| Esmeraldeño | |
|---|---|
| Atacame, Takame | |
 Geografía y geología del Ecuador (1892), the book where the Esmeraldeño language is attested | |
| Native to | Ecuador |
| Region | western Esmeraldas Province |
| Ethnicity | Afro-Ecuadorians[1] |
| Era | attested 1877 |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | atac1235 |
Esmeraldeño, or Esmeralda (also called Takame or Atacame), is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken in the coastal region of Ecuador, specifically in the western part of Esmeraldas Province.
Geographical distribution
In the 19th century, the language was spoken along the lower Esmeraldas River in Esmeraldas Province. It may have previously extended across the Ecuadorian coast in the past.[2]: 155
Classification
It has been proposed since 1902 that the language is connected to the still-spoken Pumé language of Venezuela. It also has some lexical similarities with the extinct Yurumanguí language.[2]
History
Around the beginning of the 19th century, William Bennet Stevenson visited the town of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, where he reported the Esmeraldeño language was in use; the town had a primarily Afro-Ecuadorian population. It is said that a group of shipwrecked African slaves encountered a group of local Indigenous people; they killed the men and settled among the women, from which their language was preserved. Stevenson also described the nearby town of Atacames as speaking Spanish. The descendant zambos were "factually" independent throughout the colonial period.[2]: 155
Documentation
The only data collected on the Esmeraldeño language were obtained by J. M. Pallares in 1877. These materials were published subsequently in Teodoro Wolf's (1892) Geografía y geología del Ecuador, and analyzed in Eduard Seler (1902), who first proposed a connection with Pumé, as well as Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (1941), Adolfo Constenla Umaña (1991), and Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken (2004). It is one of only two languages (with Chaʼpalaachi) of the Ecuadorian coastal languages for which any significant data is known.[2]: 155
Language contact
Esmeraldeño has undergone extensive influence from two neighboring Barbacoan languages, Chaʼpalaa and Tsafiki. A genetic connection between Barbacoan and Esmeraldeño is considered unlikely, however, as otherwise the languages are very different. Shared vocabulary between the two are primarily flora and fauna, but also some basic vocabulary.[3]: 457–458
| gloss | Esmeraldeño | Cha'paa | Tsafiki |
|---|---|---|---|
| pineapple | chula | tʃiwíla | tʃiʎa |
| earth | dó | to | tu |
| cotton | kuve | kuwá | kuwa |
| bean | muripe | moló | mulu |
| Guadua | ta-páke | paʰkí | pahki |
| snake | piama | piní | pinʲe |
| rubber[a] | sheve | sábe | sabe |
| chicken[b] | walpa | wálpa | waʎapa |
The obvious Quechua loanword walpa 'chicken' is a rarity; such words derived from Quechua are almost nonexistent.[2]: 160
Phonology
Vowels
Esmeraldeño is thought to have a 5-vowel system /i, u, e, o, a/, although the large amount of variation between vowels is suggested by Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño to be indicative of a three-vowel system /i, u, a/ instead.[2]: 156
Consonants
Orthographical representations of the consonants are presented below; the exact phonetic interpretation of these is uncertain.[2]: 156
| Bilabial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | |||
| Affricate | ch | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | sh | j~h | |
| voiced | (v) | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Vibrant | r, rr | |||||
| Lateral | l | ll | ||||
| Approximant | w | y | ||||
⟨j⟩ and ⟨h⟩ are thought to be in complementary distribution, with ⟨h⟩ rarely appearing word-initially, and ⟨j⟩ within a word. ⟨v⟩ sometimes alternates with ⟨b⟩.[2]: 156
Morphology
In Esmeraldeño, genitives follow their head, adjectives both precede and follow their noun, and the language is both prefixing and suffixing. Personal reference is represented using suffixes, with -s(a) used for the first person and -va as the second person, as are cases. The former are used to indicate possessors on a noun, and the subject or object on a verb. -sa typically results in the dropping of a preceding vowel, except in monosyllabic roots; this may also occur with multisyllabic verb bases, and may also sometimes be stressed. A third-person possessor suffix is -e or -é.[2]: 156
mul-va
eye-2POSS
mul-va
eye-2POSS
'your eye'
ene-sá
eat-1SBJ
ene-sá
eat-1SBJ
'I eat'
peli-va
row-2SBJ
peli-va
row-2SBJ
'You are rowing'
pisko-vá-s
sell-2SBJ-1OBJ
pisko-vá-s
sell-2SBJ-1OBJ
'Sell it to me!'
Further reading
- Seler, Eduard (1902). "Die Sprache der Indianer von Esmeraldas" [The language of the Indians of Esmeraldas]. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach- und Alterthumskunde [Collected treatises on American linguistics and archaeology] (in German). Vol. 1. Berlin: A. Asher & Company. pp. 49–64 – via Google Books.
- Wolf, Teodoro (1892). Geografía y geología del Ecuador. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus.
Notes
References
- Hammarström, Harald (September 2015). "Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: A comprehensive review: Online appendices". Language. 91 (3): s1–s188. doi:10.1353/lan.2015.0049. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0029-1D58-0. ISSN 1535-0665.
- Adelaar, William F. H.; Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The languages of the Andes. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. pp. 156–161. ISBN 9781139451123.
- Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2016). Estudo arqueo-ecolinguístico das terras tropicais sul-americanas (Ph.D. dissertation) (2 ed.). Brasília: University of Brasília.