Cacaopera language

Cacaopera
Native toEl Salvador
RegionMorazán Department
EthnicityCacaopera people
Extinct1974
Language codes
ISO 639-3ccr
Glottologcaca1247
Linguasphere81-AAC-aa
Map of El Salvador's Indigenous Peoples at the time of the Spanish conquest: 1. Pipil people, 2. Lenca, 3. Kakawira o Cacaopera people, 4. Xinca, 5. Maya Ch'orti' people, 6. Maya Poqomam people, 7. Mangue o Chorotega.

Cacaopera is an extinct Misumalpan language formerly spoken in the department of Morazán in El Salvador by the Cacaopera people. It was closely related to Matagalpa, and slightly more distantly to Sumo, but was geographically separated from other Misumalpan languages.

The last semi-speakers of Cacaopera, none of them native speakers, died in 1974.

Phonology

Consonants

Cacaopera consonant phonemes
Bilabial Dento-alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive voiceless p t t͡ʃ k
voiced b d
Fricative s x
Nasal m n
Lateral l
Trill r
Semivowel w j

Vowels

Misumalpan vowel phonemes
Front Back
Close i u
Open a

Suprasegmentals

Stress is phonemic in Cacaopera.

Lexicon

Lyle Campbell noted loanwords in Cacaopera and Matagalpa from both Spanish and Nawat, as well as lexical similarities to Lencan, Xincan and Kʼicheʼ.

References

  1. 1 2 "Cacaoperas o kakawiras – Ruta de Paz" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2026-05-07.
  2. ↑ Campbell, Lyle (1973). "MesoAmerican Languages Collection of Lyle Campbell". Archive of the Indigenous Language of Latin America. University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on July 1, 2016. Retrieved May 2, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Campbell, Lyle (1975). "Cacaopera". Anthropological Linguistics. 17 (4): 146–153. ISSN 0003-5483.
  4. 1 2 3 Bertoglia, Mafalda (1989). "La fonología de la lengua cacaopera". Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica. 15 (1): 115–125. doi:10.15517/rfl.v15i1.19199.