it and about the Cariban family, in a more comprehensive way.
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Sites consultados:
Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação Indígena (IEPE): https://institutoiepe.org.br/
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE): https://www.ibge.gov.br/estatisticas/sociais/saude/22827-censo-demografico-2022.html
Povos Indígenas no Brasil: https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/P%C3%A1gina_principal
Terras Indígenas no Brasil: https://terrasindigenas.org.br/