It was spoken until the middle of the 20th century; the 4,000 ethnic Kiriri are now monolingual Portuguese speakers, though a few know common phrases and names of medicinal plants.

Hence, Kariri languages became scattered across Paraíba, Ceará, Pernambuco, Bahia, and other states.

[2] The four known Kariri languages are: There are short grammatical descriptions of Kipeá and Dzubukuá, and word lists for Kamurú and Sabujá.

Ribeiro established through morphological analysis that Kariri is likely to be related to the Jê languages.

Most of their now-extinct languages are too poorly known to classify, but what is recorded does not suggest that they were all members of the Kariri family.