| Cabécar | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Costa Rica |
| Region | Turrialba Region (Cartago Province) |
| Ethnicity | Cabécar people 13,000 (2011 census)[1] |
Native speakers | 11,000 (2011)[1] 2,000 monolingual (2015)[1] |
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cjp |
| Glottolog | cabe1245 |
| ELP | Cabécar |
The Cabécar language is an indigenous American language of the Chibchan language family spoken by the Cabécar people in the inland Turrialba Region, Cartago Province, Costa Rica. As of 2007, 2,000 speakers were monolingual.[1] It is the only indigenous language in Costa Rica with monolingual adults.[1] The language is also known by its dialect names Chirripó, Estrella, Telire, and Ujarrás.[1]
Cabécar is considered to be one of a few "Chibcha-speaking tribes", categorized by similarities in the languages that they speak. Other Chibcha speaking tribes include the Bribri and the Boruca, also of Costa Rica. It is believed that the languages of the Chibcha speaking tribes shared a common ancestor around 8,000 years ago. However, differences in the languages are thought to have come about from the influence of outside people, including influences from Mesoamerica.[2]
Cabécar is an endangered language spoken in Costa Rica. It is spoken by the Cabécar people, an indigenous group located near the Talamancan mountains of Costa Rica.[2]
There are two different dialects of Cabécar, each of which has more narrow dialects within it. One of these is spoken in the north, while the other is spoken in southern parts of Costa Rica.[3]
Cabécar uses a Latin alphabet with umlauts for (ë, ö), and tildes for (ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ).[4] Cabécar has twelve vowels, five of which are nasalized.[4]
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Postalveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | plain | p ⟨p⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | t͡ʃ ⟨ch⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ | |||
| voiced | b ⟨b⟩ | d ⟨d⟩ | d͡ʒ ⟨y⟩ | |||||
| Fricative | s ⟨s⟩ | ʃ ⟨sh⟩ | h ⟨j⟩ | |||||
| Affricate | t͡k ⟨tk⟩ | t͡s ⟨ts⟩ | ||||||
| Flap | ɽ ⟨r⟩ | |||||||
| Nasal | ŋ ⟨n̈⟩ | |||||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | oral | i ⟨i⟩ | u ⟨u⟩ | |
| nasal | ĩ ⟨i̱⟩ | ũ ⟨u̱⟩ | ||
| Near-high | ɪ ⟨ë⟩ | ʊ ⟨ö⟩ | ||
| Mid-high | oral | e ⟨e⟩ | o ⟨o⟩ | |
| nasal | ẽ ⟨e̱⟩ | õ ⟨o̱⟩ | ||
| Low | oral | a ⟨a⟩ | ||
| nasal | ã ⟨a̱⟩ | |||
Cabécar has a canonical word order of subject–object–verb.[1]
|
| |
|---|---|
| Waimí (Guaymi) |
|
| Talamanca |
|
| Votic |
|
| Kuna–Colombian |
|
| Arwako–Chimila |
|
| Other |
|
Italics indicate extinct languages | |
Authority control databases: National  |
|
|---|
