The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

s on the east coast of

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 cou ...

and nearby areas. The name "Misumalpan" was devised by

John Alden Mason John Alden Mason (January 14, 1885 – November 7, 1967) was an American archaeological anthropologist and linguist. Mason was born in Orland, Indiana, but grew up in Philadelphia's Germantown. He received his undergraduate degree from the Univ ...

and is composed of syllables from the names of the family's three members

Miskito Miskito may refer to: * Miskito people, ethnic group in Honduras and Nicaragua ** Miskito Sambu, branch of Miskito people with African admixture ** Tawira Miskito, branch of Miskito people of largely indigenous origin * Miskito language, original ...

Sumo languages Sumo (also known as Sumu) is the collective name for a group of Misumalpan languages spoken in Nicaragua and Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to ...

and Matagalpan. It was first recognized by Walter Lehmann in 1920. While all the languages of the Matagalpan branch are now extinct, the Miskito and Sumu languages are alive and well: Miskito has almost 200,000 speakers and serves as a second language for speakers of other indigenous languages in the

Mosquito Coast The Mosquito Coast, also known as the Mosquitia or Mosquito Shore, historically included the area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It formed part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskit ...

. According to Hale, most speakers of Sumu also speak Miskito.

External relations

Kaufman (1990) finds a connection with

Macro-Chibchan Macro-Chibchan is a proposed grouping of the languages of the Lencan, Misumalpan, and Chibchan families into a single large phylum (macrofamily). History The Lencan and Misumalpan languages were once included in the Chibchan family proper, but ...

to be "convincing", but Misumalpan specialist Ken Hale considered a possible connection between Chibchan and Misumalpan to be "too distant to establish".Hale & Salamanca 2001, p. 35

Classification

– nearly 200,000 speakers, mainly in the

North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region The North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region is one of two autonomous regions in Nicaragua. It was created by the Autonomy Statute of 7 September 1987. It covers an area of 33,106 km2 and has a population of 541,189 (2021 estimate). It is the l ...

, but including some in

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 ...

. * Sumalpan languages: **

– some 8,000 speakers along the Huaspuc River and its tributaries, most in

but some in

. Many of them have shifted to Miskito. *** Mayangna - dominant variety of the Sumo family *** Ulwa ** Matagalpan ***

Cacaopera Cacaopera is a municipality in the Morazán department of El Salvador. According to UNESCO: The community of Cacaopera is the sole surviving representative of an otherwise vanished ethnic group, variously referred to as Ulua, Matagalpa, or C ...

† – formerly spoken in the Morazán department of

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

; and ***

Matagalpa Matagalpa () is a city in Nicaragua which is the capital of the department of Matagalpa. The city has a population of 111,258 (2021 estimate),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 cou ...

and the El Paraíso department of

Miskito became the dominant language of the

from the late 17th century on, as a result of the people's alliance with the British Empire, which colonized the area. In northeastern Nicaragua, it continues to be adopted by former speakers of Sumo. Its sociolinguistic status is lower than that of the English-based creole of the southeast, and in that region, Miskito seems to be losing ground. Sumo is endangered in most areas where it is found, although some evidence suggests that it was dominant in the region before the ascendancy of Miskito. The Matagalpan languages are long since extinct, and not very well documented. All Misumalpan languages share the same phonology, apart from

phonotactics Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...

. The consonants are p, b, t, d, k, s, h, w, y, and

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

and

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...

versions of m, n, ng, l, r; the vowels are short and long versions of a, i, u.

Loukotka (1968)

Below is a full list of Misumalpan language varieties listed by Loukotka (1968), including names of unattested varieties. ;Mosquito group *Mosquito / Miskito - language spoken on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, Central America. Dialects are: **Kâbô - spoken on the Nicaraguan coast. **Baldam - spoken on the Sandy Bay and near Bimuna. **Tawira / Tauira / Tangwera - spoken on the

Prinzapolca Prinzapolka () is a Miskito municipality in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the ...

River. **Wanki - spoken on the

Coco River River Wangki in Miskitu or Río Coco, in Spanish, formerly known as the Río Segovia, Cape River, or Yara River, is a river located on the border of northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras. It is the longest river that runs entirely within the Ce ...

and on the

Cabo Gracias a Dios Cabo Gracias a Dios is a cape located in the middle of the east coast of Central America, within what is variously called the Mosquito Coast and La Mosquitia. It is the point where the Rio Coco flows into the Caribbean, and is the border betwee ...

. **Mam / Cueta - spoken on the left bank of the

, Honduras. **Chuchure - extinct dialect once spoken around Nombre de Dios, Panama. (Unattested.) *Ulua / Wulwa / Gaula / Oldwaw / Taulepa - spoken on the

Ulúa River The Ulúa River ( es, Río Ulúa, ) is a river in western Honduras. It rises in the central mountainous area of the country close to La Paz and runs approximately due northwards to the east end of the Gulf of Honduras at . En route, it is joine ...

and Carca River, Nicaragua. *Sumu / Simou / Smus / Albauin - spoken on the

River, Nicaragua. Dialects are: **Bawihka - spoken on the Banbana River. **Tawihka / Táuaxka / Twaca / Taga - spoken between the

and

River. **Panamaca - spoken between the Pispis River, Waspuc River, and Bocay River. **Cucra / Cockorack - spoken on the Escondido River and Siqui River. **Yosco - spoken on the

Tuma River The Tuma River is a river located in Nicaragua. The length of the Tuma is . The river, a left tributary of the Río Grande de Matagalpa, is located in the Jinotega and Matagalpa Departments, North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, and South Cari ...

and Bocay River. (Unattested.) ;Matagalpa group *Matagalpa / Chontal / Popoluca - extinct language once spoken from the Tumo River to the Olama River, Nicaragua. *Jinotega / Chingo - extinct language once spoken in the villages of

Jinotega Jinotega () (derived from Náhuatl: ''Xiotenko'' ‘place next to the jiñocuajo trees’) is the capital city of the Department of Jinotega in north-central Nicaragua. The city is located in a long valley surrounded by the cool climate and Da ...

and Danlí, Nicaragua. (only several words.) *Cacaopera - spoken in the villages of

and

Lislique Lislique is a municipality in the La Unión department La Unión () is a department of El Salvador. It is located in the eastern part of the country and its capital is La Unión. It covers a total of and has a population of 263,200. The ...

, El Salvador.

Proto-language

Below are Proto-Misumalpan reconstructions by Adolfo Constenla Umaña (1987):Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1987). "Elementos de Fonología Comparada de las Lenguas Misumalpas," ''Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica'' 13 (1), 129-161.

Notes

Bibliography

*Benedicto, Elena (2002), "Verbal Classifier Systems: The Exceptional Case of Mayangna Auxiliaries." In "Proceedings of WSCLA 7th". UBC Working Papers in Linguistics 10, pp. 1–14. Vancouver, British Columbia. *Benedicto, Elena & Kenneth Hale, (2000) "Mayangna, A Sumu Language: Its Variants and Its Status within Misumalpa", in E. Benedicto, ed., ''The UMOP Volume on Indigenous Languages'', UMOP 20, pp. 75–106. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts. *

Colette Craig Colette Grinevald (born 1947) is a French linguist. She earned her PhD from Harvard University in 1975 and joined the newly created Linguistics department at the University of Oregon in 1977. Grinevald has written grammars of Jakaltek Popti' and ...

& Kenneth Hale, "A Possible Macro-Chibchan Etymon", ''Anthropological Linguistics'' Vol. 34, 1992. * Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1987) "Elementos de Fonología Comparada de las Lenguas Misumalpas," ''Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica'' 13 (1), 129-161. * Constenla Umaña A. (1998). "Acerca de la relación genealógica de las lenguas lencas y las lenguas misumalpas," Communication presented at the First Archeological Congress of Nicaragua (Managua, 20–21 July), to appear in 2002 in ''Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica'' 28 (1). * Hale, Ken. "El causativo misumalpa (miskitu, sumu)", In ''Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo"'' 1996, 30:1-2. * Hale, Ken (1991) "Misumalpan Verb Sequencing Constructions," in C. Lefebvre, ed., ''Serial Verbs: Grammatical, Comparative, and Cognitive Approaches'', John Benjamins, Amsterdam. *Hale, Ken and Danilo Salamanca (2001) "Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages", in Frawley, Hill & Munro eds. ''Making Dictionaries: Preserving indigenous Languages of the Americas''. University of California Press. * Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. (2009) "Ulwa verb class morphology", In press in ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 75.4. Preprint here: http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000639 * Ruth Rouvier, "Infixation and reduplication in Misumalpan: A reconstruction" (B.A., Berkeley, 2002) * Phil Young and T. Givón. "The puzzle of Ngäbére auxiliaries: Grammatical reconstruction in Chibchan and Misumalpan", in William Croft, Suzanne Kemmer and Keith Denning, eds., ''Studies in Typology and Diachrony: Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday'', ''Typological Studies in Language'' 20, John Benjamins 1990.

External links

FDL bibliography
(general, but search specific language names)
Ulwa Language home page

The Misumalpan Causative Construction
– Ken Hale
Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages
– Ken Hale
The Joy of Tawahka
– David Margolin

– some words of Matagalpan
Andrew Koontz-Garboden's web page
(with links to papers on Ulwa) {{DEFAULTSORT:Misumalpan Languages Language families Mesoamerican languages Indigenous languages of Central America Macro-Chibchan languages