Coconuco language

Coconuco
Nam Trik
Native toColombia
RegionCauca Department
EthnicityGuambiano, Totoró
Native speakers
21,000 (2008)
Barbacoan
  • Coconuco
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
gum – Guambiano
ttk – Totoró
Glottologcoco1262
Linguasphere81-GAA

Coconuco is a dialect cluster of Colombia spoken by the Guambiano indigenous people. Though the three varieties, Guambiano, Totoró, and the long-extinct Coconuco are traditionally called languages, Adelaar & Muysken (2004) believe that they are best treated as a single language.

Totoró had 76 speakers in 2019 out of an ethnic population of 4,000 in 1998. Guambiano, on the other hand, is vibrant and growing.

Coconucan was for a time mistakenly included in a spurious Paezan language family, due to a purported "Moguex" (Guambiano) vocabulary that turned out to be a mix of Páez and Guambiano (Curnow 1998).

References

  1. ↑ Guambiano at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Totoró at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 2.
  3. ↑ Gonzales Castaño, Geny (2019). Una gramática de la lengua namtrik de Totoró : lengua barbacoa hablada en los Andes colombianos (Thesis) (in Spanish). Université de Lyon.

Further reading