Arhuaco, commonly known as Ikʉ, ( arh, Ikʉ, link=no) is an
Indigenous American 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 ...
of the
Chibchan language family, spoken in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...
by the
Arhuaco people.
[Arhuaco](_blank)
by Arango and Sánchez, Ethnologue, 1998, access date
There are 8000 speakers, all in the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (English: ''Snow-Covered Mountain Range of Saint Martha'') is an isolated mountain range in northern Colombia, separate from the Andes range that runs through the north of the country. Reaching an elevation of ...
region of
Colombia, 90% of whom are monolingual.
Literacy is 1 to 5% in their native language. Some speak
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
, and 15 to 25% are literate in that auxiliary language.
The users have a very strong traditional culture and have vibrant use of their tongue.
It is also known as: ''Aruaco, Bintuk, Bíntukua, Bintucua, Ica, Ijca, Ijka, Ika, and Ike.''
The language uses a
subject–object–verb (SOV) sentence structure.
Phonology
is raised to and merged with word finally.
This language registers 17 consonant phonemes:
Syllable structure
With some exceptions, Arhuaco syllables may begin with up to two consonants (the second of which must be a glide /w j/) and may be closed by one of the following consonants: /ʔ n r w j/.
Prosody
Arhuaco stress normally falls on penultimate syllables, with secondary stresses occurring on every other preceding syllable, in the case of longer words (e.g. /ˌunkəˈsia/ 'protective bracelet').
There are some affixes and enclitics that are extrametrical and do not count as syllables for stress assignment.
References
Frank, Paul. 1985. A grammar of Ika. PhD thesis. University of Pennsylvania.
Frank, Paul. 2000. Ika syntax. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Landaburu, Jon. 2000
La lengua Ika in ''Lenguas indigenas de Colombia: Una visión descriptiva''. Bogota: Instituto Caro y Cuervo''.''
Notes
External links
Arhuaco (Ika) dictionary.Ika language version of the Faculty of Humanities of the National University of Colombia.
{{authority control
Languages of Colombia
Chibchan languages
Subject–object–verb languages