Chaʼpalaa (also known as Chachi or Cayapa) is a Barbacoan language spoken in northern Ecuador by ca. 9,000 ethnic Chachi people.[1]
| Chaʼpalaa | |
|---|---|
| Region | Ecuador |
Native speakers | 5,870 (2012)[1] |
Barbacoan
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cbi |
| Glottolog | chac1249 |
| ELP | Cha'palaa |
"Chaʼpalaa" means "language of the Chachi people." This language was described in part by the missionary P. Alberto Vittadello, who, by the time his description was published in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1988, had lived for seven years among the tribe.
Chaʼpalaa has agglutinative morphology, with a Subject-Object-Verb word order.
Chaʼpalaa is written using the Latin alphabet, making use of the following graphemes:
A, B, C, CH, D, DY, E, F, G, GU, HU, I, J, L, LL, M, N, Ñ, P, QU, R, S, SH, T, TS, TY, U, V, Y, and ʼ.
The writing system includes four simple vowels, and four double vowels:
Phonology
Cha'palaa has four vowels: /a, e, i, u/.[2] Cha'palaa has 22 consonant phonemes.[3]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Dorsal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | |||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | tʲ | k | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | dʲ | g | ||
| Affricate | t͡s | t͡ʃ | ||||
| Fricative | f | s | ʃ | χ | ||
| Glide | j | w | ||||
| Liquid | ɾ | ʎ | ||||