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.
5-405: Dʉmʉna (also known as Damana , Malayo , Wiwa , Arosario , Arsario , Guamaca , Guamaka , Maracasero , Marocasero , Sancá , Sanja , Sanka , Wamaka ) is a Chibchan language spoken by the indigenous Wiwa people on the southern and eastern slopes of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia . According to Ethnologue , it was spoken by 1,850 people in 2007; however, according to
10-560: A distant relationship with the Macro-Jê languages . Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Andaki , Barbakoa , Choko , Duho , Paez , Sape , and Taruma language families due to contact. 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
15-571: 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,
20-632: The Colombian Ministry of Culture, there were 13,627 Wiwa people in 2010, of whom some 60% speak Dʉmʉna well. There are seven phonemic vowels in Dʉmʉna: Dʉmʉna has 19 phonemic consonants: Chibchan languages A larger family called Macro-Chibchan , which would contain the Misumalpan languages , Xinca , and Lenca , was found convincing by Kaufman (1990). Based primarily on evidence from grammatical morphemes, Pache (2018, 2023) suggests
25-557: 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. Internal classification by Jolkesky (2016): ( † = extinct) Below
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