Bribri, also known as Bri-bri, Bribriwak, and Bribri-wak, is a
Chibchan language, from a
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 h ...
indigenous to the
Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
to northern
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 includes populations of those countries as well as
Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the coun ...
,
Costa Rica
Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...
, 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 ...
. As of 2002, there were about 11,000 speakers left. An estimate by the National Census of Costa Rica in 2011 found that Bribri is currently spoken by 54.7% of the 12,785
Bribri people, about 7,000 individuals. It is a
tonal language whose
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
is
subject–object–verb.
There are three traditional dialects of Bribri: Coroma (in the western region of the
Talamanca mountain range), Amubre (in the eastern region of the
Talamanca mountain range) and Salitre (in the South Pacific area). ''Bribri'' is a tribal name, deriving from a word for "mountainous" in their own language. The Bribri language is also referred to as ''Su Uhtuk'', which means "our language." Bribri is reportedly most similar to sister language
Cabécar as both languages have nasal harmony, but they are
mutually unintelligible
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 ...
.
Phonology
Consonants
* /b/ can have allophones of
�, m
* /d/ can have an allophone of
� as well as nasal allophones of
�̃, n
* /ɟ͡ʝ/ can have an allophone of
�
* /ɾ/ can have an allophone of
* /w, j/ can have nasalised allophones of
̃, j̃
Vowels
I, u and a are pronounced in the same manner as they would be in Spanish. E and o are more open than in Spanish. The sound of ë is between i and e, in the same manner as ö is between u and o. The nasal vowels are pronounced similarly to the corresponding orals, with the addition of some air exiting through the nose.
Alphabet
The Linguistics Department at the
University of Costa Rica has conceived a standardized spelling system that is based on several earlier attempts.
Nasal vowels are indicated by a tilde: (Previously indicated with a macron below: a̱, e̱, i̱, o̱, u̱), except after a nasal consonant (already indicating nasalisation of the vowel).
Tones are indicated by the grave accent for the high tone and the acute accent for the low tone; these can also be placed on the nasal vowels.
See also
*
Bribri Sign Language
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Portal de la lengua bribri. Bribri texts, audios and transcriptions, by Carla V. Jara and Alí García SeguraBribri's entry on the WALSA Bribri course with audio files: Jara Murillo, Carla con Alí García Segura. 2008. Materiales y Ejercicios para el Curso de Bribri I, Universidad de Costa Rica.Recordings of Bribri conversations and narrativesfrom the Indigenous Languages of Costa Rica Collection of Laura Cervantes at
AILLA.
Bribri people
Chibchan languages
Languages of Costa Rica
Tonal languages
Subject–object–verb languages
{{indigenousAmerican-lang-stub