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

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 Panama.

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 Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed 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 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 an ...

dialect continuum.

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') 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 comprehensiv ...

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. († = 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 Kamsa ( sa, कंस, Kaṃsa, translit-std=IAST) was the tyrant ruler of the Vrishni kingdom, with its capital at Mathura. He is variously described in Hindu literature as either a human or an asura; The Puranas describe him as an asura, whi ...

, Paez,

Tukano The Tucano people (sometimes spelt Tukano) are a group of Indigenous South Americans in the northwestern Amazon, along the Vaupés River and the surrounding area. They are mostly in Colombia, but some are in Brazil. They are us ...

, 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. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and mas ...

'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 The Cariban languages are a Language family, family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken ...

* Čestmír Loukotka (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's Nuclear Paezan, most closely related to Paezan and

Barbacoan Barbacoan (also Barbakóan, Barbacoano, Barbacoana) is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador. Genealogical relations The Barbacoan languages may be related to the Páez language. Barbacoan is often connected with the Paezan languages ...

* 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