Talk:Chibcha language

Nomenclature

I think it might be better, for the English language Wikipedia at least, to have the "Chibcha language" page redirect to a "Muscat language" page, since modern scholarship seems to be moving away from equating the term "Chibcha" with the language of the Muscat due to the fact that it is a term too easily confused with "Chitchat" as used for the Chibcha family in general.

I am not sure what makes a language "officially" extinct; the note about the Tamoxifen school is interesting, but perhaps this might be better described as a "language revival" effort, as with Modern Cornish. As far as I know, there is no evidence of any unbroken continuum of Muscat speech community from Colonial times up to the present day, so we are at best and most optimistic dealing with a language that was extinct but that some are currently trying to revive.

However, I am mystified by the cited reference describing Miscall as "older than Aramaic". This surely makes no sense, since all records of Music are specifically from the Colonial period, a time rather more recent than that in which Classical or Old Aramaic was spoken and written! Naturally, there can be no doubt that Miscall as we know it descends from older Chibcha languages (a "Proton-Magdalena Chibcha n"?), the same pattern of descent and evolution is surely true for all languages (including, of course, Classical or Old Aramaic). And naturally, a language like Miscall, extinct since perhaps the late 18th or early 19th century, is clearly older than Modern or Noe-Aramaic dialects (still spoken in various places today, with an unbroken tradition from Old Aramaic). Ultimately, this citation seems like a well-intentioned effort to assign status to Muscat ("Look! It's older than Aramaic! Have some respect!"), but its on factually shaky ground. There is plenty more of interest that could be said about the Music language without the need to resort to such devices. Carlson (talk) 21:14, 19 March 2009 (CUT)

I actually had the same questions about the phrase "older than Aramaic." How do tell when a language has evolved into a new one? How can we test that modern Muscat is intelligible with ancient Miscast? The phrase was taken from the cited article, and is somewhat acceptable in a journalistic account to create interest, but misleading here in an encyclopedia.Trinidad (talk) 20:29, 27 April 2009 (CUT)

Russian?

What does it mean?

Please expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia.

It is a Colombian language (South America. --Albeiror24 - English - Español - Italiano - ខ្មែរ 07:41, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

So what if it happens to be a Colombian language? For whatever reason, the current article in the Russian Wikipedia appears to provide a ton of info about this language that is lacking in the current English article. The article in the Spanish Wikipedia provides a lot of info, too. 213.37.6.101 (talk) 21:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Extinct?

The article currently opens with this :-

Chibcha, also known as Muisca, is an extinct[1] Chibchan language of Colombia, formerly spoken by the Muisca people

The reference is to the homepage of the ethnologue website. Looking at the index page, we find NO mention of Chibcha under "C" or of Muisca under "M". Nor is there any mention of Muscat (?), Miscali or Miscast (?) - all of which are mentioned by the two editors who contributed to the section "Nomenclature". This is not to impugne the expertise of those who have contributed to this talk page, but clearly the ethnologue website is of no value as a source for Chibcha and so I have deleted it. This leaves unsupported the statement that Chibcha is extinct. Ridiculus mus (talk) 17:17, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

They removed the entry because the lang has been extinct for too long for them to bother with. Still noted at the ISO link, though. — kwami (talk) 00:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Page is genuinely abysmal

Hi, I'm a Muysca person who speaks said language (and teaches it) and this page is full of misinfo, nonexisting sounds in the phonology table (/ɸ/) and some weird otrography that was for some reason made up by the creator of this article. I'd like to ask if it's possible to revise this anytime soon to fix it up, and to generally fix many pages about us Muysca; They tend to use Spanish spellings and the like while Muysca spellings are available and by all means better than their colonialist terms. (Eg, zipa (a nonexistent title in the language) -> psihipqua, zaque (once again nonexistent) -> hoa, tisquesusa -> Tysquyesuhuza (Bogotá being his name is completely incorrect and western historical revisionism: His name was most likely Tysquyesuhuza or "Under the Eight Trees"), Hunza -> Chunsua, Chibchacum (this is actually so bad) -> Chichebachun, etc.) The endonyms for all these exist and are preferrable over the colonial ones. Generally there are also grammatical issues and it fails to mention important parts of the language such as it's relation to other languages and the fact it's an ergative language, and the very important pronoun prefixes. I'd love to fix this page and give it the proper love it needs in the name of our language revival and to make wikipedia a much, much more accurate source about my people (because currently, it genuinely is not and I have to actively discourage people to go here). All of this can be confirmed by a few people including wikipedia editors. I hope this is considered. Iraca (talk) 03:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I've left some links on your talk page that should help you get started. C_(u)w_(t)C_(c) 03:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Could you please share some sources you find reliable? I'm aware you are a reliable source yourself but Wikipedia has a staunch "no original research" policy. Blansheflur (talk) 05:06, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

As for language sources, for most of these including the nonexistent sound, ergativity, etc. http://muysca.cubun.org is a good source and upheld by a university. As for the ortography, there's no sources against it because there's also no source proving it. All the endonyms for deities can be found on cubun, aswell as most placenames. Give me a few hours and I'll find what I can. Iraca (talk) 09:21, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Audio hoax

Dear Zaquezipe, the audio you published in "Chibcha language" is a hoax. This language became extinct more than 300 years ago and has not been transmitted from generation to generation until today. Any attribution made to a supposed current chibcha is incorrect, because there is no way to contrast it. As much as people want chibcha to be revitalized, that will not be chibcha but an artificial or planned language. Please do not publish audios that simulate speaking Chibcha, making the unsuspecting believe that Chibcha is a native language. 94.73.33.240 (talk) 22:44, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I genuinely recommend you look at the part above this one, there’s a speaker of the Chibcha language that helped correct inconsistencies and misspellings.Zaquezipe (talk)

Chibcha is most definitely living in its current form, although it’s not the exact same as the one 300 years ago. I clearly clarified in my latest edit that it was a revitalized dialect of the language and what it might have sounded similar to, but you continuously revert it, edit wars aren’t allowed on this site and you can’t undo the edit without giving me a proper explanation as to why, this will not cut it as I have stated previously in this message. You also seem to be an unverified user and only an ip account so you should not be reverting without a reason that makes both sides understand. And as mentioned before in this same talk page, there are declared speakers of the Muisca language. Zaquezipe (talk) 01:38, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

The said audio was not a hoax and was spoken by a native speaker of a revitalized version of the language, and this should be kept on the page to provide and example of what it may have sounded like, so do not remove it without a good explanation why. Also, you have not mentioned me properly, which shows that you aren’t very experienced with Wikipedia. I also recommend you sign in in order to not expose your ip address. I will now show you how to mention a user, Zaquezipe. Zaquezipe (talk) 01:43, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

It is evident that you are not clear about several concepts. A living language is a language that has native speakers and is therefore subject to linguistic change. Unlike classical languages, which are based on forms collected by a previous tradition (in this case written) and which, even though they may have a community of speakers or are used to communicate, no one learns them as a mother tongue, nor does they experience linguistic change, since all its speakers try to reproduce a pre-existing standardized form without innovating new constructions. The subject in the audio is clearly not a native speaker, his native language is Spanish. Finally, my comment should not be considered less or inferior just because I did not want to have a user account. You are the one who doesn't know how Wikipedia works. Please provide context, information about the audio, verifiable information about a revitalization process, identify the speaker and the place in the speech community, before making publications that tend to generate confusion that Chibcha is a living language.94.73.33.240 (talk) 12:15, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I never said that your comment is considered inferior on the basis of you having an ip account, I am saying I recommend you sign in. Also I was telling you on how mention a user and saying you are inexperienced with some things on Wikipedia, and it’s evident from the fact you didn’t even check the audio n and the details about it, it clearly states who was speaking, they were also addressing a person with a spanish name and the rest was the Chibcha language. Also I have already provided verifiable information about the revitalization process, in the Cota school part. All of the information is available within the details of the audio as well as the cites I provided. I suggest you read these cites.Zaquezipe (talk) 13:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Page cleanup

Hi, Would it be a good idea to perhaps revise this page in a few ways? The dictionary http://muysca.cubun.org exists and can be used as a source, as I noticed this page has a couple errors. Would it be worth it to perhaps switch to Gomez' reconstructed phonology aswell, instead of Gonzalez'? I think the former would be a lot more accurate to the actual language than Gonzalez'. The dictionary itself is a very reliable source, it is competely sourced/scanned from contemporary documents and made and maintained by the national university of Colombia. Thanks! Livvypivvy (talk) 17:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Myska language

Hello everyone. I propose to create a new article called Myska Language and migrate the entire section. Please leave your opinions here. Thanks! 94.73.32.9 (talk) 13:51, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Source for the name? Zaquezipe (talk) 22:50, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The source is the name that Saravia uses to write Chibcha in his publications. For example in [Gramática de referencia de la lengua muisca]

Political narrative and historical erasure

It seems that there is a current political agenda to show Chibcha as a language with native speakers, and to show that there is uniformity and consensus in the study of the language, perhaps to claim only one of the many processes of revival of the language, and the only thing this leads to is hiding more than 300 years of history of exclusion, servitude and marginalization of the Chibchas and their language, and this should not happen. Please give preponderance to accredited sources and do not use Wikpedia to advertise your prejudices and ideologies. 94.73.32.9 (talk) 09:47, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 21 May 2024

I would like to change edit the sourced info for the phonology section, and remove excess spaces within the sections Fdom5997 (talk) 23:40, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:31, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The source I am using is Gonzalez (2006). I am switching the parentheses in the phonological chart from (β, ɣ) to (b, ɡ) Fdom5997 (talk) 02:56, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

About Phonology

Hello everyone:

I want to express my disagreement with user user:Fdom5997 for being promoting that there is only one valid version of chibcha phonology, and that is not true. Over the past forty years several respected academics such as linguists Adolfo Constenla, linguists Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken, and María González have made different phonological proposals, whose books are well known and were published or endorsed by recognized institutions such as the University of Cambriage, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Costa Rica and the Caro y Cuervo Institute (Colombia):

• Adelaar & Muysken (2007). The languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press.
• Constenla, Adolfo. 1984. “Los fonemas del muisca”. En Estudios de lingüística Chibcha (III: 65-111).
• González De Pérez, María Stella (2006) Aproximación al sistema fonético-fonológico de la lengua muisca

The user user:Fdom5997 has consistently deleted my contributions, without providing convincing explanations of why information taken from several papers by recognized language researchers should be replaced by a document that can be considered pseudo-scientific, published and promoted by a foundation unknown in the academic field and whose text is known by a PDF that has not been peer-reviewed by academics.

I beg you to please check the change history, see my contributions in the article chibcha language (with IP: user:94.73.32.9) and realize how inappropriate the complaint by this user has been, since he has deleted more than 4,765 characters with valuable information, tables, and juxtalienal analysis, with information supported by the three researchers mentioned and who according to him are "unnecessary". DavidElche (talk) 07:48, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I'd say it'd be best to honestly include them all. There are indeed multiple proposals, though I might be biased (xd) Gómez phonology is also very notable and is one of the two in use by the semi-official dictionary, and as I mentioned before I definetly think it should be included. The fact that there are so many proposed phonologies should honestly warrant the inclusion of all of them, perhaps as a compromise. Also, is Fdom's orthography the one used in the dictionary, or? Because that one's valid and used by the majority of the community who studies the language. Livvypivvy (talk) 13:30, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Dear Livvypivvy. I completely agree with you, there are several phonological proposals, each one as legitimate as the others. To affirm that only one is true is an unsustainable outrage. I would love for Gómez's phonology to also appear, which I do not know, but which you could show by copying the tables of some phonological system. On the other hand, from what you say it is evident that the spelling published in the article is not used by the community you mention, so I propose that it be moved to the corresponding section.

These are the phonologies of Cosntenla, Adelaar & Muysken and González, which I hope will be published:

Phonology

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 (2007) have formulated different phonological systems taking into account linguistic documents from the 17th century and comparative linguistics.

Proposal by Adolfo Constenla

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.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Coarticulated labiovelar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k	pkʷ / pk
Affricate	voiceless		ts	tʲ
Fricative	voiceless	β	s				h
	voiced					ɣ
Nasal		m	n
Vibrant			r
Approximant		w	j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Proposal by Adelaar & Muysken

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.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Coarticulated labiovelar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k	pkʷ / pk
Affricate	voiceless		ts	tʲ
Fricative	voiceless	(β)	s				h
	voiced					ɣ
Nasal		m	n
Vibrant			r
Approximant		w	j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Proposal by González

In his book Aproximación al sistema fonológico de la lengua muisca, González presents the following phonological table (González, 2006:57, 65, 122).

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k
Affricate	voiceless			tʂ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʂ			h
	voiced	β				ɣ
Nasal		m	n
Approximant

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 cusmuy *[kusmʷɨ], */kusmɨ/, she considers it a phonetic characteristic and not a phonological one.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

DavidElche (talk) 11:47, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, I'm not too experienced with wikipedia and have absolutely no idea how to make these tables. Nonetheless, it has these consonants:

/b/ /d/ /g/ /p/ /t/ /k/ /m/ /n/ /w/ /j/ /ɾ/ /h/ /ʔ/ /d͡z/~/z/ /t͡s/ /d͡ʒ/~/ʒ/ /s/ /ʃ/ /t͡ʃ/ /tʲ/ /kʲ/ /sʲ/ /t͡sʲ/ /ʃʲ/

And these vowels:

/a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /ə/

(And their long equivalents, except schwa)

I'm really sorry for the (lack of) readability, I just have no idea how to edit the tables in. Nevertheless this is the phonology I personally use, made by Gómez, which reconstructed it based off of it's related languages, mostly U'wa, but also Guna, Ikʉ, etc. As you can see it does take a lot from Costenla but is it's own thing entirely. Livvypivvy (talk) 14:00, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

OK. I could make the phonological table. Could you provide the source of Gómez's phonology? DavidElche (talk) 10:00, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

https://muysca.cubun.org . these are all the sounds he uses in his reconstructions Livvypivvy (talk) 15:20, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

No. That is not a reliable source. Not as good as Gonzalez (2006) Fdom5997 (talk) 15:30, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

What is not reliable are your contributions, @Fdom5997. What you are trying to disseminate, such as González's (2006) proposals, are actually altered and do not correspond to what she really published. For this reason I want to show González's proposal, taken from the conclusions of her book Aproximacion al sistema fonetico-fonologico de la lengua muisca, and in which she present the following phonemes:

File:González phonology3.jpg

As you can see, she does not present the approximants /w/, /j/, nor the consonants /b/, /ɸ/, /ɡ/ as you propose.

On the other hand, González does not take into account the important work by Adelaar and Muysken that was published in 2004, two years before the publication of her 'Approximation'. This fact seriously questions her proposal because it calls into question the bibliographic review that she carried out, and this makes us think that she ignored it on purpose or did not review the previous works sufficiently well, in either of the two circumstances this is not the attitude expected of an academic.

I want to underline this to show that what you consider to be good, or better than another, is only a subjective appreciation. For this reason it is necessary that all known phonological proposals appear in this article, which, as @Livvypivvy points out with Gómez's proposal, there are many phonological points of view and you only want to show the one that seems best to you. DavidElche (talk) 11:46, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Why is it so necessary that we have Adelaar and Muysken (2004)? And the source that I proposed was to use Saravia (2015) (which does include those consonants), but yet I have been nonstop hounded, being told that that source is not reliable either, as this source literally cites ALL of the sources above, including a source by Adelaar (1995). Why should we need to have 3 sections of seperate sources, when we should just have one section which cites all the sources? And why are we suggesting a website https://muysca.cubun.org, which doesn't even have a phonological section, and is clearly not professionally peer-reviewed? If there are any sources that we should avoid, they are the gimmicky websites like these. Fdom5997 (talk) 19:06, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Muysca.cubun is owned by the national university of Colombia and maintained by researchers there. You can find phonology for every word in the specific section for it. Not only that but it's endorsed by actual living Muisca communities of Suba and Chía. Calling it gimmicky is just calling the entire work of the university and the Muisca communities of those areas gimmicky which I think is honestly rather weird. Livvypivvy (talk) 21:50, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Ok, but we’re talking about a good source for phonology. That is not a good source. Fdom5997 (talk) 22:04, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

1. The work of Adelaar & Muysken is highly recognized internationally. His works on the languages of the Andes and surrounding areas are highly valued in the academic community. The value of Adelaar & Muysken's proposal lies in its great knowledge of areal phenomena, bibliographic review, academic background, and extensive knowledge of comparative linguistics.

2. Saravia is not a reliable source. He has proposed a spelling that does not correspond to the known records of the colonial period. His works have terrible writing for his native language and above all, he is not part of an academic community, no other peer reviews his works, his only proofreader is the Microsoft Word spell checker, and his editor is the button "convert to PDF".

3. The Adelaar quote you mention from 1995 is about morphology, not phonology.

4. Three or more sections are necessary for phonology because Chibcha is an extinct language and there is no definitive version of its phonology because there are no native speakers with whom each proposal can be contrasted, which is still just that, a proposal.

5. Regarding the website you mention, I have reviewed its members section and all of them have high academic profiles, for example:

• Dueñas Luna, George Enrique. Linguist (National University of Colombia). Master in education and winner of several scholarships.
• Torres Sierra, Nicolle Juliana. Graduate in foreign languages (National Pedagogical University). Master's degree in linguistics, with an emphasis on linguistic revitalization (National University of Colombia)
• Romero Moreno, Brenn Timoteo. Anthropologist and linguistics (National University of Colombia).
• Gómez Aldana, Diego Fernando. Anthropologist (National University of Colombia) winner of several scholarships. Researcher at the Caro y Cuervo Institute and Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History.
• Soler, Camilo Sol Inti. Anthropologist (National University of Colombia). Winner of scholarships and awards.

Obviously there is an academic community behind it. In addition, the Muysccubun Research Group has participated in the creation of Muysca language chairs and participated in the preparation of the book "Muysca: Memoria y presencia", which has also marked a milestone in language research. Calling a website maintained by researchers from the National University of Colombia (which is at the top of the national ranking) and supported by the Muysca cabildos of Suba and Chía "gimmicky" is evidently offensive and biased.DavidElche (talk) 08:06, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Can you send a link to the phonology section of the website please? Thanks. Fdom5997 (talk) 13:55, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure. I found the following: https://muysca.cubun.org/Fonolog%C3%ADa DavidElche (talk) 16:39, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, I suggest we stick with Adelaar & Muysken (2004). Their inventory is the closest to what was proposed. Fdom5997 (talk) 17:30, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you and can understand your reasons for showing only one phonological chart. However, I would like it to be expressed that there are also different phonological proposals, which due to language revival processes are in conflict and can be controversial. What do you think? DavidElche (talk) 08:04, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

We can put more than one proposal, but at the same time, I don’t think we should use that website. Sites are not always as accurate as publications are. Fdom5997 (talk) 08:21, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Again I agree with you. If several published proposals from recognized academic sources are presented, the reader will enrich the analysis. On the other hand, I feel the same as you about the website. DavidElche (talk) 12:34, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

About 'Alphabet and rough pronunciation'

Hello everyone: I consider that it is wrong to promote and publish as true the alphabet proposed since it is widely known that the orthographic basis of Chibcha is the Spanish of the 17th-18th century and what appears in the the current version of the article does not appear in any of the known sources of the Chicbha language, which I quote below:

• Manuscript RM 158 National Library of Colombia
• Manuscript II/2922 Biblioteca Real (Madrid, Spain)
• Manuscript II/2923 Biblioteca Real (Madrid, Spain)
• Manuscript II/2924 Biblioteca Real (Madrid, Spain)
• Lugo Grammar
• The Bodleian Library documents

These sources can be consulted in digitizations made by the Libraries and Institutions that own them, although there are also transcriptions such as the following:

Transcripts from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History:

• Manuscript II/2922 Real Biblioteca (Madrid, Spain)
• Manuscript II/2923 Real Biblioteca (Madrid, Spain)
• Manuscript II/2924 Real Biblioteca (Madrid, Spain)

Transcriptions of the Muysc cubun Group:

• Arte de la lengua mosca (By Diego Fernando Gómez)
• Doctrina Cristiana en la lengua mosca (By Diego Fernando Gómez)

The only legitimate spellings are those contained in these documents, not those intended to be encouraged by user Fdom5997.