The Choco languages are a small family of Native American languages spread across Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 and Panama

Panama

Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

.

Family division

Choco consists of perhaps ten languages, half of them extinct.

• The Emberá languages
  Emberá languages
  Emberá is a group of languages spoken by 100,000 people in northwestern Colombia and southeastern Panama. It belongs to the Choco language family.Embera, Emperã, Empena, Eberã, Epena, etc...
  
   (also known as Chocó proper, Cholo)
• Noanamá (also known as Waunana, Woun Meu)
• Anserma (†)
• Cenu (†) ?
• Cauca (†) (not Choco?)
• Sinúfana (Cenufara) (†) ?
• Quimbaya (Kimbaya) (†) (not Choco?)
• Caramanta (†) ?
• Runa  (†)

Anserma, Cenu, Cauca, Sinúfana, Runa, and Kimbaya are all extinct

Extinct language

An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...

 now. Quimbaya is known from only 8 words. Gordon (2005) states that the Arma people spoke either Cenu or Cauca, but list an Arma language in Ethnologue

Ethnologue

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...

regardless.

The Emberá group is two languages mainly in Colombia with over 60,000 speakers that lie within a fairly mutually intelligible dialect continuum

Dialect continuum

A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...

. Ethnologue divides this into 6 languages. Kaufman (1994) considers the term Cholo to be vague and condescending. Noanamá has some 6,000 speakers on the Panama-Colombia border.

Kaufman (1994) states that Quimbaya may not be a Choco language.

Genetic relations

Choco has been included in a number of hypothetical phylum relationships:

• within 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...
  
  's Macro-Leco
• Antonio Tovar, Jorge A. Suárez, & Robert Gunn: related to Cariban
• Čestmír Loukotka (1944): Southern Emberá may be related to Paezan, Noanamá to Arawakan
• within Paul Rivet
  Paul Rivet
  Paul Rivet was a French ethnologist, who founded the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. He was also one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the February 6, 1934 far right riots.Rivet proposed a theory according to...
  
   & Loukotka's (1950) Cariban
• Constenla Umaña & Margery Peña: may be related to Chibchan
• within Joseph Greenberg
  Joseph Greenberg
  Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
  
  's Nuclear Paezan, most closely related to Paezan
  Paezan languages
  Paezan may be any of several language-family proposals of Colombia and Ecuador named after the Paez language.-Proposed genealogical relations:...
  
   and Barbacoan
  Barbacoan languages
  Barbacoan is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador.-Family division:Barboacoan consists of 6 languages:*Northern* Awan...
  
  

External links

• Ethnologue: Choco
• Proel: Familia Chocó