The Cabécar language is an indigenous American language of the Chibchan language family spoken by the

Cabécar people The Cabécar are an indigenous group of the remote Talamanca region of eastern Costa Rica. They speak Cabécar, a language belonging to the Chibchan language family of the Isthmo-Colombian Area of lower Central America and northwestern Colom ...

in the inland Turrialba Region,

Cartago Province Cartago (), which means Carthage in Spanish, is a province of central Costa Rica. It is one of the smallest provinces, however probably the richest of the Spanish Colonial era sites and traditions. Geography It is located in the central part ...

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

. As of 2007, 2,000 speakers were monolingual. It is the only indigenous language in Costa Rica with monolingual adults. The language is also known by its dialect names Chirripó, Estrella, Telire, and Ujarrás.

History

Cabécar is considered to be one of a few "Chibcha-speaking tribes", categorized by similarities in the languages that they speak. Other Chibcha speaking tribes include the Bribri and the

Boruca The Boruca (also known as the Brunca or the Brunka) are the indigenous people living in Costa Rica. The tribe has about 2,660 members, most living on a reservation in the Puntarenas Province in southwestern Costa Rica, a few miles away from t ...

, also of Costa Rica. It is believed that the languages of the Chibcha speaking tribes shared a common ancestor around 8,000 years ago. However, differences in the languages are thought to have come about from the influence of outside people, including influences from

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Wit ...

Geographic distribution

Cabécar is an endangered language spoken in Costa Rica. It is spoken by the

, an indigenous group located near the Talamancan mountains of Costa Rica.

Dialects and varieties

There are two different dialects of Cabécar, each of which has more narrow dialects within it. One of these is spoken in the north, while the other is spoken in southern parts of Costa Rica.

Phonology

Cabécar uses a Latin alphabet with umlauts for (ë, ö), and

tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) i ...

s for (ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ).Native-languages.org
/ref> Cabécar has twelve vowels, five of which are nasalized.

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Cabécar has a canonical word order of subject–object–verb.

References

Resources

*Quesada, J. D. (2007). The Chibchan Languages. Editorial Tecnologica de CR. 259pp *Gavarrete, M. E. (2015). The challenges of mathematics education for Indigenous teacher training. Intercultural Education, 26(4), 326-337. *Quesada, D. J. (2000). On Language Contact: Another Look at Spanish-speaking (Central) America. Hispanic Research Journal, 1(3), 229-242. *Umaña, A. C. (2012). Chibchan languages. The indigenous languages of South America: A comprehensive guide, 2, 391. *Instituto Clodomiro Picado: Tkäbe tso Costa Rica ska Tkäbe te sa shkawe wätkewaklä (serpientes de Costa Rica y prevención de mordeduras). San José: Instituto Clodomiro Picado; 2009:20. *Lamounier Ferreira, A. (2013). ¿ En cabécar o español?: bilingüismo y diglosia en Alto Chirripó. Centro de Investigación e Identidad y Cultura Latinoamericana. Universidad de Costa Rica. Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe Vol.10, no.12 (2013, segundo semestre) 105-119 páginas "Miradas sobre la diversidad indígena" *González Campos, G. (2015). Nuevas consideraciones sobre la morfología verbal del cabécar. LETRAS; Vol 1, No 51 (2012); 33-58. Escuela de Literatura y Ciencias del Lenguaje *Pacheco, M. Á. Q. (2013). Estado de la lengua cabécar en el poblado de San Rafael de Cañas, Buenos Aires (Puntarenas). Estudios de Lingüística Chibcha. *Solórzano, S. F. (2010). Teclado chibcha: un software lingüístico para los sistemas de escritura de las lenguas bribri y cabécar. Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 36(2). *Potter, E. (1998). The primary education of bilingual indigenous children on the Talamanca Bribri Reservation in Limón Province of Costa Rica/by Elsa Potter. Texas A&M University-Kingsville. *Anderson, W. D. (2006). Medical Education: What Would the Shamans and Witches Think?*. Academic Medicine, 81(10), S138-S143. *Margery Peña, Enrique. 1989. Diccionario Cabécar-Español, Español-Cabécar. Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica. 676pp. Reprint 2003. *Cervantes Gamboa, Laura. 1991. Observaciones etnomusicológicas acerca de tres cantos de cuna cabécares. Estudios de Lingüística Chibcha 10. 143-163. * Elisabeth Verhoeven. 2012. Cabécar – a Chibchan language of Costa Rica. In Jeanette Sakel and Thomas Stolz (eds.), Amerindiana: Neue Perspektiven auf die indigenen Sprachen Amerikas, 151-169. Berlin: Akademie

* Ricardo Pozas Arciniega, Pozas Arciniega, Ricardo. ''Yis ma̱ i shö (yo voy a decir)'', with Enrique Margery Peña (editor) and Francisco Amighetti (illustrator). Costa Rica: Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1996. . 70pp

External links

Recording of "2 children's chants of the Cabécar Indians"
from the Indigenous Languages of Costa Rica Collection of Laura Cervantes at AILLA.
Audio sampleNumeral list 1-20Christian Bible - Matthew 2Video of documentary of Cabecar songsVideo with audio and text of Christian hymn "Gloria" in CabecarInterview discussing work on Cabecar dictionary (in Spanish)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cabecar Language Cabécar people Subject–object–verb languages Languages of Costa Rica Cartago Province Indigenous languages of Central America Chibchan languages