Chimila, known natively as , is a Chibchan language of Colombia, spoken by the Chimila people, who live between the lower Magdalena River, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria and the Cesar River. Chimila was historically grouped with the Malibu languages, but then it was classified as a Chibchan language.
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff considered Chimila to be one of the Arawakan languages, and would thus be expected to be like Tairona, one of the Chibchan languages.
Phonology The following is a preliminary sketch based on Trillos Amaya's (1997) grammar.
The Chimila language has 5 oral vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. These basic segments can also be realized as short, long, aspirated and glottalized..
+ Vowels Front Central Back Close i iː iʰ iˀ u uː uʰ uˀ Mid e eː eʰ eˀ o oː oʰ oˀ Open a aː aʰ aˀ
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 counterpart. The trill /ɾ/ is slightly preglottalized.
+ Consonants Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labialized velar Plosive/Affricate voiceless p t tʃ k kʷ voiced dʒ g gʷ prenasalized ᵐb ⁿd ᶮdʒ ᵑg ᵑgʷ Nasal m n ɲ ŋ ŋʷ Fricative s x Approximant l, ɾ w
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..
Tone 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:
gloss Chimila one ti-tásu, nyéːˀmun two (ti-)múxuna three (ti-)máxana four mbrí nyéː head háːˀkra eye guáːˀkva nose náːˀ ear kútsaˀkra tooth dí man tsáːˀkve woman yúnˀkve water níː-taˀkve fire ngéː earth íˀti fish mínˀkrava tree ká, káx sun nínga moon máːma-su
A provisional writing system has been developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Some of the words mentioned above are now spelled differently, as shown in the following table:
gloss Chimila two tiimujnaʼ three tiimajnaʼ four briiʼ yeeʼe head jaakra-la tooth dij sun diǥǥa moon maamasuʼ
Toponyms "Cesar", the name of both the Cesar River and the Cesar Department, is an adaptation from the Chimila word Chet-tzar or Zazare ("calm water") into Spanish.LABLAA - Luis Galvis: Don Gonzalo
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.
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