Cha'palaa (also known as Chachi or Cayapa) is a Barbacoan language spoken in northern

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ' ...

by ca. 3000 ethnic

Chachi people Chachi people (also Cayapas) are an ethnic group who live in the rainforest area of northwestern Esmeraldas on the northern coast of Ecuador. They live by the Cayapas River in the Centro El Encanto, a section of the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological Res ...

. "Cha'palaa" means "language of the

." This language was described in part by the missionary P. Alberto Vittadello, who, by the time his description was published in

Guayaquil , motto = Por Guayaquil Independiente en, For Independent Guayaquil , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Ecuador#South America , pushpin_re ...

in 1988, had lived for seven years among the tribe. Cha'palaa has

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

morphology, with a Subject-Object-Verb word order. Cha'palaa is written using the Latin alphabet, making use of the following graphemes: A, B, C, CH, D, DY, E, F, G, GU, HU, I, J, L, LL, M, N, Ñ, P, QU, R, S, SH, T, TS, TY, U, V, Y, and ' The writing system includes four simple vowels, and four double vowels:

Phonology

Cha'palaa has four vowels: /a, e, i, u/. Cha'palaa has 22 consonant phonemes.

References

External links

Native Languages on Cha'palaachi, with links

Cayapa
( Intercontinental Dictionary Series) Agglutinative languages Languages of Ecuador Barbacoan languages Endangered Barbacoan languages {{na-lang-stub