Lencan

Language of Honduras and El Salvador

Languagelanguage family language dead languageQ36189

Also known as Lenca · Lencan languages

Subclass of: Mesoamerican languages
Indigenous to: Comayagua Department
, Francisco Morazán Department
, Intibucá Department
+3 more

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

The Lencan languages are a small language family native to Central America, whose speakers lived throughout El Salvador and Honduras during the Pre-Columbian era. By the beginning of the 20th century, only two languages of the family survived, Salvadoran Lenca or Potón and Honduran Lenca, which were described and studied academically. Of the two, only Salvadoran Lenca still has speakers, despite the fact that there are between 37,000 and 100,000 people belonging to the Lenca ethnic group.

Overview

All data

28 statements · 36% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

UNESCO language status: 6 extinct
Ethnologue language status: 9 Dormant
1
Sources
1.Stated in Ethnologueethnologue.com/language/lenRetrieved 2019-05-10
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Country: Honduras
1
Sources
1.“ScriptSource - Honduras”scriptsource.org/country/HNRetrieved 2023-08-21
View statement on Wikidata ↗

On other databases

12 identifiers linking Lencan across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

36%

externally sourced

Source last edited May 30, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). Lencan (Q36189). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/lencan-Q36189