The Catacaoan languages are an extinct family of three languages spoken in the

Piura Region Piura () is a coastal department and region in northwestern Peru. The region's capital is Piura and its largest port cities, Paita and Talara, are also among the most important in Peru. The area is known for its tropical and dry beaches. It i ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. The three languages in the family are: * Catacao or Katakao, once spoken around the city of

Catacaos Catacaos is a town in the Piura Province, Piura Region, Peru. It is known for its gastronomy and crafts (or souvenirs). The town was severely damaged by flash floods in March 2017 when the Piura River The Piura River is a river in northern Per ...

* Colán or Kolán, once spoken between the

Piura River The Piura River is a river in northern Peru. The river flows westward from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean and is susceptible to major flooding. Piura is the largest city along the river's course. Course The Piura River has its source in eastern ...

and

Chira River The Chira River or Rio Chira is a river (as well as a valley) in northern Peru whose mouth is 100 km north west of the provincial capital of Piura and 25 km north of the port of Paita. Its source is in the Ecuadorian Andes near the tow ...

*Chira or Lachira or Tangarará, once spoken along the

. It is unattested. *

Terrence Kaufman Terrence Kaufman (1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistic ...

includes the

Leco language Leco, also written as Leko, is a language isolate that, though long reported to be extinct, is spoken by 20–40 individuals in areas east of Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. The Leco ethnic population was 13,527 in 2012. Classification Although Leco ...

in the Catacaoan group. Catacao and Colán are frequently subsumed into the extinct

Tallán language Tallán (or ''Tacllán'', after the use of the taclla, a farming tool) was a conglomerate of ethnic groups with a common origin that settled in the plains of north-western Peru, an ethnos with a matriarchal system. (Due to their possible kinship ...

as dialects, thus making the Catacaoan family synonymous with Tallán.

Vocabulary comparison

Genetic relations

Loukota compares Catacaoan to the Culle language and the

Sechura language The Sechura language, also known as Sek, is an extinct language spoken in the Department of Piura of Peru, near the port of Sechura. It appears to have become extinct by the beginning of the 20th century. The only documentation is that of an 18 ...

but does not make any claims about genetic relatedness.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Catacaoan Languages Indigenous languages of South America Languages of Peru Language families