Chimila language

Chimila
Ette taara
Native to	Colombia
Ethnicity	1,500 (2009) [1]
Native speakers	350 (2009) [1]
Language family	Chibchan Arwako–Chimila Chimila
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cbg
Glottolog	chim1309
ELP	Chimila

Chimila (Shimizya), also known as Ette Taara, ^[2] is a Chibchan language of Colombia, spoken by the Chimila people, who live between the lower Magdalena River, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria and the Cesar River. ^[3] At one time Chimila was grouped with the Malibu languages, ^[4] but then Chimila became classified as a Chibchan language.

Julian Steward, in the 1950 Handbook of South American Indians, reports a communication from Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff that he considered Chimila to be one of the Arawakan languages, and would thus be expected to be like Tairona, one of the Chibchan languages. ^[5]

Phonology

Although an accurate description of the phonology of Chimila is yet to be produced, a preliminar sketch can be found in Trillos Amaya's (1997) grammar.

The Chimila languages has 5 oral vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. These basic segments can also be realized as short, long, aspirated and glottalized. ^[6]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː iʰ iˀ		u uː uʰ uˀ
Mid	e eː eʰ eˀ		o oː oʰ oˀ
Open		a aː aʰ aˀ

The consonant inventory of Chimila consists of 23 phonemes. Voiceless stops are essentially realized as in Spanish, without any additional feature. On the other hand, voiced stops are prenasalized. The same is true for affricates. In addition, there is also a plain voiced velar stop and a plain voiced palatal affricate. Velar consonants also exhibit a labialized counterpart. The trill /ɾ/ is slightly preglottalized.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labialized velar
Plosive Affricate	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k	kʷ
	voiced			dʒ	g	gʷ
	prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮdʒ	ᵑg	ᵑgʷ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ	ŋʷ
Fricative			s		x
Approximant			l, ɾ		w

Plain voiced and prenasalized stops and affricates have been shown to contrast, e.g. kaː "breast", gaː "excrement" and ᵑgaː "wing, feather". ^[3] The most frequent type of consonant cluster is formed by a stop and /ɾ/. In general, lenis consonants, except for prenasalized ones, /x/, /ɾ/ and /w/, are realized as fortis whenever they follow the stressed syllable. ^[7]

According to Trillos Amaya (1997), Chimila also has two tones. In monosyllabic words ending in a long vowel, tone is contrastive, e.g. tóː "maraca" (rising tone), tòː "heart" (falling tone). In polysyllabic words, the distribution of tones is often predictable: if the syllable following the vowel that bears the tone starts with a geminated consonant or /r/, the tone is falling, however, if the following consonant is not geminated, then the tone is rising. ^{[8] [3]}

Vocabulary

In early twentieth century, anthropologist Dolmatoff (1947) was able to collect an extensive sample of Chimila words. The following table shows some basic vocabulary items of the language: ^[9]

gloss	Chimila
one	ti-tásu, nyéːˀmun
two	(ti-)múxuna
three	(ti-)máxana
four	mbrí nyéː
head	háːˀkra
eye	guáːˀkva
nose	náːˀ
ear	kútsaˀkra
tooth	dí
man	tsáːˀkve
woman	yúnˀkve
water	níː-taˀkve
fire	ngéː
earth	íˀti
fish	mínˀkrava
tree	ká, káx
sun	nínga
moon	máːma-su

A provisional writing system has been developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Some of the words mentioned above are now spelled differently, as shown in the following table: ^[2]

gloss	Chimila
two	tiimujnaʼ
three	tiimajnaʼ
four	briiʼ yeeʼe
head	jaakra-la
tooth	dij
sun	diǥǥa
moon	maamasuʼ

Chimila-derived names

"Cesar", the name of both the Cesar River and the Cesar Department, is an adaptation from the Chimila word Chet-tzar or Zazare ("calm water") into Spanish. ^[10]

Guatapurí derives from the Chimila for "cold water", and provides the name of the Guatapurí River. ^[11]

Notes

1. Chimila at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Narváez Escobar, Sindy Paola (2020). "La aproximación del léxico ette taara en el ciclo Moonate de la Institución Etnoeducativa Departamental Ette Ennaka" (PDF). Lingüística y Literatura (in Spanish). 41 (78): 352–383. doi: 10.17533/udea.lyl.n78a14 .
3. Adelaar & Muysken (2004 , p. 75)
4. Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Classification of South American Indian Languages . Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center. pp.  244–5.
5. Steward, Julian Haynes (1950). Handbook of South American Indians: Physical anthropology, linguistics and cultural geography of South American Indians. Handbook of South American Indians, United States. Vol. 6. Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. pp. 187–88.
6. Trillos Amaya (1997 , p. 66).
7. Adelaar & Muysken (2004 , p. 76).
8. Trillos Amaya (1997 , pp. 75–76).
9. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gérard (1947). "La lengua chimila". Journal de la Société des Américanistes (in Spanish). 36: 15–50. doi:10.3406/jsa.1947.2358.
10. LABLAA - Luis Galvis: Don Gonzalo Archived 2009-09-14 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
11. (in Spanish) Marcos Fidel Vega Seña (2005), Vallenato: Cultura y sentimiento , U. Cooperativa de Colombia. p14.

References

• Adelaar, Willem F. H.; Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781139451123.
• Trillos Amaya, María (1997). Categorías gramaticales del ette taara - Lengua de los Chimilas. Lenguas aborígenes de Colombia. Descripciones, 10 (in Spanish). Bogotá: CCELA - Universidad de los Andes. ISSN   0120-9507.