How many languages are there?
There are hundreds of indigenous languages still spoken today in Latin America, although there were probably as many as 1,750 before the beginning of the European invasions (Sherzer, 1991). Campbell (1997) reports between 550 and 700 languages for the whole region, citing sources from the mid-1990's.
There are some 56 language families and 73 isolates (a language with no known relatives) in Latin America (Kaufman, 1994a&b). For comparison, there are only two language families in Europe - Indo-European and Finno-Ugric - and one isolate, Basque. [Look at thelanguage families tables.]
Linguists divide the languages of the Americas into three groups:
- North America - this group includes the languages of northern Mexico, like Yaqui and Tarahumara. We follow Kaufman 1994a in including these languages in the Meso-American lists for convenience.
- Meso-America - this region extends from central Mexico into Costa Rica, and includes the Otomanguean and Mayan language families. There 11 families and 3 isolates in this group.
- South America - this region includes all of South America, lower Central America, and the Antilles. There are 48 families and 70 isolates in this group.
