Nawat

Nawat (also called Pipil, autonymously Nawat) is a Nahuan Uto-Aztecan language descended from Classical Nahuatl-speaking migrants who moved south from central Mexico to El Salvador around 800-900 CE. The Nawat-speaking Pipil people maintained their indigenous language for 800 years before being severely affected by the 1932 La Matanza massacre, in which the Salvadoran government killed an estimated 10,000-40,000 indigenous people, many of them Nawat speakers. After 1932, surviving Nawat speakers hid their indigenous identity and language for safety, leading to near-complete language shift. Today, only around 500-2000 fluent speakers remain, virtually all elderly. Revival efforts since the 1990s include bilingual education programs, the Don Bosco University Nawat-language degree program, and the IRIN-USAID Nawat cultural revitalization project. Linguistically, Nawat preserves Postclassic Nahuatl features that are absent from Modern Mexican Nahuatl varieties.