Choco languages

The Choco languages (also Chocoan, Chocó, Chokó) are a small family of Native American languages spread across Colombia and Panama. They consist of the following groups:

Family division

Choco consists of 10 (?) languages:

A. Emberá group (a.k.a. Chocó proper, Chokó proper, Chocó)

1. Southern Emberá

2. Northern Emberá

3. Noanamá (a.k.a. Waunana, Huaunana, Woun Meu)

4. Anserma (†)

5. Runa (†) ???

6. Arma (†) ???

7. Cenu (†) ???

8. Cauca (†) ???

9. Sinúfana (a.k.a. Cenufara) (†) ???

10. Quimbaya (a.k.a. Kimbaya) (†) ???

Anserma, Runa, Arma, Cenu, Cauca, Sinúfana, and Kimbaya are all extinct now. Quimbaya is known from only 8 words. Gordon (2005) states that the Arma people spoken either Cenu or Cauca (thus, it is not clear why it is listed in the Ethnologue).

The Emberá group is 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. Noanamá has some 6000 speakers on the Panama-Colombia border.

Kaufman (1994) states that Quimbaya may not be a Choco language.

Genetic relations

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

within Morris Swadesh's Macro-Leco
Antonio Tovar and Jorge Suárez: related to Cariban
Cestmír Loukotka (1944): Southern Emberá may be related to Paezan, Noanamá to Arawakan
within Paul Rivet & Loukotka's (1950) Cariban
within Joseph Greenberg's Nuclear Paezan, most closely related to Paezan and Barbacoan

Links

Ethnologue: Choco
Proel: Familia Chocó

Bibliography

Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13-67). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-2927-0414-3.
Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46-76). London: Routledge.
Loewen, Jacob. (1963). Choco I & Choco II. International Journal of American Linguistics, 29.
Licht, Daniel Aguirre. (1999). Embera. Languages of the world/materials 208. LINCOM.
Mortensen, Charles A. (1999). A reference grammar of the Northern Embera languages. Studies in the languages of Colombia (No.7); SIL publications in linguistics (No. 134). SIL.
Rivet, Paul; & Loukotka, Cestmír. (1950). Langues d'Amêrique du sud et des Antilles. In A. Meillet & M. Cohen (Eds.), Les langues du monde (Vol. 2). Paris: Champion.
Suárez, Jorge. (1974). South American Indian languages. The new Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed.). Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
Swadesh, Morris. (1959). Mapas de clasificación lingüística de México y las Américas. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Tovar, Antonio; & Larrucea de Tovar, Consuelo. (1984). Catálogo de las lenguas de América del Sur (nueva ed.). Madrid: Editorial Gedos. ISBN 8-4249-0957-7.