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

Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large num ...

spread across Colombia 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 ...

Family division

Choco consists of six known branches, all but two of which are extinct. *The

Emberá languages Emberá (also known as Chocó) is a dialect continuum spoken by Emberá people, 100,000 people in northwestern Colombia and southeastern Panama. It belongs to the Choco languages, Choco language family. ''Embera, Emperã, Empena, Eberã, Epena' ...

(also known as Chocó proper, Cholo) * Noanamá (also known as Waunana, Woun Meu) * Anserma ''(†)'' * Arma ''(†)'' ? (unattested) * Sinúfana (Cenufara) ''(†)'' ? *

Caramanta Caramanta is a town and municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. Part of the subregion of Southwestern Antioquia. Climate Caramanta has a subtropical highland climate An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is ...

''(†)'' ? Anserma, Arma, and Sinúfana are extinct. The Emberá group consists of two languages mainly in Colombia with over 60,000 speakers that lie within a fairly mutually intelligible

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

. Ethnologue 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 The University of Brasília ( pt, Universidade de Brasília, UnB) is a federal public university in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. It was founded in 1960 and has since consistently been named among the top five Brazilian universities and the ...

. († = extinct) ;Choko *''

Waunana ''Waunana'' is a genus of cellar spiders that was first described by B. A. Huber in 2000. Species it contains four species, found only in Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama: *'' Waunana anchicaya'' Huber, 2000 – Colombia, Ecuador *'' Waunana eb ...

'' *Embera **Embera, Southern: '' Embera Baudo''; '' Embera Chami''; ''

Epena Epena is a village of 2000 people, and seat of Epena District in the Likouala Department of northeastern Republic of the Congo. It is on the Likouala-aux-Herbes river, just east of the Lake Télé Community Reserve. Notable residents *Amina ...

'' **Embera, Northern: '' Embera Katio''; '' Embera Darien''

Language contact

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Guahibo, Kamsa, 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's Macro-Leco * Antonio Tovar,

Jorge A. Suárez Jorge Alberto Suárez (29 July 1927 – 24 February 1985) was an Argentinian linguist specializing in Mexican indigenous languages. He was born in Villa María in the province of Córdoba in Argentina, and was educated in Buenos Aires, first as ...

, and Robert Gunn: related to Cariban *

Čestmír Loukotka Čestmír Loukotka (12 November 1895 – 13 April 1966) was a Czechoslovak linguist. His daughter was Jarmila Loukotková. Career Loukotka proposed a classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in whi ...

(1944): Southern Emberá may be related to Paezan, Noanamá to Arawakan * 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