Fifteen families of languages are native to Mexico and Central America. Some of these families, such as Uto-Aztecan, overlap into North America, and others, such as Chibchan and Maipurean, extend from South America into Middle America.

The Maya family consists of 31 languages spoken principally in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Chol was the main language during the Classic period of Maya civilization, from about AD 300 to 900. It was joined later by Yucatec Maya. Several Mayan languages have many speakers, including K'iche' with 675,000, Yucatec Maya with 500,000, Mam with 400,000, and Kaqchikel with 375,000.

More people speak each of these languages than speak all the Native American languages in Canada and the United States combined.

However, other languages in the Mayan family have very few speakers; two are already extinct.

The Otomanguean family contains about 30 languages, in a geographic area that extends from northern Mexico to Nicaragua. The most widely spoken Otomanguean languages are Otomi with 300,000 speakers, Zapotec with 300,000, and Mixtec with 250,000.

The Mixe-Zoquean family is of special importance because the Olmecs, who founded the first great civilization of Middle America about 1200 BC, appear to have spoken a language in this family.

Today, a dozen or so Mixe-Zoquean languages are spoken in southern Mexico.

Another large family is Uto-Aztecan, which extends from the Western United States through Mexico and into Central America. It includes Nahuatl, the language of the ancient civilizations of the Toltecs, which lasted from the 10th to 13th centuries, and the Aztecs, which lasted from the 14th to 16th centuries, and their modern descendents.

More than 1 million people speak Nahuatl today.

Several languages of the Chibchan family are spoken in lower Central America, including Paya, Rama, Bribri, and Guaymi, while most Chibchan languages are found in northern South America.

A number of smaller families and isolated languages are also found in Middle America. They include the Tequistlatecan family in Mexico, the Xincan family in Guatemala, the Jicaque family in Honduras, and the Lencan family in Honduras and El Salvador.

Linguists have had much difficulty in classifying South American languages. Although linguists have grouped the approximately 1500 languages into 118 distinct families and isolates, considerable descriptive and historical research remains to be done in order to gain a clearer understanding of these languages.

The Maipurean (or Arawakan) family covers the widest area in the western hemisphere of any native language family. Languages in this family are spoken throughout the Antilles; in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua; and in all South American countries except Uruguay and Chile.

Of the 65 languages in this family, 31 are now extinct. One of the extinct languages, Taíno, was the first Native American language encountered by Columbus. Taíno contributed many words to Spanish and other European languages.

Maipurean languages that are still spoken include Baniva (Venezuela), Maipure (Colombia and Venezuela), Arawak or Locono (Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana, and Venezuela), Garifuna or Black Carib (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras), Amuesha (Peru), and Piro (Brazil, Peru).

Languages in the Quechua family have more speakers than any other family in the Americas-about 8.5 million in all. More than half the speakers live in Peru, where Quechua and Spanish are the two official languages. Quechua was the language of the ancient Inca civilization, which flourished from the mid-1400s to the mid-1500s. Quechuan languages are spoken in the region of the Andes Mountains in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina, in addition to Peru.

Aymaran is another large language family of the Andes region. The dominant language in the family, Aymara, has about 1.5 million speakers in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.

The language family Chibchan stretches from northern South America into Central America. Chibchan languages include Tiribi, Bribri, and Boruca (Costa Rica); Guaymi (Panama); Paya (Honduras); Rama (Nicaragua); Kuna (Panama, Colombia); and Cagaba or Kogi (Colombia).

The now extinct Muisca (or Chibcha) was the language of an advanced civilization in Colombia at the time of the Spanish conquest (early 1500s).

The extensive Tupian family includes the Tupí-Guaraní branch that alone contains about 30 languages spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Guaraní has close to 5 million speakers in Paraguay; about 90 percent of the Paraguayan population speak Guaraní, and about 75 percent speak Spanish. The Guaraní branch of the family consists of nine languages, spoken in Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil.

Tupí, an important language in colonial times, has contributed a number of words to the vocabulary of Spanish and other European languages.

Languages in the Cariban family are spoken mainly in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Surinam, and Venezuela. Many of the 45 languages in this family are extinct, however. The earliest references to Cariban speakers come from the 15th-century journals of Spanish Italian navigator Christopher Columbus. The Arawakan peoples Columbus encountered spoke of the fierce Caniba or Canima, their term for the Carib tribe and the source of our word cannibal (flesh-eater).

Other important language families in South America include Pano-Tacanan languages of Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru; Ge languages of Brazil; and Jivaroan languages of Ecuador and Peru.

Today, 187 of the approximately 300 languages native to North America remain, but children are no longer learning 149 of the surviving languages. Many of these languages will disappear within a generation.

Language extinction is also a serious problem in Latin America.

Languages evolve over the course of centuries to meet the needs of their speakers and to convey the thoughts these speakers choose to express. Each language shows us a unique way of understanding experience; the loss of a language means the loss of all that could be learned through the study of that language about human values, oral literature and tradition, history, and human thought.

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