 | This articleshould specify the language of its non-English content using{{lang}} or{{langx}},{{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and{{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriateISO 639 code. Wikipedia'smultilingual support templates may also be used - notably cbg for Chimila.See why.(October 2025) |
| Chimila | |
|---|---|
| Ette taara | |
| Native to | Colombia |
| Ethnicity | 1,500 (2009)[1] |
Native speakers | 350 (2009)[1] |
Chibchan
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cbg |
| Glottolog | chim1309 |
| ELP | Chimila |
 | |
Chimila (Shimizya), also known asEtte Taara,[2] is aChibchan language of Colombia, spoken by theChimila people, who live between the lowerMagdalena River, theSierra Nevada de Santa Maria and the Cesar River.[3] At one time Chimila was grouped with theMalibu languages,[4] but then Chimila became classified as a Chibchan language.
Julian Steward, in the 1950Handbook of South American Indians, reports a communication fromGerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff that he considered Chimila to be one of theArawakan languages, and would thus be expected to be like Tairona, one of the Chibchan languages.[5]
Although an accurate description of the phonology of Chimila is yet to be produced, a preliminar sketch can be found in Trillos Amaya's (1997) grammar.
The Chimila languages has 5 oral vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. These basic segments can also be realized as short, long, aspirated and glottalized.[6]
| 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 alabialized counterpart. The trill /ɾ/ is slightly preglottalized.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labialized velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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" andᵑgaː "wing, feather".[3] 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.[7]
According to Trillos Amaya (1997), Chimila also has twotones. 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.[8][3]
In early twentieth century, anthropologistDolmatoff (1947) was able to collect an extensive sample of Chimila words. The following table shows some basic vocabulary items of the language:[9]
| 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 theSummer Institute of Linguistics. Some of the words mentioned above are now spelled differently, as shown in the following table:[2]
| gloss | Chimila |
|---|---|
| two | tiimujnaʼ |
| three | tiimajnaʼ |
| four | briiʼ yeeʼe |
| head | jaakra-la |
| tooth | dij |
| sun | diǥǥa |
| moon | maamasuʼ |
"Cesar", the name of both theCesar River and theCesar Department, is an adaptation from the Chimila wordChet-tzar orZazare ("calm water") intoSpanish.[10]
Guatapurí derives from the Chimila for "cold water", and provides the name of theGuatapurí River.[11]
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