Páez is a language isolate

Language isolate

A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...

 of 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...

 spoken by Páez people

Paez people

The Paez, also known as the Nasa, are a Native American people who live in the Andes Mountains of Colombia.-Religion:In the early 1900s, Lazarists built missions among the Paez and began the work to convert them to Christianity. Jesuits had originally tried to convert the Paez, but failed. However,...

 in the central Andes

Andes

The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

 region near Popayán

Popayán

Popayán is the capital of the Colombian department of Cauca. It is located in southwestern Colombia between Colombia's Western Mountain Range and Central Mountain Range...

. The Ethnologue estimates about 71,400 to 83,300 speakers(2000 SIL), among which are counted 35,700 to 41,650 monolinguals of an ethnic population of 122,638.

Genealogical relations

Páez is often connected with the poorly documented and 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...

 Panzaleo

Panzaleo

The Panzaleo are a group of Quichua people in Ecuador, primarily in Cotopaxi and Tungurahua provinces.So-called Panzaleo pottery was originally thought to be associated with this group, but has since been identified as a type of trade pottery....

 and Andaquí

Andaqui

Andaqui is an extinct language from the southern highlands of Colombia. It may be one of the Paezan or Barbacoan languages, which may be related to each other....

 in a hypothetical Paezan grouping. Some proposals include the Coconucan languages

Coconucan languages

Coconuco Guambiano is a dialect cluster of Colombia. Though the three varieties, Guambiano, moribund Totoró, and the extinct Coconuco, are traditionally called languages, Adelaar & Muysken believe that they are best treated as a single language....

, which is now usually placed as a sub-family under Barbacoan. Páez (and/or the Paezan family) is often grouped together with the Barbacoan family. More distant proposals group Páez (Paezan) with Chibchan languages

Chibchan languages

The Chibchan languages make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama...

 in a Macro-Chibchan

Macro-Chibchan

Macro-Chibchan is a proposal linking languages of Colombia and Nicaragua. These languages were once included in the Chibchan family itself, but were excluded pending further evidence as that family became well established...

phylum.

External links

• Ethnologue: Páez
• Proel: Lengua Paes
• Fabre: Nasa