Chaná language

The Chaná language (Chaná: Lanték 'speak' or 'language'; from lan, "tongue" and tek a communicative suffix) is one of the Charruan languages, spoken by the Chaná people in what is now Argentina and Uruguay along the Uruguay and Paraná Rivers on the margins of the Río de la Plata. It was spoken by the Chaná from pre-Columbian times in the vast region that today is between Entre Ríos Province, Argentina and Uruguay, and the Uruguay and Paraná Guazú Rivers. According to recent oral memory narratives, in ancient times, they inhabited territories around the current Brazilian margin of the Uruguay River. They later migrated from this location along the Uruguay and Paraná Rivers from the outfall of the Iguazú River and from the Paraguay River to the current location of Asunción. Today, there is only one person who can speak Chaná, Blas Wilfredo Omar Jaime, and prior to his discovery of the fact that he was the last speaker, he had not used Chaná for many decades, eroding his memory of the language. UNESCO recognizes it as a living language but also as "extremely endangered" because it has only one native speaker. The Chamber of Deputies of the Entre Ríos Province recently recognized the necessity for the government to recognize and protect the language.