Arhuaco language

"Ica language" redirects here. Not to be confused with the Ika language of Nigeria.

Arhuaco
Ica
Ikʉ
Native to	Colombia
Ethnicity	14,800 Arhuacos (2001)
Native speakers	8,000 (2009)
Language family	Chibchan Arwako–Chimila Arwako languages Arhuaco
Language codes
ISO 639-3	arh
Glottolog	arhu1242
ELP	Ica
Aruako is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Arhuaco, commonly known as Ikʉ (Arhuaco: Ikʉ) (also known as Aruaco, Bintuk, Bíntukua, Bintucua, Ica, Ijca, Ijka, Ika, and Ike) is a Chibchan language, spoken in Colombia by the Arhuaco people.

There are 8,000 speakers, all in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of Colombia, 90% of whom are monolingual. They have a very strong traditional culture and have vibrant use of their tongue. Literacy is 1 to 5% in their native language. Some speak Spanish, and 15 to 25% are literate in it.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ⟨i⟩	ɨ ⟨ʉ⟩	u ⟨u⟩
Mid	e ⟨e⟩	ə ⟨y⟩	o ⟨o⟩
Open		a ⟨a⟩

• /ə/ is raised to and merged with /ɨ/ word finally.

Arhuaco has 17 consonant phonemes:

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Velar	Glottal
Occlusive	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩	tʃ ⟨ch⟩	k ⟨k⟩	ʔ ⟨ꞌ⟩
	voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d ⟨d⟩	dʒ ⟨ɉ⟩	ɡ ⟨g⟩
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n~ŋ ⟨n⟩
Fricative	voiceless		s ⟨s⟩			h ⟨j⟩
	voiced	β ⟨w⟩	z ⟨z⟩	ʒ ⟨zh⟩
Flap			ɾ ⟨r⟩

Syllable structure

With some exceptions, Arhuaco syllables may begin with up to two consonants (the second of which must be a glide /w j/) and may be closed by /ʔ n r w/ or /j/.

Prosody

Arhuaco stress normally falls on penultimate syllables, with secondary stresses occurring on every other preceding syllable, in the case of longer words (e.g. /ˌunkəˈsia/ 'protective bracelet'). There are some affixes and enclitics that are extrametrical and do not count as syllables for stress assignment.

Morphology

Personal pronouns

Arhuaco personal pronouns

person	singular	plural
1st	nən	niβi
2nd	ma	miβi
3rd	a	ikənaʔ

Frank (1985, 34) lists six personal pronouns for Arhuaco, with singular and plural numbers for first, second, and third persons. They "do not occur very frequently in text; they occur occasionally in subject position, very rarely in object position, and most frequently as the object of a preposition".

Unusually, person marking in Arhuaco verbs has evolved to have effectively become a way to mark epistemic modality or evidentiality.

Syntax

The language uses a subject–object–verb (SOV) sentence structure.

References

• Frank, Paul. 1985. A grammar of Ika. PhD thesis. University of Pennsylvania.
• Frank, Paul. 2000. Ika syntax. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Landaburu, Jon. 2000 La lengua Ika, in Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: Una visión descriptiva. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo (Spanish).

External links

• Arhuaco (Ika) dictionary
• Ika language version of the Faculty of Humanities of the National University of Colombia