| Muisca | |
| Also Known As: | Mosca, Chibcha |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /
|
| Region: | Bogotá savanna, Altiplano Cundiboyacense |
| State: | Colombia |
| Map: | Chibcha lang.png |
| Mapcaption: | Chibchan languages. Chibcha itself is spoken in the southernmost area, in central Colombia |
| Ethnicity: | Muisca |
| Extinct: | 18th century[1] |
| Speakers: | No known native speakers[2] |
| Ref: | linglist |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Fam1: | Chibchan |
| Fam2: | Kuna-Colombian |
| Script: | only numerals |
| Iso2: | chb |
| Iso3: | chb |
| Glotto: | chib1270 |
| Glottorefname: | Chibcha |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Revived: | at least 150 speakers |
| Dia1: | Duit language |
Muisca or Muysca (*pronounced as //ˈmɨska// *pronounced as /[ˈmʷɨska]/), also known as Chibcha, Mosca and Muysca of Bogotá, was a language spoken by the Muisca people, one of the many indigenous cultures of the Americas, historically only in the Savanna of Bogotá. The Muisca inhabit the Altiplano Cundiboyacense of what today is the country of Colombia. "Chibcha" was, according to Pedro Simón, the language's indigenous name,[3] however colonial-era dictionaries contradict this and indicate the indigenous name was muysccubun.[4]
"...the languages with a higher level of contact and greater recognition are more vulnerable, as was the case of the Muysca language, with a significant population at the arrival of the Spanish, and which has been extinct since the 18th century, despite having been recognized and taught as a general language." (Ardila, 2016: 274-275) (Original text in Spanish).
The name of the language Muysc cubun means "language of the people", from muysca ("people") and cubun ("language" or "word"). Despite the disappearance of the language in the 17th century (approximately), several language revitalization processes are underway within the current Muisca communities. The Muisca people remain ethnically distinct and their communities are recognized by the Colombian state.[4] The language is within the language sub-group magdalénicos.[5]
Modern Muisca scholars such as Diego Gómez have found that the variety of languages was much larger than previously thought and that in fact there was a Chibcha dialect continuum that extended throughout the Cordillera Oriental from the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy to the Sumapaz Páramo. The quick colonization of the Spanish and the improvised use of traveling translators reduced the differences between the versions of Chibcha over time.[6] The language recorded in dictionaries was only the dialect spoken around the colonial capital-city of Santafé de Bogotá.[7]
An important revival-effort has been provided by the remaining Muisca communities or cabildos.[8]
Important scholars who have contributed to the knowledge of the Muisca language include Juan de Castellanos, Bernardo de Lugo, José Domingo Duquesne and Ezequiel Uricoechea.
See main article: Chibchan languages. The Muysca language is part of the Chibcha linguistic family, which in turn belongs to the macro-Chibchan group. The Chibcha linguistic family includes several indigenous languages of Central America and Northwestern South America.
| Duit Boyacá | Uwa Boyacá N. de Santander Arauca | Barí N. de Santander | Chimila Cesar Magdalena | Kogui S.N. de Santa Marta | Guna Darién Gap | Guaymí Panama Costa Rica | Boruca Costa Rica | Maléku Costa Rica | Rama Nicaragua | English | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tia | siʔ | chibai | má | saka | sö | sö | tebej | tlijii | tukan | Moon | ||
| atia | úbistia | intok | ti-tasu/nyé | kwati | éˇxi | dooka | one | [9] [10] | ||||
| dary | tsá | ngäbe | ochápaká | nkiikna | person man people | [11] [12] | ||||||
| eba | á | maize | [13] [14] | |||||||||
| tò | heart | [15] | ||||||||||
| yút | purkwe | to die | [16] [17] | |||||||||
| háta | ju | uu | house | [18] [19] | ||||||||
| mex | morén | good | [20] [21] | |||||||||
| yén | pek-pen | frog | [22] | |||||||||
In prehistorical times, in the Andean civilizations called preceramic, the population of northwestern South America migrated through the Darién Gap between the isthmus of Panama and Colombia. Other Chibchan languages are spoken in southern Central America and the Muisca and related indigenous groups took their language with them into the heart of Colombia where they comprised the Muisca Confederation, a cultural grouping.
See main article: Spanish conquest of the Muisca.
See also: Spanish conquest of the Chibchan Nations. As early as 1580 the authorities in Charcas, Quito, and Santa Fe de Bogotá mandated the establishment of schools in native languages and required that priests study these languages before ordination. In 1606 the entire clergy was ordered to provide religious instruction in Chibcha. The Chibcha language declined in the 18th century.[23]
In 1770, King Charles III of Spain officially banned use of the language in the region as part of a de-indigenization project. The ban remained in law until Colombia passed its constitution of 1991.
Since 2008 a Spanish–Muyscubun dictionary containing more than 3000 words has been published online. The project was partly financed by the University of Bergen, Norway.
The only public school in Colombia currently teaching Chibcha (to about 150 children) is in the town of Cota, about 30km (20miles) by road from Bogotá. The school is named Jizcamox (healing with the hands) in Chibcha.
See main article: Myska language.
The sources of the Muysca language are seven documents prepared in the first decade of the 17th century and are considered a legitimate and reliable documentary set of the language.
Manuscript 158 of the National Library of Colombia has a Grammar, an annex called "Modos de hablar en la lengua Mosca o Chipcha", a Spanish-Muysca vocabulary and a "Catheçismo en la lengua Mosca o Chipcha" . It was transcribed by María Stella González and published by the Caro y Cuervo Institute in 1987. According to the researcher, this manuscript "was written at times when the language was still spoken.[24] " González's transcription has been one of the most consulted works by modern linguists interested in the language.
Three documents from the Biblioteca Real de Palacio are compendiums of the Muysca language and are part of the so-called Mutis Collection, a set of linguistic-missionary documents of several indigenous languages of the New Kingdom of Granada and the Captaincy General of Venezuela, collected by Mutis, due to the initial wishes of the Tsarina of Russia Catherine the Great, who wanted to create a dictionary of all the languages of the world[25]
This manuscript is made up of three books: the first titled "De la gramática breve de la lengua Mosca"; the second contains three titles: "Confesionarios en la Lengua Mosca chibcha", "Oraciones en Lengua Mosca chibcha" and "Catecismo breve en Lengua Mosca chibcha" ; The third book is titled "Bocabulario de la Lengua Chibcha o Mosca" . It was transcribed by Diego Gómez and Diana Girlado between 2012 and 2013.[26]
These manuscripts are actually a single vocabulary, one copies the other. The first was transcribed by Quesada Pacheco in 1991 and the second by Gómez y Giraldo between 2012 and 2013[27]
It was published in Madrid, Spain, in the year 1619. It consists of a grammar, a confessional in Spanish and a confessional in Muysca. For the elaboration of his work, Lugo devised a sort or type in order to express a vowel that was not part of the phonetic inventory of Spanish and that was necessary to capture if a correct pronunciation was wanted, he called it "Inverse Ipsilon" and today we know it as "The Lugo's y". In other sources it appears simply expressed with the grapheme y.
Recently, a couple of doctrinal texts of the Muysca language were discovered in the Bodleian Library, which were sewn into the final part of an anonymous grammar of the Quechua language, published in Seville in 1603. The first of them is a brief Grammar, and the second a brief Christian Doctrine. These pamphlets are considered the earliest known texts of the General Language of the New Kingdom of Granada and although their orthography is inconsistent and a little different from the known ones, these pamphlets are associated with the variety spoken in Santafé and its surroundings[28]
Because Muysc Cubun is an extinct language, various scholars as Adolfo Constenla (1984), González de Pérez (2006) and Willem Adelaar with the collaboration of Pieter Muysken (2004) have formulated different phonological systems taking into account linguistic documents from the 17th century and comparative linguistics.
The proposal of Adolfo Constenla, Costa Rican teacher of the Chibcha languages, has been the basis of the other proposals and his appreciations are still valid, even more so because they were the result of the use of the comparative method with other Chibcha languages and lexicostatistics. In fact, Constenla's classification of the Chibcha languages remains the most accepted.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ / pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Vibrant | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
In The languages of the Andes they present a phonologic chart based on the orthography developed during the colonial period, which diverges in some aspects from that used in Spanish according to the needs of the language.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ / pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Vibrant | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
In his book Aproximación al sistema fonológico de la lengua muisca, González presents the following phonological table (González, 2006:57, 65, 122).
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Approximant | (pronounced as /link/) | (pronounced as /link/) | ||||||
González does not present approximants, although she considers [w] as a semivocalic extension of bilabial consonants, as Adolfo Constenla presented it at the time, for example in *[kusmʷɨ], */kusmɨ/, she considers it a phonetic characteristic and not a phonological one.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
Muysca is an agglutinative language, characterized by roots that are usually monosyllabic or bisyllabic (to a lesser extent longer), which combine to form extensive expressions. Typologically, it is a final core language. In addition, it is an inflectional language, which means that the roots receive prefixes and suffixes. The closest living language to Muysca is Uwa. Compared to other northern Chibcha languages, Muysca presents more recent innovations.
In Muysca, the noun voids morphemes of gender, number and case. In nouns denoting sex, it is necessary to add the corresponding name "fucha~fuhucha" or "cha".
The adjective muysca does not agree in gender or number with the noun. According to its form, it can be basic, derived or periphrastic.
The periphrastic form uses the 3rd person + verbal root/name (+n) + ma-gue:
See main article: Muisca numerals.
Counting 1 to 10 in Chibcha is Chibcha: ata, Chibcha: boza, Chibcha: mica, Chibcha: muyhyca, Chibcha: hyzca, Chibcha: taa, Chibcha: cuhupqua, Chibcha: suhuza, Chibcha: aca, Chibcha: hubchihica. The Muisca only had individual lexemes for the numbers one to ten and the number 20:, used extensively in their complex lunisolar Muisca calendar. For numbers higher than 10 they used additions; Chibcha: quihicha ata ("ten plus one") for eleven. Higher numbers were multiplications of twenty; Chibcha: guehyzca would be "five times twenty"; 100.
This list is a selection from the online dictionary and is sortable. Note the different potatoes and types of maize and their meaning.
| Muysccubun | English | |
|---|---|---|
| "maize" | ||
| "parrot" | ||
| "finger" or "finger tip" | ||
| "potato [black inside]" (species unknown) | ||
| "vein" (of blood) or "root" | ||
| "good" | ||
| "maize [dark]" (species unknown) | ||
| "green" or "blue" | ||
| "finger nail" | ||
| "fox" | ||
| Phytolacca bogotensis, plant used as soap | ||
| "bread" | ||
| "potato [black]" (species unknown) | ||
| "maize [not very coloured]" (species unknown) | ||
| "feather" | ||
| "small" | ||
| "potato [wide]" (species unknown) | ||
| "dead body" | ||
| "grandfather" and "grandmother" | ||
| "bear" or "older brother/sister" | ||
| "maize [of rice]" (species and meaning unknown) | ||
| "tobacco" | ||
| "potato" (Solanum tuberosum) | ||
| "flower of potato plant" | ||
| "potato" (species unknown) | ||
| "potato [small]" (species unknown) | ||
| "flea" (Tunga penetrans) | ||
| "lizard" | ||
| "salt" | ||
| "gold" or "money" | ||
| "maize [soft and red]" (species and meaning unknown) | ||
| "arm" | ||
| "lightning" | ||
| "tree" or "leaf" | ||
| "arrow" | ||
| "potato [floury]" (species unknown) | ||
| "potato [long]" (species unknown) | ||
| ' | "nose" | |
| "maize [reddish]" (species unknown) | ||
| "owl [white]" | ||
| "white-tailed deer" | ||
| "soup" | ||
| "hi!" (to a friend) | ||
| "potato [yellow]" (species unknown) | ||
| "rain" or "lake" | ||
| "white river clay" | ||
| "fish"; Eremophilus mutisii | ||
| "potato [white]" (species unknown) | ||
| "broth" | ||
| "that", "those" | ||
| "frog" | ||
| "pot" | ||
| "head" or "skull" |
The following greetings have been taken directly from written sources from the 17th century when the language was alive.
Words of origin are still used in the department of Cundinamarca, of which Bogotá is the capital, and the department of Boyacá, with capital Tunja. These include curuba (Colombian fruit banana passionfruit), toche (yellow oriole), guadua (a large bamboo used in construction) and tatacoa ("snake"). The Muisca descendants continue many traditional ways, such as the use of certain foods, use of coca for teas and healing rituals, and other aspects of natural ways, which are a respected part of culture in Colombia.
As the Muisca did not have words for imported technology or items in early colonial times, they borrowed them from Spanish, such as "shoe"; çapato,[29] "sword"; espada,[30] "knife"; cuchillo[31] and other words.
See main article: List of Muisca toponyms.
Most of the original Muisca names of the villages, rivers and national parks and some of the provinces in the central highlands of the Colombian Andes are kept or slightly altered. Usually the names refer to farmfields, the Moon goddess Chía, her husband Sué, names of caciques, the topography of the region, built enclosures and animals of the region.[32]
