
Emberá (also known as Chocó) is a
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 ...
spoken by
100,000 people
"100,000 People" is a song by American rock band Kings of Leon. It was released as a digital download and for streaming on January 7, 2021, by RCA Records as the second single from their eighth studio album ''When You See Yourself''.
Background
Th ...
in northwestern
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 Car ...
and southeastern
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 Cos ...
. It belongs to the
Choco language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...
.
''Embera, Emperã, Empena, Eberã, Epena'', etc. is the Embera word for 'human being' or 'man' and is used as the autonym by all speakers of varieties of Embera (though not by the related Wounaan). It is also sometimes used to refer to other indigenous people who are not of Emberá ethnicity.
Languages and regional variation
Emberá is usually divided into at least two major groupings:
# Northern Emberá
# Southern Emberá
Each has a few regional
varieties. These varieties are sometimes considered
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
s but are actually distinct
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s. The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America lists them as follows, along with alleged sub-varieties which may be places, extinct groups, or misspellings:
* Northern (Northern Antioquia, Emberá norteño)
**
Catío (Katío): Dabeiba, Tukurá (Río Verde, upper Sinú, Emberá-Katío), Ngverá (San Jorge)
**
Northern Emberá (Citará, Northwest Embera, West Embera):
[The Northern Embera variety is used in the movie "End of the Spear", where Embera people from Panama portray the Waodani people of Ecuador.] Darién (Sambú, Panamá Embera), Citará (Atrato, Andágueda), Juradó
* Southern
**
Chamí (Caramanta, Embera-Chamí, East Embera, Southern Antioquia): Tadó*, Cristianía, Upper Andágueda, Mistrató, Garrapatas
**
Baudó: Catrú, Dubasa, Purricha, Pavaja
**
Eperara (Epena): Joaquincito, Cajambre, Naya, Saija, Tapaje, Satinga
''Ethnologue'' (2005, 2009) treats
Tadó
Tadó () is a municipality and town in the Chocó Department, Colombia.
Climate
Tadó has an extremely wet tropical rainforest climate
A tropical rainforest climate, humid tropical climate or equatorial climate is a tropical climate sub-type us ...
(*) as a separate language. A case can be made for classifying Baudó in the Northern Embera group. It has many features of both groups and is partially intelligible with the neighboring Northern Embera dialect as well as with Epena.
Bibliography
* ''The archive of the indigenous languages of Latin America''. (Web page
www.ailla.utexas.org/site/sa_lg_tbl.html accessed 2005, Dec. 27).
* Aguirre Licht, Daniel. (1999). ''Embera''. Languages of the World/materials 208. LINCOM.
* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. .
* Gunn, Robert D. (Ed.). (1980). ''Clasificación 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. (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''.
* 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.
* Pardo Rojas, Mauricio y Aguirre, Daniel L. (1993). "Dialectología chocó". ''Biblioteca Ezequiel Uricoechea'' 11: 269-312. Bogotá: ICC.
* Sara, Solomon (2001). ''A Tri-Lingual Dictionary of Emberá-Spanish-English''. Lincom Europa.
See also
*
Embera-Wounaan, who speak the Embera and Wounaan languages
References
External links
Audio recordings of "traditional narratives and myths" in Embera with some Spanish translations part of th
at
AILLA.
Embera(
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 ...
)
{{authority control
Choco languages
Embera-Wounaan
Indigenous languages of Central America
Indigenous languages of the South American Northwest