Almost all present-day South American countries are known to have been home to speakers of Arawakan languages, the exceptions being Ecuador, Uruguay, and Chile.

[1] On the other hand, Blench (2015) suggests a demographic expansion that had taken place over a few thousand years, similar to the dispersals of the Austronesian and Austroasiatic language families in Southeast Asia.

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Arawa, Bora-Muinane, Guahibo, Harakmbet-Katukina, Harakmbet, Katukina-Katawixi, Irantxe, Jaqi, Karib, Kawapana, Kayuvava, Kechua, Kwaza, Leko, Macro-Jê, Macro-Mataguayo-Guaykuru, Mapudungun, Mochika, Mura-Matanawi, Nambikwara, Omurano, Pano-Takana, Pano, Takana, Puinave-Nadahup, Taruma, Tupi, Urarina, Witoto-Okaina, Yaruro, Zaparo, Saliba-Hodi, and Tikuna-Yuri language families due to contact.

[5] Classification of Maipurean is difficult because of the large number of Arawakan languages that are extinct and poorly documented.

Out of them, 29 languages are now extinct: Wainumá, Mariaté, Anauyá, Amarizana, Jumana, Pasé, Cawishana, Garú, Marawá, Guinao, Yavitero, Maipure, Manao, Kariaí, Waraikú, Yabaána, Wiriná, Aruán, Taíno, Kalhíphona, Marawán-Karipurá, Saraveca, Custenau, Inapari, Kanamaré, Shebaye, Lapachu, and Morique.

In North America, however, scholars have used the term to include a hypothesis adding the Guajiboan and Arawan families.

The sorting out of the labels Maipurean and Arawakan will have to await a more sophisticated classification of the languages in question than is possible at the present state of comparative studies.The languages called Arawakan or Maipurean were originally recognized as a separate group in the late nineteenth century.

Almost all the languages now called Arawakan share a first-person singular prefix nu-, but Arawak proper has ta-.

The Arawak language family, as constituted by L. Adam, at first by the name of Maypure, has been called by Von den Steinen "Nu-Arawak" from the prenominal prefix "nu-" for the first person.

In the islands of Marajos, in the middle of the estuary of the Amazon, the Aruan people spoke an Arawak dialect.

[13] C. H. de Goeje's published vocabulary of 1928 outlines the Lokono/Arawak (Suriname and Guyana) 1400 items, comprising mostly morphemes (stems, affixes) and morpheme partials (single sounds), and only rarely compounded, derived, or otherwise complex sequences; and from Nancy P. Hickerson's British Guiana manuscript vocabulary of 500 items.

However, most entries which reflect acculturation are direct borrowings from one or another of three model languages (Spanish, Dutch, English).

A feature found throughout the Arawakan family is a suffix (whose reconstructed Proto-Arawakan form is /*-tsi/) that allows the inalienable (and obligatorily possessed) body-part nouns to remain unpossessed.

'The prefixes and suffixes used for subject and object cross-referencing on the verb are stable throughout the Arawakan languages, and can therefore be reconstructed for Proto-Arawakan.

The Arawakan languages are spoken by peoples occupying a large swath of territory, from the eastern slopes of the central Andes Mountains in Peru and Bolivia, across the Amazon basin of Brazil, northward into Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and Colombia on the northern coast of South America, and as far north as Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala.

Arawak-speaking peoples migrated to islands in the Caribbean some 2,500 years ago,[22] settling the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas.

Scholars have suggested that the Wayuu are descended from Taíno refugees, but the theory seems impossible to prove or disprove.

It developed as the result of forced migration among people of mixed Arawak, Carib, and African descent.