NATIVE AMERICAN INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF EL SALVADOR IN CENTRAL AMERICA ISTHMUS

Salvadoran Lenca was spoken in Chilanga and Potón. Lencans had arrived in El Salvador about 2,000 years B.C.E and founded the site of

Quelepa Quelepa is an important archaeological site located in eastern El Salvador. Generally considered to have been settled by the Lenca people, the site was founded around 400 BC in the Late Preclassic period (500 BC - AD 250). The inhabitants cons ...

. One speaker remains in Potón. Salvadoran Lenca is of the small language family of

Lencan languages Lencan is a small family of nearly extinct indigenous Mesoamerican languages. Languages There are two attested Lencan languages, both extinct (Campbell 1997:167). * Salvadoran Lencan was spoken in Chilanga and Potó (thus the alternative lan ...

that consists of two languages one of which is the Salvadoran Lenca and the Honduran Lenca. There have been attempts to link the Lencan languages to other languages within their groupings, but there has been no success. Campbell, Lyle. ''Glossary of Historical Linguistics''. Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Lenca Potón

As of 2012, Mario Salvador Hernández of Guatajiagua is the last speaker of Lenca Potón, which differs from the version spoken in Chilanga, where the language has disappeared. Research in 2004 by the

University of Central America José Simeón Cañas Central American University ( es, Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas"), also known as UCA El Salvador, is a private university, private university with Nonprofit organization, nonprofit purposes in San Salvado ...

recorded 380 words, five vowels and 16 consonants, alternation between “g” and “k”, with reduplication to create plurals from singular forms.

References

* *Del Río Urrutía, Ximena. 1999. El lenca de Chilanga. Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 25. 193-209. * Campbell, Lyle. 1976. "The Last Lenca". ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 42(1): 73–78. {{Languages of El Salvador Extinct languages Languages of El Salvador Language revival Lencan languages