Chaʼpalaa (also known as Chachi or Cayapa) is a
Barbacoan language
Barbacoan (also Barbakóan, Barbacoano, Barbacoana) is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador.
Genealogical relations
The Barbacoan languages may be related to the Páez language. Barbacoan is often connected with the Paezan languages ...
spoken in northern
Ecuador
Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...
by ca. 5,870 ethnic
Chachi people
Chachi people (also Cayapas) are an ethnic group who live in the rainforest area of northwestern Esmeraldas on the northern coast of Ecuador. They live by the Cayapas River in the Centro El Encanto, a section of the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological ...
.
[
"Chaʼpalaa" means "language of the ]Chachi people
Chachi people (also Cayapas) are an ethnic group who live in the rainforest area of northwestern Esmeraldas on the northern coast of Ecuador. They live by the Cayapas River in the Centro El Encanto, a section of the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological ...
." This language was described in part by the missionary P. Alberto Vittadello, who, by the time his description was published in Guayaquil
Guayaquil (), officially Santiago de Guayaquil, is the largest city in Ecuador and also the nation's economic capital and main port. The city is the capital (political), capital of Guayas Province and the seat of Guayaquil Canton. The city is ...
, Ecuador
Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...
in 1988, had lived for seven years among the tribe.
Chaʼpalaa has agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...
morphology, with a Subject-Object-Verb word order.
Chaʼpalaa is written using the Latin alphabet, making use of the following graphemes:
A, B, C, CH, D, DY, E, F, G, GU, HU, I, J, L, LL, M, N, Ñ, P, QU, R, S, SH, T, TS, TY, U, V, Y, and .
The writing system includes four simple vowels, and four double vowels:
Phonology
Cha'palaa has four vowels: /a, e, i, u/.
References
External links
Native Languages on Cha'palaachi, with links
Cayapa
(Intercontinental Dictionary Series
The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary An ...
)
Agglutinative languages
Languages of Ecuador
Barbacoan languages
Endangered Barbacoan languages
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