The Chocó family includes two languages, Waunana and the group of the Emberá dialects.

Waunana and Emberá share a large number of cognates (estimated to 50% by Loewen 1960: 12), which provide evidence for their common origin.

However, there is no clear evidence in terms of a sufficient number of cognates for a common origin of Chocó with other South or Central American families.

[3] Catío's phoneme inventory contains 16 consonants (p, t, dɮ , t͡ʃʼ, k, b, d, g, s, h, m, n, r, u) and 6 vowels, both oral and nasal (a, e, i, o, u, ɨ).

Darien Embera's phoneme inventory contains 17 consonants (p, t, k, b, d, dɮ, t͡ʃʼ, g, s, h, z, r, t, w, j) and 6 vowels, oral and nasal (a, e, i, o, u, ɨ).

At the clausal level, the basic order is SOV with some flexibility used for discourse purposes.

Northern Emberá and Catío make a clear distinction (immediate vs. unspecified temporal distance) in those tenses in which the event time point does not coincide with the speech time point (past and future) For example: wã-toko-ago-IMM_PST-DECL‘s/he just left’   vs.     wã-podo-ago-IMM_FUT-DECL‘s/he is about to leave’wã-toko-a {} vs. {} wã-podo-ago-IMM_PST-DECL {} {} {} go-IMM_FUT-DECL{‘s/he just left’} {} {} {} {‘s/he is about to leave’}Northern Embera is written in two similar orthographies: one is used in Panama, and the other is used in Colombia.