Chimané also known as Mosetén, is a language of the western Bolivian lowlands spoken by the Moseten and Tsimane peoples along the Beni River

Beni River

The Beni River is a river in the north of Bolivia.It rises north of La Paz and flows northeast through the pampas. One of the tributary rivers is Tuichi River in the Madidi National Park. Tuichi River joins the Beni River upstream from the town Rurrenabaque. South of Rurrenabaque, Río Beni runs...

. Sometimes classified as two languages, they reportedly have no trouble communicating (Ethnologue 16), and were evidently a single language separated recently through cultural contact (Campbell 2000).

Classification

Tsimane has no obvious relatives among the languages of South America. There is some lexicon shared with Puquina

Puquina language

Puquina is an extinct language once spoken by the ancient Inca in the region surrounding Lake Titicaca and in the north of what is now Chile....

 and the Uru–Chipaya languages, but these appear to be borrowings. Morris Swadesh

Morris Swadesh

Morris Swadesh was an influential and controversial American linguist. In his work, he applied basic concepts in historical linguistics to the Indigenous languages of the Americas...

 suggested a Moseten–Chon

Moseten–Chon languages

Mosetén–Chon is a proposal linking the Mosetenan languages and the Chon languages of South America. Kaufman finds the connection fairly convincing.-References:...

 relationship, which Suárez provided evidence for in the 1970s, and with which Kaufman

Terrence Kaufman

Terrence Kaufman is an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He is currently a professor at the department of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh....

(1990) is sympathetic.