Maléku language


Classification

The Malku Jaíka language, also called malecu, maleku, Guatuso, Watuso-Wétar, and Guetar is a member of the Voltic branch of the Chibchan language family.
Maléku, or ‘the speech of our people’, is considered to be endangered according to The Endangered Languages Project. According to the 2011 National Population Census, 67.5% of the population that lives in the Maleku official territory declared that they speak the language; however, the state of vitality varies from one village to another and even among families. In any case, following the parameters of UNESCO, the language can be classified as definitively endangered.

History

The malekus constitute one of the original peoples of the Costa Rican territory. While their contact with the Hispanic language and culture was extremely sporadic and limited at least until the second mid-nineteenth century, it can be assumed that this contact was intensified in the middle of the twentieth century.

Geographic distribution

Official status
The Maleku is an indigenous language of north-central Costa Rica, in the area of Guatuso, in the province of Alajuela, Costa Rica. It is spoken by around 300 to 460 indigenous Maléku people in an area of 2994 hectares. The aboriginal group that speaks Maléku is also known as the Guatusos. They live in three communities called Palenques in the northern area of Costa Rica: Margarita, Tonjibe and El Sol. According to Constenla, the Guatuso is in a state of decline in Margarita and in a state of resistance in Tonjibe and El Sol. At the 2000 census, 71.1% of the members of the ethnic group declared themselves to speak the language, but only 49% considered it as the mother tongue. The 2011 National Census of Population reported that 67.5% of the population in these communities speaks this language. The Ministry of Education reported a Maléku population of 498 inhabitants. According to this institution, children attending schools in the region of Guatuso receive bilingual instruction in Maléku and Spanish. According to Espinoza Romero, Mejía Marín & Ovares Barquero 2011, the school, traditionally an acculturation mechanism, has not contributed to strengthening the MaléKu identity. For instance, students receive instruction of core subjects in Spanish. They have to learn how to read and write in Spanish first. When they already read and write in the mainstream language, they can learn their language. The authors claim that the norm has been the teaching of the official language: Spanish and that despite the existence of educational policies that contemplate the revitalization of the use of indigenous languages in the region, there is an absence of strategies for teaching aboriginal languages.
Dialects/Varieties
The speakers of these three communities have declared that there are differences between the variety spoken by the communities of Margarita and El Sol and the one that is spoken by the people of Tonjibe. Corobicí is possibly a dialect.
=Phonology=
Vowels
Maleku has five vowels.
Source: http://www.lapsyd.ddl.cnrs.fr/lapsyd/index.php?data=view&code=758
Vowel notes:
Sánchez affirms that the vowel system of the Maleku is similar to Spanish ; he cites some words with unlike VV sequences but is unclear if these are single nuclei or V.V.
Smith Sharp argues for V.V with an optional desyllabification of high vowels to approximants , in agreement with Costenla Umaña.
Stress
Sánchez argues that stress is contrastive. The examples given suggest there may be role for morphological structure and vowel length in predicting stress placement. Smith Sharp states "En maleku, hay una sola oposición de acento. Cada palabra tiene por los menos un acento primario que no es predecible en palabras de dos o más sílabas."
Consonants
The traditional consonant system of the Maleku includes fifteen phonemes:
Source: http://www.lapsyd.ddl.cnrs.fr/lapsyd/index.php?data=view&code=758
Consonant notes:
Sánchez reports /t/ as 'dental-alveolar' and other coronals as 'alveolar'. Contrast between /ɬ, x/ appears to be in process of being lost in favor of /x/. Influence from Spanish has added voiced stops and /ɲ/ to the modern colloquial language; these are not included in the inventories of Sánchez, Smith Sharp or in the text counts of Krohn. Costenla Umaña excludes them from his 'heritage inventory'.
Syllabic notes:
V seems to be the basic pattern, with no clusters, as suggested by Smith Sharp. Any C can occur in onset ; any C except affricates, fricatives and /ɾ/ in coda. Sánchez gives 2 examples of word-internal CC codas /rɸ, rp/ in /irp-tʃia, irɸ-laŋ/ "drink it, eat it" and suggests CVCC as max syllable, but such examples are described as the result of an optional loss of a vowel in the 2nd person ergative prefix /riɸa/ by Costenla Umaña
Canonical Form:
V
Syllabic Restriction:
V

Grammar

Word order

The basic order of the elements is variable in transitive and in intransitive clauses. In intransitive clauses the common order is SV, but it is also possible to find VS order.
For example: Tó na- tóye
Yo 1E ir
I go

Subjects and objects

Maleku possesses an ergative–absolutive actancial system.

Subject of an intransitive verb

In intransitive clauses the subject is expressed in absolutive case. The affixes that appear in the verb establish a concordance of the person with the subject. These are:
1 person2 person3 person
na-mi, -ma-i, -a

Subject of a transitive verb

In transitive clauses Maleku distinguishes between complete and incomplete transitive clauses. The affixes that appear in the verb are common in both constructions. These are
1 person2 person3 person
-rra-rrifa
-rrif
-rrf
-rrip
-rrfa
-rrp

-rri

Number

Maleku distinguishes between singular and plural in common nouns. The plural is expressed in two ways.

Personal pronouns

There are four personal pronouns in Maleku. These are:
1° person singular2° person singular1° person plural 1° person plural
Tón~ tó→ Ipó~ púo→ youToí~ toí→ weTótiquí~ totiquí→ we


Written System

The alphabet of Maleku was proposed by the linguist Adolfo Constenla, and it was adopted as official by the Asesoría de Educación Indígena del Ministerio de Educación Publica de Costa Rica.
Vowels
Consonants

Vocabulary