Kamëntšá, commonly rendered Camsá or Sibundoy in old sources,Handbook of South American Indians is a

language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...

and native language of the Kamëntšá people who primarily inhabit the Sibundoy Valley of the

Putumayo Department Putumayo () is a departments of Colombia, department of Southern Colombia. It is in the south-west of the country, bordering Ecuador and Peru. Its capital is Mocoa. The word ''putumayo'' comes from the Quechua languages. The verb ''p'utuy'' ...

in the south of

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

Classification

Kamëntšá appears to be a

. Researchers have tried connecting it to the

Chibchan languages The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa R ...

without success. Fabre reports that the Kamëntšá are descended, at least in part, from the , whose language is unattested.

Language contact

Jolkesky notes that there are lexical similarities with the

Choco languages The Choco languages (also Chocoan, Chocó, Chokó) are a small family of Indigenous languages spread across Colombia and Panama. Family division Choco consists of six known branches, all but two of which are extinct. *The Emberá languages ...

due to contact.

Varieties

Mason lists the following names as Coche (Mocoa) varieties. *Sebondoy *Quillacinga *Patoco

Phonology

Consonants

Howard and O'Brien call the retroflex phonemes in the above table

retroflex A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...

, while Huber & Reed use the

alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (alveolopalatal, ''alveo-palatal'' or ''alveopalatal'') consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simu ...

symbols. More specifically, Howard uses and , O'Brien uses and , and Huber & Reed use and .

Vowels

Huber & Reed, Howard, and O'Brien all analyze six vowel phonemes in Kamëntšá: , , , , , and . O'Brien notes that has a limited distribution and is rarely found at the beginnings of words, and that in many cases may be an allophone of before palatal consonants. Howard found that and fluctuate in some morphemes, as do and .

Grammar

Kamëntšá is a

polysynthetic language In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...

with prefixes and suffixes. It also has dual number, which is unusual for languages around it.

Vocabulary

Huber & Reed's book provides a comparison between 68 indigenous languages of Colombia. The following table provides the order of words in the book, along with glosses in English and Spanish. The Kamëntšá words follow their orthography, i.e., using and instead of and . :

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * (Contains mythic and legendary in Camsá with interlinear morphemic glossing and English translations.) * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Camsa Language Language isolates of South America Languages of Colombia