Nheengatu

Nheengatu (Língua Geral Amazônica, "Good speech of the Amazon") is the modern descendant of Tupinambá, the Tupi-Guarani language used by colonial Portuguese Jesuits as a lingua franca for indigenous communication across coastal and Amazonian Brazil from the 16th-18th centuries. By the 19th century, after the colonial decline and Portuguese imposition, Tupinambá largely died as L1, but Nheengatu survived as a regional vernacular in the upper Rio Negro region near the Brazil-Colombia-Venezuela tri-border. In 2002, São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas, Brazil) became the first Brazilian municipality to recognize indigenous languages as official languages alongside Portuguese, with Nheengatu among them. ~6,000-8,000 speakers maintain it today, primarily in indigenous communities along the Rio Negro and its tributaries.