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Quechua, usually called Runasimi in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers as of 2004. Approximately 25% of Peruvians speak a Quechuan language.
Paezan may be any of several hypothetical or obsolete language-family proposals of Colombia and Ecuador named after the Paez language.
Peru has many languages in use, with its official languages being Spanish, Quechua, Aymara. Spanish has been in the country since it began being taught in the time of José Pardo instead of the country's Native languages, especially the languages in the Andes. In the beginning of the 21st century, it was estimated that in this multilingual country, about 50 very different and popular languages are spoken: which reduces to 44 languages if dialects are considered variants of the same language. The majority of these languages are Indigenous, but the most common language is Spanish, the main language that about 94.4% of the population speaks. Spanish is followed by the country's Indigenous languages, especially all types of Quechua and Aymara (1.4%), who also have co-official status according to Article 48 of the Constitution of Peru, as well as the languages of the Amazon and the Peruvian Sign Language. In urban areas of the country, especially the coastal region, most people are monolingual and only speak Spanish, while in many rural areas of the country, especially in the Amazon, multilingual populations are prevalent.
Pano-Tacanan is a proposed family of languages spoken in Peru, western Brazil, Bolivia and northern Paraguay. There are two close-knit branches, Panoan and Tacanan, with 33 languages. There are lexical and grammatical similarities between the two branches, but it has not yet been demonstrated that these are genetic.
Páez is a language of Colombia, spoken by the Páez people. Crevels (2011) estimates 60,000 speakers out of an ethnic population of 140,000.
Cueva is a poorly attested and often misclassified extinct indigenous language of Panama. The Cueva people were exterminated between 1510 and 1535 during Spanish colonization. During the 17th and 18th centuries the Kuna repopulated the Cueva area.
Chimuan or Yuncan is a hypothetical small extinct language family of northern Peru and Ecuador.
Culle, also spelled Culli, Cullí, or Kulyi, is a poorly attested extinct language of the Andean highlands of northern Peru. It is the original language of the highlands of La Libertad Region, the south of the Cajamarca Region (Cajabamba), and the north of the Ancash region. It is known through various word lists collected while the language was still spoken and through vocabulary loaned into the Spanish spoken in the region.
The Moluche or Nguluche are an indigenous people of Chile. Their language was a dialect of Mapudungun, a Mapuche language. At the beginning of the Conquest of Chile by the Spanish Empire the Moluche lived in what came to be known as Araucanía. The Moluche were called Araucanos ("Araucanians") by the Spanish.
Coconuco, also known as Guambiano and Misak, is a dialect cluster of Colombia spoken by the Guambiano indigenous people. Though the three varieties, Guambiano, moribund Totoró, and the extinct Coconuco are traditionally called languages, Adelaar & Muysken (2004) believe that they are best treated as a single language.
Gorgotoqui is a currently undocumented extinct language of the Chiquitania region of the eastern Bolivian lowlands. It may have been a Bororoan language.
The Teushen language is an indigenous language of Argentina, which may be extinct. It was spoken by the Teushen people, a nomadic hunter-gatherer people of Patagonia, who lived between the Puelche people to their north and the Tehuelche people to the south, who occupied the central part of the Tierra del Fuego region. The tribe is now extinct.
Esmeralda, or Esmeraldeño, is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken in the coastal region of Ecuador, specifically in the western part of Esmeraldas Province. The only existing data for Atacame was collected by J.M. Pallares in 1877.
Chono is a poorly attested extinct language of confusing classification. It is attested primarily from an 18th-century catechism, which is not translated into Spanish.
Timote, also known as Cuica or Timote–Cuica, is the language of the Timote–Cuica state in the Venezuelan Andes, around the present city of Mérida and south of Lake Maracaibo.
Mucuchí (Mokochi) is a suspected Timotean language of Venezuela. Mirripú (Maripú) was a dialect. Most classifications place them as dialects of Timote, with Cuica being a separate language, but the data in Loukotka indicates that Timote and Cuica were one language, and Mucuchí–Marripú another; this is reflected in Campbell (2012).
The Marañón River basin, at a low point in the Andes which made it an attractive location for trade between the Inca Empire and the Amazon basin, once harbored numerous languages which have been poorly attested or not attested at all. Those of the middle reaches of the river, above the Amazon basin, were replaced in historical times by Aguaruna, a Jivaroan language from the Amazon which is still spoken there. The languages further upriver are difficult to identify, due to lack of data. The region was multilingual at the time of the Conquest, and the people largely switched to Spanish rather than to Quechua, though Quechua also expanded during Colonial times.
The Haush language was an indigenous language spoken by the Haush people and was formerly spoken on the island of Tierra del Fuego. The Haush were considered the oldest inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego; they inhabited the far eastern tip of the Mitre Peninsula. They made regular hunting trips to Isla de los Estados.
The Teushen or Tehues were an indigenous hunter-gatherer people of Patagonia in Argentina. They were considered "foot nomads", whose culture relied on hunting and gathering. Their territory was between the Tehuelche people to the south and the Puelche people to their north.
Chimila (Shimizya), also known as Ette Taara, is a Chibchan language of Colombia, spoken by the Chimila people, who live between the lower Magdalena river, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria and the Cesar river. At one time Chimila was grouped with the Malibu languages, but then Chimila became classified as a Chibchan language.
References
- Adelaar, Willem F. H.; Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press.