Extinct languages in the Pacific of Nicaragua

Abstract

This article is an effort to summarize what is known about the indigenous languages that were spoken in the Pacific side of Nicaragua; in one single respect: their genetic relationships with other languages that are or were spoken in the continent. Given that all the indigenous languages of the Pacific side are now extinct, what we can determine about them now has to be based in writen material that was collected in previous times, mostly lists of words. Enough evidence of the type previously mentioned exists only for three languages: mangue/chorotega, nicarao/pipil and subtiava.  All of these languages have been related by the experts to languages or families of languages spoken to the north in the contient (particularly in the arca called Mesoamerica):  mangue/chorotega to the family oto-mangue, nicarao/pipil to the nahua subfamily of the Uto-Aztecan family; subtiava has been related to tlapaneca (a language still spoken in Guerrero, Mexico). The further association of the last two languages to larger groups of families of languages has not been still clearly determined.