Chimila (Shimizya), also known as Ette Taara, is a Chibchan language of Colombia, spoken by the Chimila people, who live between the lower

Magdalena river The Magdalena River (, ; less commonly ) is the main river of Colombia, flowing northward about through the western half of the country. It takes its name from the biblical figure Mary Magdalene. It is navigable through much of its lower reaches, ...

, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria and the Cesar river. At one time Chimila was grouped with the

Malibu languages The Malibu languages are a poorly attested group of extinct languages once spoken along the Magdalena River in Colombia. Material exists only for two of the numerous languages mentioned in the literature: Malibú and Mocana. Classification Th ...

, but then Chimila became classified as a Chibchan language.

Julian Steward Julian Haynes Steward (January 31, 1902 – February 6, 1972) was an American anthropologist known best for his role in developing "the concept and method" of cultural ecology, as well as a scientific theory of culture change. Early life and ed ...

, in the 1950 ''Handbook of South American Indians'', reports a communication from

Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (6 March 1912 – 17 May 1994) was an Austrian anthropologist and archaeologist. He is known for his fieldwork among many different Amerindian cultures such as in the Amazonian tropical rainforests (e.g. Desana Tucano) ...

that he considered Chimila to be one of the

Arawakan languages 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. Branc ...

, and would thus be expected to be like Tairona, one of the Chibchan languages.

Phonology

Although an accurate description of the phonology of Chimila is yet to be produced, a preliminar sketch can be found in Trillos Amaya's (1997) grammar. The Chimila languages has 5 oral vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. These basic segments can also be realized as short, long, aspirated and glottalized. The consonant inventory of Chimila consists of 23 phonemes. Voiceless stops are essentially realized as in Spanish, without any additional feature. On the other hand, voiced stops are prenasalized. The same is true for affricates. In addition, there is also a plain voiced velar stop and a plain voiced palatal affricate. Velar consonants also exhibit a

labialized Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...

counterpart. The trill /ɾ/ is slightly preglottalized. Plain voiced and prenasalized stops and affricates have been shown to contrast, e.g. ''kaː'' "breast", ''gaː'' "excrement" and ''ᵑgaː'' "wing, feather". The most frequent type of consonant cluster is formed by a stop and /ɾ/. In general, lenis consonants, except for prenasalized ones, /x/, /ɾ/ and /w/, are realized as fortis whenever they follow the stressed syllable. According to Trillos Amaya (1997), Chimila also has two tones. In monosyllabic words ending in a long vowel, tone is contrastive, e.g. ''tóː'' "maraca" (rising tone), ''tòː'' "heart" (falling tone). In polysyllabic words, the distribution of tones is often predictable: if the syllable following the vowel that bears the tone starts with a geminated consonant or /r/, the tone is falling, however, if the following consonant is not geminated, then the tone is rising.

Vocabulary

In early twentieth century, anthropologist Dolmatoff (1947) was able to collect an extensive sample of Chimila words. The following table shows some basic vocabulary items of the language: A provisional writing system has been developed by the

Summer Institute of Linguistics SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

. Some of the words mentioned above are now spelled differently, as shown in the following table:

Chimila-derived names

"Cesar", the name of both the

Cesar River The Cesar River () is a river in northern Colombia which is a part of the Magdalena Basin. It flows through the Cesar-Ranchería Basin and separates the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from the mountain ranges of the Serranía del Perijá, an exten ...

and the

Cesar Department Cesar Department (), or simply Cesar, () is a departments of Colombia, department of Colombia located in the north of the country in the Caribbean Region of Colombia, Caribbean region, bordering to the north with the Department of La Guajira, to ...

, is an adaptation from the Chimila word ''Chet-tzar'' or ''Zazare'' ("calm water") into

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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

. ''Guatapurí'' derives from the Chimila for "cold water", and provides the name of the Guatapurí River. Marcos Fidel Vega Seña (2005),
Vallenato: Cultura y sentimiento
', U. Cooperativa de Colombia. p14.

Notes

References

* * Languages of Colombia Chibchan languages {{indigenousAmerican-lang-stub