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

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

and

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

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) * Sinúfana (Cenufara) ? * Anserma * Caramanta * ?

Arma Arma, ARMA or variants, may refer to: Places * Arma, Kansas, United States * Arma, Nepal * Arma District, Peru * Arma District, Yemen * Arma Mountains, Afghanistan People * Arma people, an ethnic group of the middle Niger River valley * Arma lan ...

(unattested) At least Anserma, Arma, and Caramanta are

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce 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 different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

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 ...

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 A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. ( = extinct) * Choko ** '' Waunana'' ** Embera *** Southern **** '' Embera Baudo'' **** '' Embera Chami'' **** '' Epena'' *** Northern **** '' Embera Katio'' **** '' Embera Darien''

Language contact

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

Kamsa Kamsa (, ) was the tyrant ruler of the Vrishni kingdom, with its capital at Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, Mathura. He is variously described in Hindu texts, Hindu literature as either a human or an asura; The Puranas describe him as an asura, while ...

, Paez, Tukano, Witoto-Okaina, Yaruro, Chibchan, 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, and developed his mature career at UNAM in Mexico. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewi ...

's Macro-Leco * Antonio Tovar, Jorge A. Suárez, and Robert Gunn: related to Cariban *

Čestmír Loukotka Čestmír Loukotka (12 November 1895 – 13 April 1966) was a Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovak linguist and ethnologist. His daughter was Jarmila Loukotková. Career Loukotka proposed a Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas#Lou ...

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

'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