been 700 languages. However, since the conquering of Latin America by Spain and after Peru's independence, the disappearance of Indigenous people (because of conquest and mixing of languages) and discrimination against Indigenous languages because of mixed populations, as well as the Peruvian government (which imposed Spanish), led to the number of Indigenous languages dropping to fewer than 150. Today the number of Indigenous languages is still large, but much less than it used to be. The following list shows the languages spoken today in Peru and those that went extinct since the 20th century (shown in italics). Classification The Indigenous languages of Peru belong to more than 15 language families, and some isolated or unclassified languages, which are extinct today (represented in the table as †), are also documented to more than 15 languages. The following list organizes more than 95 languages within existing and extinct languages: Quechua Quechua is the second language of Peru, in terms of number of speakers. It is the official language in areas where it is the dominant language, even though from a linguistic point of view, it's a family of related languages. (Ethnologue assigns separate language codes to more than 25 varieties of Quechua in Peru.) Aymara Aymara has the third largest number of speakers within Peru, with about half a million speakers in the country. It is most common in the southern part of the country, in parts of Puno, Moquegua, and Tacna. Amazonian Languages The rest of the Indigenous languages of Peru have more than 105 thousand speakers in total, and are located mostly in the east and north part of the country, specifically in Loreto, Madre de Dios, and Ucayali. The northern part of Peru (Loreto) is probably the most diverse part of the country from a linguistic standpoint since that part contains an abundance of the small families of languages and isolated languages. In northern Peru, there are 5 small families of languages: Cahuapana, Jívara, Zápara, Peba-yagua, and Bora-witoto. These families of languages are mostly spoken in Loreto, but also in areas connected to Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. The majority of these groups were destroyed in the "Rubber Boom" at the beginning of the 20th century. In the Putumayo river region, the population fell from 50 thousand to between 7-10 thousand within the first decade of the 20th century. In the Ucayali area, Pano languages are most common, while in