The name of the language Muysc cubun in its own language means "language of the people", from muysca ("people") and cubun ("language" or "word"). Despite the disappearance of the language in the 17th century (approximately), several language revitalization processes are underway within the current Muisca communities. The Muisca people remain ethnically distinct and their communities are recognized by the Colombian state.[7]
The Muysca language is part of the Chibcha linguistic family, which in turn belongs to the macro-Chibchan group. The Chibcha linguistic family includes several indigenous languages of Central America and Northwestern South America.
History
Distribution of Chibchan languages across southern Central and northwestern South America
In prehistorical times, in the Andean civilizations called preceramic, the population of northwestern South America migrated through the Darién Gap between the isthmus of Panama and Colombia. Other Chibchan languages are spoken in southern Central America and the Muisca and related indigenous groups took their language with them into the heart of Colombia where they comprised the Muisca Confederation, a cultural grouping.
As early as 1580 the authorities in Charcas, Quito, and Santa Fe de Bogotá mandated the establishment of schools in native languages and required that priests study these languages before ordination. In 1606 the entire clergy was ordered to provide religious instruction in Chibcha. The Chibcha language declined in the 18th century.[8]
Modern Muisca scholars as Diego Gómez[9] have claimed that the variety of languages was much larger than previously thought and
that in fact there was a Chibcha dialect continuum that extended throughout the Cordillera Oriental from the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy to the Sumapaz Páramo.[9] The quick colonization of the Spanish and the improvised use of traveling translators reduced the differences between the versions of Chibcha over time.[10]
Since 2008 a Spanish–Muysc cubun dictionary containing more than 3000 words has been published online. The project was partly financed by the University of Bergen, Norway.[11]
Language sources
The sources of the Muysca language are seven documents prepared in the first decade of the 17th century and are considered a legitimate and reliable documentary set of the language.
RM 158
Manuscript 158 of the National Library of Colombia has a Grammar, an annex called "Modos de hablar en la lengua Mosca o Chipcha" [sic], a Spanish-Muysca vocabulary and a "Catheçismo en la lengua Mosca o Chipcha" [sic]. It was transcribed by María Stella González and published by the Caro y Cuervo Institute in 1987. According to the researcher, this manuscript "was written at times when the language was still spoken.[12]" González's transcription has been one of the most consulted works by modern linguists interested in the language.
Manuscripts from the Biblioteca Real de Palacio
Three documents from the Biblioteca Real de Palacio are compendiums of the Muysca language and are part of the so-called Mutis Collection, a set of linguistic-missionary documents of several indigenous languages of the New Kingdom of Granada and the Captaincy General of Venezuela, collected by Mutis, due to the initial wishes of the Tsarina of Russia Catherine the Great, who wanted to create a dictionary of all the languages of the world[13]
Manuscript II/2922
This manuscript is made up of three books: the first titled "De la gramática breve de la lengua Mosca"; the second contains three titles: "Confesionarios en la Lengua Mosca chibcha" [sic], "Oraciones en Lengua Mosca chibcha" [sic] and "Catecismo breve en Lengua Mosca chibcha" [sic]; The third book is titled "Bocabulario de la Lengua Chibcha o Mosca" [sic]. It was transcribed by Diego Gómez and Diana Girlado between 2012 and 2013.[14]
Manuscript II/2923 and Manuscript II/2924
These manuscripts are actually a single vocabulary, one copies the other. The first was transcribed by Quesada Pacheco in 1991 and the second by Gómez y Giraldo between 2012 and 2013[15]
Lugo Grammar
Folio 9 recto of Gramática en la lengua general del Nuevo Reino, llamada Mosca, by fray Bernardo de Lugo, printed in Madrid, Spain, in 1619.
It was published in Madrid, Spain, in the year 1619. It consists of a grammar, a confessional in Spanish and a confessional in Muysca. For the elaboration of his work, Lugo devised a sort or type in order to express a vowel that was not part of the phonetic inventory of Spanish and that was necessary to capture if a correct pronunciation was wanted, he called it "Inverse Ipsilon" and today we know it as "The Lugo's y". In other sources it appears simply expressed with the grapheme y.
The Bodleian Library pamphlets
Recently, a couple of doctrinal texts of the Muysca language were discovered in the Bodleian Library, which were sewn into the final part of an anonymous grammar of the Quechua language, published in Seville in 1603. The first of them is a brief Grammar, and the second a brief Christian Doctrine. These pamphlets are considered the earliest known texts of the General Language of the New Kingdom of Granada and although their orthography is inconsistent and a little different from the known ones, these pamphlets are associated with the variety spoken in Santafé and its surroundings[16]
Phonology
Phonology
Because Muysc Cubun is an extinct language, various scholars as Adolfo Constenla (1984), González de Pérez (2006) and Willem Adelaar with the collaboration of Pieter Muysken (2007) have formulated different phonological systems taking into account linguistic documents from the 17th century and comparative linguistics.
Proposal by Adolfo Constenla
The proposal of Adolfo Constenla,[17] Costa Rican teacher of the Chibcha languages, has been the basis of the other proposals and his appreciations are still valid, even more so because they were the result of the use of the comparative method with other Chibcha languages and lexicostatistics. In fact, Constenla's classification of the Chibcha languages remains the most accepted.
In The languages of the Andes they present a phonologic chart based on the orthography developed during the colonial period, which diverges in some aspects from that used in Spanish according to the needs of the language.[18]
González does not present approximants, although she considers [w] as a semivocalic extension of bilabial consonants, as Adolfo Constenla presented it at the time, for example in cusmuy *[kusmʷɨ], */kusmɨ/, she considers it a phonetic characteristic and not a phonological one.
The Myska alphabet consists of around 20 letters. Myska didn't have an "L" in their language. The letters are pronounced more or less as follows:[19][20][21]
a – as in Spanish "casa"; ka – "enclosure" or "fence" e – as in "action"; izhe – "street" i – open "i" as in "'inca" – sié – "water" or "river" o – short "o" as in "box" – to – "dog" u – "ou" as in "you" – uba – "face" y – between "i" and "e"; "a" in action – ty – "singing" b – as in "bed", or as in Spanish "haba"; – bohozhá – "with"
between the vowels "y" it is pronounced [βw] – kyby – "to sleep"
ch – "sh" as in "shine", but with the tongue pushed backwards – chuta – "son" or "daughter" f – between a "b" and "w" using both lips without producing sound, a short whistle – foï – "mantle"
before a "y" it's pronounced [ɸw] – fyzha – "everything"
g – "gh" as in "good", or as in Spanish "abogado"; – gata – "fire" h – as in "hello" – huïá – "inwards" ï – "i-e" as in Beelzebub – ïe – "road" or "prayer" k – "c" as in "cold" – kony – "wheel" m – "m" as in "man" – mika – "three"
before "y" it's pronounced [mw], as in "Muisca" – myska – "person" or "people"
in first position before a consonant it's pronounced [im] – mpkwaká – "thanks to"
n – "n" as in "nice" – nyky – "brother" or "sister"
in first position followed by a consonant it's pronounced [in] – ngá – "and"
p – "p" as in "people" – paba – "father"
before "y" it's pronounced [pw] as in Spanish "puente" – pyky – "heart"
s – "s" as in "sorry" – sahawá – "husband"
before "i" changes a little to "sh"; [ʃ] – sié – "water" or "river"
t – "t" as in "text" – yta – "hand" w – "w" as in "wow!" – we – "house" zh – as in "chorizo", but with the tongue to the back – zhysky – "head"
The accentuation of the words is like in Spanish on the second-last syllable except when an accent is shown: Bacata is Ba-CA-ta and Bacatá is Ba-ca-TA.
In case of repetition of the same vowel, the word can be shortened: fuhuchá ~ fuchá – "woman".[20]
In Chibcha, words are made of combinations where sometimes vowels are in front of the word. When this happens in front of another vowel, the vowel changes as follows:[22]a-uba becomes oba – "his (or her, its) face" a-ita becomes eta – "his base" a-yta becomes ata – "his hand" (note: ata also means "one")
Sometimes this combination is not performed and the words are written with the prefix plus the new vowel:
a-ita would become eta but can be written as aeta, a-uba as aoba and a-yta as ayta
Grammar
Muysca is an agglutinative language, characterized by roots that are usually monosyllabic or bisyllabic (to a lesser extent longer), which combine to form extensive expressions. Typologically, it is a final core language. In addition, it is an inflectional language, which means that the roots receive prefixes and suffixes. The closest living language to Muysca is Uwa. Compared to other northern Chibcha languages, Muysca presents more recent innovations.
Greetings in Muysc cubun
The following greetings have been taken directly from written sources from the 17th century when the language was alive.
choâ - Hello, choâ mzone – how are you?
choâ mibizine - To greet several people
chogue – Fine!
mua,z, choa umzone – What about you? (And you are well?)
haspqua sihipquaco – Greetings!
Nouns
In Muysca, the noun lacks morphemes of gender, number and case. In nouns denoting sex, it is necessary to add the corresponding name "fucha~fuhucha" or "cha".
(1a)
(Lugo, 1619:3r)
fulano
fulano
muysca
person
cha
male
cho
good
guy
COP
fulano muysca cha cho guy
fulano person male good COP
So-and-so is a good male
(1b)
(Lugo, 1619:3r)
muysca
person
fuhucha
woman
cho
good
muysca fuhucha cho
person woman good
Good woman
Adjective
The adjective muysca does not agree in gender or number with the noun. According to its form, it can be basic, derived or periphrastic.
The periphrastic form uses the 3rd person + verbal root/name (+n) + ma-gue:
Counting 1 to 10 in Chibcha is ata, boza, mica, muyhyca, hyzca, taa, cuhupqua, suhuza, aca, hubchihica.[11] The Muisca only had numbers one to ten and the number 20: gueta, used extensively in their complex lunisolarMuisca calendar. For numbers higher than 10 they used additions; quihicha ata ("ten plus one") for eleven. Higher numbers were multiplications of twenty; guehyzca would be "five times twenty"; 100.
Selection of words
This list is a selection from the online dictionary and is sortable. Note the different potatoes and types of maize and their meaning.[11]
Words of Muysc cubun origin are still used in the department of Cundinamarca, of which Bogotá is the capital, and the department of Boyacá, with capital Tunja. These include curuba (Colombian fruit banana passionfruit), toche (yellow oriole), guadua (a large bamboo used in construction) and tatacoa ("snake"). The Muisca descendants continue many traditional ways, such as the use of certain foods, use of coca for teas and healing rituals, and other aspects of natural ways, which are a respected part of culture in Colombia.
As the Muisca did not have words for imported technology or items in early colonial times, they borrowed them from Spanish, such as "shoe"; çapato,[41] "sword"; espada,[42] "knife"; cuchillo[43] and other words.
Most of the original Muisca names of the villages, rivers and national parks and some of the provinces in the central highlands of the Colombian Andes are kept or slightly altered. Usually the names refer to farmfields (ta), the Moon goddess Chía, her husband Sué, names of caciques, the topography of the region, built enclosures (ca) and animals of the region.[44]
Modern uses
Education
The only public school in Colombia currently teaching Chibcha (to about 150 children) is in the town of Cota, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) by road from Bogotá. The school is named Jizcamox (healing with the hands) in Chibcha.[45]
It has been suggested that this article be split into a new article titled Myska language. (discuss) (May 2024)
The Myska language
The Myska language is a constructed language based on colonial Chibcha, created by the Argentine Facundo Saravia. The pronunciation is based on the phonological proposal by María González for chibcha, although it has several innovations.
Its spelling is also based on the Aproximación al sistema fonético-fonológico de la lengua muisca[46] and a free adaptation of the spelling of Fray Bernardo de Lugo.
This language has received several criticisms from the chibcha cabildos and sectors of academia.
Structure and grammar
Subject
The subjects in Chibcha do not have genders or plurals. to thus can mean "male dog", "male dogs", "female dog" or "female dogs". To solve this, the Myska used the numbers and the word for "man", cha, and "woman", fuhuchá, to specify gender and plural:[47]
to cha ata – "one male dog" (literally: "dog" "male" "one")
to cha mika – "three male dogs" ("dog male three")
to fuhuchá myhyká – "four female dogs"
Personal pronoun
Myska
English
hycha
I
mwe
thou / you (singular) – informal and formal use
asy
he / she / it / they
chié
we
mié
you (plural)
Possessive pronoun
The possessive pronoun is placed before the word it refers to.
i- is only used in combination with ch, n, s, t or zh; i-to = ito ("my dog")
zh- becomes zhy- when followed by a consonant (except ï); zh-paba = zhypaba ("my father")
in case of a ï, the letter is lost: zh-ïohozhá = zhohozhá ("my buttocks")
m- becomes um- when followed by a consonant; m-ïoky = umïoky ("your book")
zhy- and um- are shortened when the word starts with w; zhy-waïá & um-waïá = zhwaïá & mwaïá ("mi mother" & "your mother")
when the word starts with h, zhy- and um- are shortened and the vowel following h repeated; zhy-hué & um-hué = zhuhué & muhué ("my sir" & "your sir")
Verbs
The Myska used two types of verbs, ending on -skwá and -suká; bkyskwá ("to do") and guitysuká ("to whip") which have different forms in their grammatical conjugations. bkyskwá is shown below, for verbs ending on -suká.
This constructed language has raised several concerns on the part of the Chibcha groups recognized by the Colombian State due to accusations of cultural appropriation and for displaying itself as a living native language despite the fact that the Chibchas lost their language perhaps since the 18th century, so that there are no native speakers today. Another concern of the Chibcha councils is the commercialization of their linguistic heritage through courses or talks at public events, schools, squares and other places, whose members present themselves as legitimate representatives of the current Chibchas, or as their direct descendants. With these and other activities they raise money, including from national institutions and international organizations on behalf of the Chibcha and their revitalization, using the constructed language as an instrument to demonstrate their progress and legitimacy.[49] On the other hand, the use of Mysca in social networks and public events has generated the feeling that Chibcha has been a language that has survived uninterruptedly since pre-Hispanic times, ignoring the historical process of acculturation and the struggle ancestral of the cabildos for the communal ownership of their lands, for the recognition of their identity by the State and against the exclusion and poverty to which the members and ancestors of the Chibcha cabildos have been subject.
Criticism from academia
This neo-language has also been involved in different academic controversies because on many occasions Myska is presented to the public as a natural language or, in the best of cases, as the closest approximation to the language spoken by the Chibchas, despite that its phonology, spelling, grammar, and even vocabulary, have not developed naturally but rather based on ancient writings, which is why its consistency and distance from the spelling of known linguistic sources is questioned. The presentation of this reconstructed language as an almost faithful approximation to the original or equivalent to the colony's Chibcha has aroused the following criticism:
The creation of alternative vocabularies and grammars to the colonial sources distances the unsuspecting public from the true colonial linguistic sources, the main source of chibcha.
It is a personalist proposal that does not allow criticism and from which other positions have been denigrated.[50]
The new spelling reveals an obvious contradiction, how can a spelling be created if it cannot be contrasted or verified with native speakers or audio records that support it.
One of the biggest controversies is the prosody of the language. Academics such as Diego Gómez have stated that the pronunciation of several Myska words do not correspond in almost any case to the reconstructions carried out by him and his team based on the comparative method. Furthermore, the muisquisms, words of Chibcha origin that were adapted to the Spanish of the area, are reinterpreted and pronounced differently than they have been traditionally pronounced. For example, the Muisquism 'cuba' (youngest son), is written kuhubá and pronounced [kuhu'baa], even though the inhabitants of Cundinamarca and Boyacá have traditionally pronounced it ['kuba].
The use of this artificial language is part of a political agenda that seeks to highlight the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, although its disseminators are mostly privileged white-mestizo people with a high level of education, who have undertaken a process of re-ethnicization, ignoring the traditional authorities and organizations of the indigenous cabildos recognized by the Colombian State.
^Ardila, Olga (2016) El muysca y la muerte de las lenguas, en 'Muysca: Memoria y presencia'. Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
"Finally, in the 18th century, a new linguistic policy prohibited the use of indigenous languages and imposed the use of Spanish, according to a royal decree of 1770 from Charles III. This policy sought to achieve "that the different languages used in all domains become extinct and only Spanish is spoken. By this time, Muysca was already considered an extinct language" (Ardila, 2016:264)
"...the languages with a higher level of contact and greater recognition are more vulnerable, as was the case of the Muysca language, with a significant population at the arrival of the Spanish, and which has been extinct since the 18th century, despite having been recognized and taught as a general language." (Ardila, 2016: 274-275) (Original text in Spanish).
^Gamboa Mendoza, Jorge. (2016) El cacicazgo muisca en los años posteriores a la Conquista: del psihipqua al cacique colonial. instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia.
^González de Pérez, María Stella. Trayectoria de los estudios sobre la lengua chibcha o muisca. Bogotá 1980. Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
^Gómez & Giraldo. Transcription of the Moscow Vocabulary of 1612. Manuscript II/2924 from the Royal Library of the Royal Palace of Madrid. ICANH. 2011.
^Gómez & Giraldo (2012-2013). Gramática, confesionario, catecismo breve y vocabulario de la lengua mosca-chibcha. Anonymous. ICANH.
^Gómez, Diego F. Los folletos muyscas de la Biblioteca Bodleiana (1603): los textos más tempranos de la lengua general del Nuevo Reino de Granada. en Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana: 36, 2, 2020.
Gamboa Mendoza, Gamboa (2013). El cacicazgo muisca en los años posteriores a la Conquista: del psihipqua al cacique colonial. Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia.
Gómez, Diego F (2013). Comparación léxica entre el muysca de Bogotá y el uwa central. Muysca: memoria y presencia. Bogotá (in Spanish). Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Gómez, Diego F (2020). "Los folletos muyscas de la Biblioteca Bodleiana (1603): los textos más tempranos de la lengua general del Nuevo Reino de Granada". Revista internacional de lingüística iberoamericana (in Spanish). 18 (36). Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert: 195–216. doi:10.31819/rili-2020-183610. S2CID256616900.
González de Pérez, María Stella (2006). Aproximación al sistema fonético-fonológico de la lengua muisca (in Spanish). Bogotá Instituto Caro y Cuervo. pp. 53–119.
Arango, Teresa (1954). Precolombia: Introducción al estudio del indígena colombiano [PreColombia: Introduction to the Study of Colombian Indigenous People] (in Spanish). Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra.
Wiesner García, Luis Eduardo (2014). "Etnografía muisca" [Muisca Ethnography]. Central Andean Region (in Spanish). IV. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica: 2. Retrieved 2016-07-11.
