Chipaya (endolinguonym ''Chipay taqu'') is a native South American language of the Uru–Chipaya language family. The only other language in the grouping, Uru, is considered by some to be a divergent dialect of Chipaya. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' 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 comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'' lists the language vitality as "vigorous," with 1,800 speakers out of an ethnic population of around , although younger generations speak it progressively less. Chipaya has been influenced considerably by Aymara, the

Quechuan languages Quechua (, ), also called (, 'people's language') in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral " Proto-Quechua" ...

, and more recently, Spanish, with a third of its vocabulary having been replaced by those languages.

Geographical distribution

The Chipayan language is spoken in the area south of

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; ; ) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, both in terms of the volume of ...

along the Desaguadero River in the mountains of

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

and mainly in the town of Chipaya located in the Sabaya Province of the Bolivian department of Oruro north of Coipasa Salt Flats. Native speakers generally refer to it as ''Chipay taqu'' or ''Puquina'' or ''Uchun Maa Taqu'' ("our mother language"), but is not the same as, nor in fact even related to, the extinct

Puquina language Puquina (or Pukina) is an extinct language once spoken by a native ethnic group in the region surrounding Lake Titicaca (Peru and Bolivia) and in the north of Chile. It is often associated with the culture that built Tiwanaku. Remnants of Puqui ...

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant clusters

Multiple possibilities are separated by slashes, and optional elements are enclosed in parentheses. Possible syllable onsets are: *(s/ŝ) + p + (h) *(s/ŝ/sh) + k/q + (h/hʷ/x/xʷ) *s/ŝ + p/k/kʷ/q/qʷ/h/hʷ/m/n *t + h/hʷ/x/xʷ *¢/ĉ/č/l + h Possible syllable codas are: *h/x + p/t/k/q/l/ll/r + (t) *hʷ/xʷ + k/q + (t) *Consonant + t

Vowels

*Each vowel can be short, e.g., a , or long, e.g., a• .

Grammar

Chipaya is an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of language that primarily forms words by stringing together morphemes (word parts)—each typically representing a single grammatical meaning—without significant modification to their forms ( agglutinations) ...

, though it has features uncommon to most agglutinative languages, according to preliminary research by the organization DOBES.

References

External links

DOBES - Chipaya LanguageDOBES - Uru-Chipaya
* ttps://ids.clld.org/contributions/270 Chipaya( Intercontinental Dictionary Series) {{DEFAULTSORT:Chipaya Language Indigenous languages of the Andes Languages of Bolivia Uru–Chipaya languages