The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The name is derived from the name of an extinct language called Chibcha or Muisca, once spoken by the people who lived on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense of which the city of Bogotá was the southern capital at the time of the Spanish Conquista. However, genetic and linguistic data now indicate that the original heart of Chibchan languages and Chibchan-speaking peoples might not have been in Colombia, but in the area of the Costa Rica-Panama border, where the greatest variety of Chibchan languages has been identified.[1]
The extinct languages of Antioquia, Old Catío and Nutabe have been shown to be Chibchan (Adelaar & Muysken, 2004:49). The language of the Tairona is unattested, apart from a single word, but may well be one of the Arwako languages still spoken in the Santa Marta range. The Zenú a.k.a. Sinú language of northern Colombia is also sometimes included, as are the Malibu languages, though without any factual basis.
Adolfo Constenla Umaña argues that Cueva, the extinct dominant language of Pre-Columbian Panama long assumed to be Chibchan based on a misinterpreted Kuna vocabulary, was actually Chocoan, but there is little evidence.
The Cofán language (Kofán, Kofane, A'i) of Ecuador and Colombia has been erroneously included in Chibchan due to borrowed vocabulary.
On the basis of shared grammatical innovations, Pache (2023) argues that Pech is most closely related to the Arhuacic languages of northern Colombia, forming a Pech-Arhuacic subgroup.[6]
Below is a full list of Chibchan language varieties listed by Loukotka (1968), including names of unattested varieties.[7]
Chibchan language varieties listed by Loukotka (1968)
Rama group
Rama – language spoken around Bluefields Lagoon and on the Rama River, Nicaragua.
Melchora – extinct language once spoken on the San Juan Melchoras River, Nicaragua. (Unattested.)
Guatuso group
Guatuso – spoken on the Frío River, Costa Rica, now perhaps extinct.
Guetar / Brusela – extinct language once spoken on the Grande River, Costa Rica.
Suerre / Camachire / Chiuppa – extinct language once spoken on the Tortuguero River, Costa Rica. (Benzoni 1581, p. 214, only five words.)
Pocosi – extinct language once spoken on the Matina River and around the modern city of Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. (Unattested.)
Voto – extinct language once spoken at the mouth of the San Juan River, Costa Rica. (Unattested.)
Quepo – extinct language once spoken in Costa Rica on the Pacuare River. (W. Lehmann 1920, vol. 1, p. 238, only one single word.)
Corobisi / Corbesi / Cueresa / Rama de Rio Zapote – spoken by a few individuals in Costa Rica on the Zapote River. (Alvarez in Conzemius 1930, pp. 96–99.)
Talamanca group
Terraba / Depso / Quequexque / Brurán – extinct language once spoken in Costa Rica on the Tenorio River.
Tirub / Rayado / Tiribi – extinct language spoken once in Costa Rica on the Virilla River.
Viceyta / Abiseta / Cachi / Orosi / Tucurrique – extinct language once spoken on the Tarire River, Costa Rica.
Brunca / Boruca / Turucaca – extinct language of Costa Rica, spoken on the Grande River and in the Boruca region.
Coto / Cocto – extinct language once spoken between the sources of the Coto River and Grande River, Costa Rica. (Unattested.)
Dorasque group
Chumulu – extinct language once spoken in El Potrero, Veraguas (Potrero de Vargas), Panama.
Gualaca – extinct language once spoken on the Chiriqui River, Panama.
Changuena – once spoken in Panama, on the Changuena River.
Guaymi group
Muoi – extinct language once spoken in the Miranda Valley of Panama.
Move / Valiente – now spoken on the Guaymi River and in the Veragua Peninsula.
Norteño – dialect without an aboriginal name, spoken on the northern coast of Panama, now perhaps extinct.
Penonomeño – once spoken in the village of Penonemé.
Murire / Bucueta / Boncota / Bogota – spoken in the Serranía de Tabasara by a few families.
Sabanero / Savaneric / Valiente – extinct dialect without aboriginal name, once spoken on the plains south of the Serranía de Tabasara.
Pariza – extinct dialect spoken in the Conquest days on the Veragua Peninsula. (G. Espinosa 1864, p. 496, only one single word.)
Cuna group
Coiba – extinct language once spoken on the Chagres River, Panama. (W. Lehmann 1920, vol. I, pp. 112–122; A. Santo Tomas 1908, pp. 124–128, only five words.)
Cuna / Bayano / Tule / Mandingo / San Blas / Karibe-Kuna / Yule – language spoken in eastern Panama, especially on the Bayano River, in San Blas and the small islands on the northern coast.
Cueva / Darien – extinct language Once spoken at the mouth of the Atrato River, Colombia.
Chochama – extinct language once spoken on the Suegro River, Panama. (Unattested.)
Antioquia group
Guazuzú – once spoken in the Sierra de San Jerónimo, department of Antioquia, Colombia. (Unattested.)
Oromina / Zeremoe – extinct language once spoken south of the Gulf of Urabá, Antioquia, Colombia. (Unattested.)
Catio – once spoken in the region of Dabaiba, Colombia. (only a few words.)
Hevejico – once spoken in the Tonusco and Ebéjico Valleys. (Unattested.)
Abibe – once spoken in the Sierra de Abibe. (Unattested.)
Buritaca – once spoken at the sources of the Sucio River. (Unattested.)
Caramanta – once spoken around the city of Caramanta.
Cartama – once spoken around the modern city of Cartama. (Unattested.)
Pequi – once spoken in the Pequi region. (Unattested.)
Tairona / Teyuna – extinct language once spoken on the Frio River and on the Caribbean coast, department of Magdalena, Colombia, now a secret language of the priests in the Cagaba tribe.
Zyuimakane – extinct language once spoken on the Volador River in the same region. (Unattested.)
Bungá – extinct language once spoken on the Santa Clara River. (Unattested.)
Ulabangui – once spoken on the Negro River, in the Santa Clara River region. (Unattested.)
Cashingui – once spoken on the Palomino River. (Unattested.)
Masinga – once spoken on the Bonda River, in the Palomino River region. (Unattested.)
Bonda / Matuna – once spoken on the Bonda River and Santa María River. (Holmer 1953a, p. 313, only one single word; Preuss 1927, only a few toponyms.)
Cágaba / Köggaba / Kaugia / Koghi – language spoken in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the villages of San Andrés, San Miguel, San José, Santa Rosa, and Pueblo Viejo.
^Pache, M. J. (2018, December 5). Contributions to Chibchan historical linguistics. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/67094
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^Kaufman, Terrence (1990). "Language History in South America: What we know and how to know more". In Payne, Doris L. (ed.). Amazonian Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 13–74. ISBN0-292-70414-3.
^Pache, Matthias (2023). "Evidence For A Chibcha-Jê Connection". International Journal of American Linguistics. 89 (2): 219–253. doi:10.1086/723641. ISSN0020-7071.
^Pache, Matthias (2023-01-01). "Pech and the Basic Internal Classification of Chibchan". International Journal of American Linguistics. 89 (1): 81–103. doi:10.1086/722240. ISSN0020-7071.
^Holt, Dennis. 1986. The Development of the Paya Sound-System. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
^Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1981). Comparative Chibchan Phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
^Constenla Umaña, Adolfo. 2012. Chibchan languages. In Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona (eds.), The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide, 391–440. Berlin: Mouton.
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