Enxet, also known as Enxet Sur or Southern Lengua, is a language spoken by the Indigenous southern
Enxet
The Enxet are an indigenous people of about 17,000 living in the Gran Chaco region of western Paraguay. Originally hunter-gatherers, many are now forced to supplement their livelihood as laborers on the cattle ranches that have encroached upon ...
people of
Presidente Hayes Department
Presidente Hayes () is a department in Paraguay. The capital is the city of Villa Hayes. The department was named after U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who awarded the territory to Paraguay while arbitrating a boundary dispute between Paragu ...
,
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
. It is one of twenty languages spoken by the wider
Gran Chaco
The Gran Chaco or Dry Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion of the Brazilian states of Mato Gros ...
Amerindians
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...
of
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...
. Once considered a dialect of the broader ''Lengua'' language, Enxet (Southern Lengua) and
Enlhet
Enlhet (Eenlhit), or Northern Lengua, is a language of the Paraguayan Chaco, spoken by the northern Enxet people. It is also known as ''Vowak'' and ''Powok''.
In Filadelfia (Paraguayan Chaco) there is an organization that advocates for Enlhet ...
(Northern Lengua) diverged as extensive differences between the two were realized.
Classification
Enxet belongs to the Enlhet-Enenlhet (aka Mascoian) language family, a small family of languages spoken in the Paraguayan region of the South American Gran Chaco.
Enxet is most closely related to its sister language Enlhet, based on some preliminary analysis, but a substantial historical analysis of the Enlhet-Enenlhet family has not yet been published.
History
Enxet and Enlhet were once considered dialects of