Misumalpan

The Misumalpan languages, also called Misumalpa or Misuluan, are a small family spoken by different Indigenous groups in the region commonly known as Mosquitia, called Yapti Tasba Masrka, meaning the People's Land, in Miskitu. The name Misumalpan was coined by American anthropologist John Alden Mason in the early 20th century as an acronym of the family's three branches, Miskitu, Mayangna and Matagalpan, and the grouping was first recognized as a linguistic family by Walter Lehmann in 1920. All recorded languages of the Matagalpan branch are extinct, while Miskitu and Mayangna remain living languages; Miskitu has an estimated 180,000 to 200,000 speakers and functions as a regional lingua franca on the Caribbean coast.