The moribund Hibito–Cholón or Cholónan languages form a proposed
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...
that links two languages of
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
,
Hibito and
Cholón. This family was believed to be extinct but in 2021 a native speaker was rediscovered, she is
Martha Pérez Valderrama, she is currently the only known speaker of this family (specifically from the
Cholón). They may also be related to the extinct
Culle language, and perhaps to the
language of the Chachapoya, but the data for all of these languages is poor.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the
Kechua,
Leko Leko may refer to:
* Leko (surname)
* Leko languages, a small group of African Savanna languages
* Leco language, a moribund isolate language of Bolivia
* Lekolite or Leko, a type of stage spotlight
* Alexandro da Silva Santos or Leko, Brazilian fo ...
,
Mapudungun,
Mochika,
Kandoshi,
Muniche, and
Barbakoa language families due to contact.
Lexicon
Several basic Hibito and Cholon words appear to be related, though the data on both languages is poor. The following examples are given in the ''ad hoc'' orthography of the three sources we have on these languages:
:
Comparative word list of Hibito and Cholon from Loukotka (1949):
;Notes
*(Sp.) = Spanish loanword (excluded)
;Sources used by Loukotka (1949) — Hibito
*Manuscript by Martínez Compañón from the 1700s
*Tessmann (1930)
;Sources Loukotka (1949) — Cholon
*Mata (1748)
[Mata, Fr. Pedro de la. 1748. ''Arte de la lengua Cholona''. Trujillo. Manuscript held at the British Museum in London. (Republished in ''Inca'' (1923), vol. 1, pp. 690-750. Lima.)]
*Tessmann (1930)
[Tessmann, Günter. 1930. ''Die Indianer Nordost-Perus: grundlegende Forschungen für eine systematische Kulturkunde''. Hamburg: Friederichsen, de Gruyter.]
:
Rivet (1949)
References
*Alain Fabre, 2005, ''Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: CHOLÓN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hibito-Cholon languages
Hibito–Cholon languages,
Proposed language families
Language families