What is the most widely-spoken indigenous language of South America?

Question

The question is about INDIGENOUS language. European languages that arrived in South America laterdo not count.

Answer 1

Short answer: Quechua (#1) and Guarani (#2).

Long answer: As a group, the 2-24 Quechua languages are the most widely spoken. "Quechua", like "Chinese", is often cited as a single language and is one of the two official languages of Peru. The Quechua languages are closely related and there is some mutual intelligibility, so citing them as a single language makes some sense, but technically there are at least two of them. The second most widely spoken language is Guarani, one of the two official languages of Paraguay, but it may also be more than one language. It all depends on how you count languages versus dialects. But even so, these two languages are much more widely spoken than any other languages on the continent because they are official languages of countries and have some level of protection from the steamrollers of Spanish and Portuguese.

Answer 2

There are many different tribes in each of the countries in South America, and you cannot say that there´s one language that is the most spoken. If it´s for the population who speaks it, i´ll say Guaraní in Paraguay (most of their population knows that language). The others such as Quechua, Goagiro, Pemón, Yanomami, etc are spoken for indigenous only. Hope this helps you! :)

Answer 3

I lately learn that many humans in South America nonetheless talk Quechua in Bolivia and Peru. I could say in the ones places approximately 35% to forty five% of the humans talk Native languages.