Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Choco languages

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Geographic distribution:
  
Colombia & Panama

Glottolog:
  
choc1280

Subdivisions:
  
Emberá Waunana

Choco languages

Linguistic classification:
  
One of the world's primary language families

The Choco languages (also Chocoan, Chocó, Chokó) are a small family of Native American languages spread across Colombia and Panama.

Contents

Family division

Choco consists of half a dozen known languages, all but two of them extinct.

  • The Emberá languages (also known as Chocó proper, Cholo)
  • Noanamá (also known as Waunana, Woun Meu)
  • Anserma (†)
  • Arma (†) ? (unattested)
  • Sinúfana (Cenufara) (†) ?
  • Caramanta (†) ?

    • Anserma, Arma, and Sinúfana are extinct.

    The Emberá group consists of two languages mainly in Colombia with over 60,000 speakers that lie within a fairly mutually intelligible dialect continuum. Ethnologue divides this into 6 languages. Kaufman (1994) considers the term Cholo to be vague and condescending. Noanamá has some 6,000 speakers on the Panama-Colombia border.

    Genetic relations

    Choco has been included in a number of hypothetical phylum relationships:

  • within Morris Swadesh's Macro-Leco
  • Antonio Tovar, Jorge A. Suárez, & Robert Gunn: related to Cariban
  • Čestmír Loukotka (1944): Southern Emberá may be related to Paezan, Noanamá to Arawakan
  • within Paul Rivet & Loukotka's (1950) Cariban
  • Constenla Umaña & Margery Peña: may be related to Chibchan
  • within Joseph Greenberg's Nuclear Paezan, most closely related to Paezan and Barbacoan

    • References

    Choco languages Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA