Esmeraldeño, or Esmeralda (also called Takame or Atacame), is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken in the coastal region of Ecuador, specifically in the western part of Esmeraldas Province.
Geographical distribution In the 19th century, the language was spoken along the lower Esmeraldas River in Esmeraldas Province. It may have previously extended across the Ecuadorian coast in the past.
Classification It has been proposed since 1902 that the language is connected to the still-spoken Pumé language of Venezuela. It also has some lexical similarities with the extinct Yurumanguí language.
History Around the beginning of the 19th century, William Bennet Stevenson visited the town of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, where he reported the Esmeraldeño language was in use; the town had a primarily Afro-Ecuadorian population. It is said that a group of shipwrecked African slaves encountered a group of local Indigenous people; they killed the men and settled among the women, from which their language was preserved. Stevenson also described the nearby town of Atacames as speaking Spanish. The descendant zambos were "factually" independent throughout the colonial period.
Documentation The only data collected on the Esmeraldeño language were obtained by J. M. Pallares in 1877. These materials were published subsequently in Teodoro Wolf's (1892) Geografía y geología del Ecuador, and analyzed in Eduard Seler (1902), who first proposed a connection with Pumé, as well as Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (1941), Adolfo Constenla Umaña (1991), and Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken (2004). It is one of only two languages (with Chaʼpalaachi) of the Ecuadorian coastal languages for which any significant data is known.
Language contact Esmeraldeño has undergone extensive influence from two neighboring Barbacoan languages, Chaʼpalaa and Tsafiki. A genetic connection between Barbacoan and Esmeraldeño is considered unlikely, however, as otherwise the languages are very different. Shared vocabulary between the two are primarily flora and fauna, but also some basic vocabulary. +Esmeraldeño-Barbacoan shared vocabularyglossEsmeraldeñoCha'paaTsafikipineapplechulatʃiwílatʃiʎaearthdótotucottonkuvekuwákuwabeanmuripemolómuluGuaduata-pákepaʰkípahkisnakepiamapinípinʲerubbershevesábesabechickenwalpawálpawaʎapa The obvious Quechua loanword 'chicken' is a rarity; such words derived from Quechua are almost nonexistent.
Phonology Vowels Esmeraldeño is thought to have a 5-vowel system , although the large amount of variation between vowels is suggested by Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño to be indicative of a three-vowel system instead.
Consonants Orthographical representations of the consonants are presented below; the exact phonetic interpretation of these is uncertain. BilabialDentalPalatalVelarGlottalStopvoicelessptkvoicedbdgAffricatechFricativevoicelessfsshj~hvoiced(v)NasalmnVibrantr, rrLaterallllApproximantwy and are thought to be in complementary distribution, with rarely appearing word-initially, and within a word. sometimes alternates with .
Morphology In Esmeraldeño, genitives follow their head, adjectives both precede and follow their noun, and the language is both prefixing and suffixing. Personal reference is represented using suffixes, with used for the first person and as the second person, as are cases. The former are used to indicate possessors on a noun, and the subject or object on a verb. typically results in the dropping of a preceding vowel, except in monosyllabic roots; this may also occur with multisyllabic verb bases, and may also sometimes be stressed. A third-person possessor suffix is or .
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