Purepecha

Purepecha is a language isolate, or by some accounts a small language family of its own, spoken by about 142,000 people according to Mexico's 2020 census, concentrated in the highlands of the state of Michoacan with further speaker communities in cities including Guadalajara, Tijuana and Mexico City and across the United States. It has long been classified as unrelated to any other known language, a position reflected in authoritative surveys such as Lyle Campbell's; Joseph Greenberg's proposal to place it within the Chibchan family is rejected by specialists, along with the rest of his broader classification of American languages. Despite lying within the Mesoamerican culture area, Purepecha does not share many of the linguistic traits that typically define that area, suggesting it represents either an ancient substrate or a comparatively recent arrival to the region.