Mesoamerican languages are the
languages indigenous to the
Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of
Guatemala and
Belize and parts of
Honduras and
El Salvador. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic
diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican
sprachbund is commonly referred to as the
Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.