The Lencan languages are a small linguistic family from Central America, whose speakers before the Spanish conquest spread throughout El Salvador and Honduras.

According to Constenla-Umaña's study (2005), the Lenmichi Micro-Phylum first split into Proto-Chibchan and Proto-Misulencan, the common intermediate ancestor of the Lencan and the Misumalpan languages.

[10][11] In the case of Salvadoran Lenca, in the end of the nineties Consuelo Roque, linguist from the University of El Salvador (UES), found Mario Salvador Hernández from Guatajiagua (a semi-speaker who is considered the last native speaker by the salvadoran newspapers, and specifically of the variant of that population, and who learned the language from his grandmother) and both would write a learning primer titled in spanish: Poton piau, nuestra lengua Potón.

This type of partial knowledge is not even remotely close, in any case that we have been able to verify, to a real mastery of the historical language, whose disappearance dates back to the mid-twentieth century...".

[15] A 2002 novel by Roberto Castillo, La guerra mortal de los sentidos, chronicles the adventures of the "Searcher for the Lenca Language.