A'Ingae (Cofan)

A'ingae (also known as Cofan or Kofan) is a language isolate spoken by approximately 1,500 people in 13 communities in Ecuador and Colombia (Figure 1). Traditionally, the A'i (speakers of A'ingae) lived in the Andean foothills, but over the past century they have migrated down the Aguarico and San Miguel rivers, founding communities at Dureno and Zabalo, where the language is most widely spoken. This migration was spurred in large part by extensive oil contamination; an issue of great concern to the Foundation for the Survival of the Cofan People (FSC) and the community at large (Cepek 2012: 103; 2018: 1-15). Another concern in the Cofan community is the decreasing use of A'ingae, which, according to Ethnologue (Simons & Fennig 2017), is 'endangered' in Ecuador and 'severely endangered' in Colombia as a growing emphasis on Spanish disincentivizes the younger generation from learning A'ingae.