The Choco languages (also Chocoan, Chocó, Chokó) are a small family of

Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...

spread across

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the ...

and

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

Family division

Choco consists of six known branches, all but two of which are extinct. *The Emberá languages (also known as Chocó proper, Cholo) * Noanamá (also known as Waunana, Woun Meu) * Anserma ''(†)'' * Arma ''(†)'' ? (unattested) * Sinúfana (Cenufara) ''(†)'' ? * Caramanta ''(†)'' ? Anserma, Arma, and Sinúfana are

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

. The Emberá group consists of two languages mainly in Colombia with over 60,000 speakers that lie within a fairly

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

divides this into six languages. Kaufman (1994) considers the term ''Cholo'' to be vague and condescending. Noanamá has some 6,000 speakers on the Panama-Colombia border.

Jolkesky (2016)

Internal classification by Jolkesky (2016):Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho De Valhery. 2016.
Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas
'. Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Brasília The University of Brasília ( pt, Universidade de Brasília, UnB) is a federal public university in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. It was founded in 1960 and has since consistently been named among the top five Brazilian universities and the ...

. († = extinct) ;Choko *'' Waunana'' *Embera **Embera, Southern: '' Embera Baudo''; '' Embera Chami''; ''

Epena Epena is a village of 2000 people, and seat of Epena District in the Likouala Department of northeastern Republic of the Congo. It is on the Likouala-aux-Herbes The Likouala-aux-Herbes is a river in the Republic of the Congo. It is a tributa ...

'' **Embera, Northern: '' Embera Katio''; '' Embera Darien''

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Guahibo,

Kamsa Kamsa ( sa, कंस, Kaṃsa, translit-std=IAST) was the tyrant ruler of the Vrishni kingdom, with its capital at Mathura. He is variously described in Hindu literature as either a human or an asura; The Puranas describe him as an asura, whi ...

, Paez, Tukano, Witoto-Okaina, Yaruro,

Chibchan The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, 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 ...

, and Bora-Muinane language families due to contact. Genetic links between Choco and Chibchan had been proposed by Lehmann (1920). However, similarities are few, some of which may be related to the adoption of maize cultivation from neighbors.

Genetic relations

Choco has been included in a number of hypothetical phylum relationships: * within

Morris Swadesh Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and ma ...

's Macro-Leco *

Antonio Tovar Antonio Tovar Llorente (17 May 1911 – 13 December 1985) was a Spanish philologist, linguist and historian. Biography Born in Valladolid, the son of a notary, he grew up in Elorrio (Vizcaya), Morella (Castellón) and Villena (Alicante) where as ...

, Jorge A. Suárez, and Robert Gunn: related to

Cariban The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocket ...

Čestmír Loukotka Čestmír Loukotka (12 November 1895 – 13 April 1966) was a Czechoslovak linguist. His daughter was Jarmila Loukotková. Career Loukotka proposed a classification for the languages of South America based on several previous works. This ...

(1944): Southern Emberá may be related to Paezan, Noanamá to

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

* within

Paul Rivet Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 21 March 1958) was a French ethnologist known for founding the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. In his professional work, Rivet is known for his theory that South America was originally populated in pa ...

and Loukotka's (1950) Cariban * Constenla Umaña and Margery Peña: may be related to

* within

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

's Nuclear Paezan, most closely related to Paezan and Barbacoan * with Yaruro according to Pache (2016)

Vocabulary

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for the Chocó languages.

Proto-language

For reconstructions of Proto-Chocó and Proto-Emberá by Constenla and Margery (1991),Constenla Umaña, Adolfo; Margery Peña, Enrique. (1991). Elementos de fonología comparada Chocó. ''Filología y lingüística'', ''17'', 137-191. see the corresponding Spanish article.

References

Bibliography

* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Constenla Umaña, Adolfo; & Margery Peña, Enrique. (1991). Elementos de fonología comparada Chocó. ''Filología y lingüística'', ''17'', 137-191. * Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). ''Language in the Americas''. Stanford: Stanford University Press. * Gunn, Robert D. (Ed.). (1980). ''Claificación de los idiomas indígenas de Panamá, con un vocabulario comparativo de los mismos''. Lenguas de Panamá (No. 7). Panama: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. * Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), ''Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages'' (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. . * Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), ''Atlas of the world's languages'' (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge. * Loewen, Jacob. (1963). Choco I & Choco II. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''29''. * Licht, Daniel Aguirre. (1999). ''Embera''. Languages of the world/materials 208. LINCOM. * Mortensen, Charles A. (1999). ''A reference grammar of the Northern Embera languages''. Studies in the languages of Colombia (No.7); SIL publications in linguistics (No. 134). SIL. *Pinto García, C. (1974/1978). Los indios katíos: su cultura - su lengua. Medellín: Editorial Gran-América. *Rendón G., G. (2011). La lengua Umbra: Descubrimiento - Endolingüística - Arqueolingüística. Manizales: Zapata. * Rivet, Paul; & Loukotka, Cestmír. (1950). Langues d'Amêrique du sud et des Antilles. In A. Meillet & M. Cohen (Eds.), ''Les langues du monde'' (Vol. 2). Paris: Champion. *Sara, S. I. (2002). A tri-lingual dictionary of Emberá-English-Spanish. (Languages of the World/Dictionaries, 38). Munich: Lincom Europa. * Suárez, Jorge. (1974). South American Indian languages. ''The new Encyclopædia Britannica'' (15th ed.). Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica. * Swadesh, Morris. (1959). ''Mapas de clasificación lingüística de México y las Américas''. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. * Tovar, Antonio; & Larrucea de Tovar, Consuelo. (1984). ''Catálogo de las lenguas de América del Sur'' (nueva ed.). Madrid: Editorial Gedos. .

External links

* Proel
Familia Chocó
{{authority control Language families Indigenous languages of Central America Indigenous languages of the South American Northwest