Talk:Chibcha language

Nomenclature

I think it might be better, for the English language Wikipedia at least, to have the "Chibcha language" page redirect to a "Muscat language" page, since modern scholarship seems to be moving away from equating the term "Chibcha" with the language of the Muscat due to the fact that it is a term too easily confused with "Chitchat" as used for the Chibcha family in general.

I am not sure what makes a language "officially" extinct; the note about the Tamoxifen school is interesting, but perhaps this might be better described as a "language revival" effort, as with Modern Cornish. As far as I know, there is no evidence of any unbroken continuum of Muscat speech community from Colonial times up to the present day, so we are at best and most optimistic dealing with a language that was extinct but that some are currently trying to revive.

However, I am mystified by the cited reference describing Miscall as "older than Aramaic". This surely makes no sense, since all records of Music are specifically from the Colonial period, a time rather more recent than that in which Classical or Old Aramaic was spoken and written! Naturally, there can be no doubt that Miscall as we know it descends from older Chibcha languages (a "Proton-Magdalena Chibcha n"?), the same pattern of descent and evolution is surely true for all languages (including, of course, Classical or Old Aramaic). And naturally, a language like Miscall, extinct since perhaps the late 18th or early 19th century, is clearly older than Modern or Noe-Aramaic dialects (still spoken in various places today, with an unbroken tradition from Old Aramaic). Ultimately, this citation seems like a well-intentioned effort to assign status to Muscat ("Look! It's older than Aramaic! Have some respect!"), but its on factually shaky ground. There is plenty more of interest that could be said about the Music language without the need to resort to such devices. Carlson (talk) 21:14, 19 March 2009 (CUT)

I actually had the same questions about the phrase "older than Aramaic." How do tell when a language has evolved into a new one? How can we test that modern Muscat is intelligible with ancient Miscast? The phrase was taken from the cited article, and is somewhat acceptable in a journalistic account to create interest, but misleading here in an encyclopedia.Trinidad (talk) 20:29, 27 April 2009 (CUT)

Russian?

What does it mean?

Please expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia.

It is a Colombian language (South America. --Albeiror24 - English - Español - Italiano - ខ្មែរ 07:41, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

So what if it happens to be a Colombian language? For whatever reason, the current article in the Russian Wikipedia appears to provide a ton of info about this language that is lacking in the current English article. The article in the Spanish Wikipedia provides a lot of info, too. 213.37.6.101 (talk) 21:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Extinct?

The article currently opens with this :-

Chibcha, also known as Muisca, is an extinct[1] Chibchan language of Colombia, formerly spoken by the Muisca people

The reference is to the homepage of the ethnologue website. Looking at the index page, we find NO mention of Chibcha under "C" or of Muisca under "M". Nor is there any mention of Muscat (?), Miscali or Miscast (?) - all of which are mentioned by the two editors who contributed to the section "Nomenclature". This is not to impugne the expertise of those who have contributed to this talk page, but clearly the ethnologue website is of no value as a source for Chibcha and so I have deleted it. This leaves unsupported the statement that Chibcha is extinct. Ridiculus mus (talk) 17:17, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

They removed the entry because the lang has been extinct for too long for them to bother with. Still noted at the ISO link, though. — kwami (talk) 00:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Page is genuinely abysmal

Hi, I'm a Muysca person who speaks said language (and teaches it) and this page is full of misinfo, nonexisting sounds in the phonology table (/ɸ/) and some weird otrography that was for some reason made up by the creator of this article. I'd like to ask if it's possible to revise this anytime soon to fix it up, and to generally fix many pages about us Muysca; They tend to use Spanish spellings and the like while Muysca spellings are available and by all means better than their colonialist terms. (Eg, zipa (a nonexistent title in the language) -> psihipqua, zaque (once again nonexistent) -> hoa, tisquesusa -> Tysquyesuhuza (Bogotá being his name is completely incorrect and western historical revisionism: His name was most likely Tysquyesuhuza or "Under the Eight Trees"), Hunza -> Chunsua, Chibchacum (this is actually so bad) -> Chichebachun, etc.) The endonyms for all these exist and are preferrable over the colonial ones. Generally there are also grammatical issues and it fails to mention important parts of the language such as it's relation to other languages and the fact it's an ergative language, and the very important pronoun prefixes. I'd love to fix this page and give it the proper love it needs in the name of our language revival and to make wikipedia a much, much more accurate source about my people (because currently, it genuinely is not and I have to actively discourage people to go here). All of this can be confirmed by a few people including wikipedia editors. I hope this is considered. Iraca (talk) 03:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I've left some links on your talk page that should help you get started. C_(u)w_(t)C_(c) 03:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Could you please share some sources you find reliable? I'm aware you are a reliable source yourself but Wikipedia has a staunch "no original research" policy. Blansheflur (talk) 05:06, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

As for language sources, for most of these including the nonexistent sound, ergativity, etc. http://muysca.cubun.org is a good source and upheld by a university. As for the ortography, there's no sources against it because there's also no source proving it. All the endonyms for deities can be found on cubun, aswell as most placenames. Give me a few hours and I'll find what I can. Iraca (talk) 09:21, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Audio hoax

Dear Zaquezipe, the audio you published in "Chibcha language" is a hoax. This language became extinct more than 300 years ago and has not been transmitted from generation to generation until today. Any attribution made to a supposed current chibcha is incorrect, because there is no way to contrast it. As much as people want chibcha to be revitalized, that will not be chibcha but an artificial or planned language. Please do not publish audios that simulate speaking Chibcha, making the unsuspecting believe that Chibcha is a native language. 94.73.33.240 (talk) 22:44, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I genuinely recommend you look at the part above this one, there’s a speaker of the Chibcha language that helped correct inconsistencies and misspellings.Zaquezipe (talk)

Chibcha is most definitely living in its current form, although it’s not the exact same as the one 300 years ago. I clearly clarified in my latest edit that it was a revitalized dialect of the language and what it might have sounded similar to, but you continuously revert it, edit wars aren’t allowed on this site and you can’t undo the edit without giving me a proper explanation as to why, this will not cut it as I have stated previously in this message. You also seem to be an unverified user and only an ip account so you should not be reverting without a reason that makes both sides understand. And as mentioned before in this same talk page, there are declared speakers of the Muisca language. Zaquezipe (talk) 01:38, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

The said audio was not a hoax and was spoken by a native speaker of a revitalized version of the language, and this should be kept on the page to provide and example of what it may have sounded like, so do not remove it without a good explanation why. Also, you have not mentioned me properly, which shows that you aren’t very experienced with Wikipedia. I also recommend you sign in in order to not expose your ip address. I will now show you how to mention a user, Zaquezipe. Zaquezipe (talk) 01:43, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

It is evident that you are not clear about several concepts. A living language is a language that has native speakers and is therefore subject to linguistic change. Unlike classical languages, which are based on forms collected by a previous tradition (in this case written) and which, even though they may have a community of speakers or are used to communicate, no one learns them as a mother tongue, nor does they experience linguistic change, since all its speakers try to reproduce a pre-existing standardized form without innovating new constructions. The subject in the audio is clearly not a native speaker, his native language is Spanish. Finally, my comment should not be considered less or inferior just because I did not want to have a user account. You are the one who doesn't know how Wikipedia works. Please provide context, information about the audio, verifiable information about a revitalization process, identify the speaker and the place in the speech community, before making publications that tend to generate confusion that Chibcha is a living language.94.73.33.240 (talk) 12:15, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I never said that your comment is considered inferior on the basis of you having an ip account, I am saying I recommend you sign in. Also I was telling you on how mention a user and saying you are inexperienced with some things on Wikipedia, and it’s evident from the fact you didn’t even check the audio n and the details about it, it clearly states who was speaking, they were also addressing a person with a spanish name and the rest was the Chibcha language. Also I have already provided verifiable information about the revitalization process, in the Cota school part. All of the information is available within the details of the audio as well as the cites I provided. I suggest you read these cites.Zaquezipe (talk) 13:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Page cleanup

Hi, Would it be a good idea to perhaps revise this page in a few ways? The dictionary http://muysca.cubun.org exists and can be used as a source, as I noticed this page has a couple errors. Would it be worth it to perhaps switch to Gomez' reconstructed phonology aswell, instead of Gonzalez'? I think the former would be a lot more accurate to the actual language than Gonzalez'. The dictionary itself is a very reliable source, it is competely sourced/scanned from contemporary documents and made and maintained by the national university of Colombia. Thanks! Livvypivvy (talk) 17:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)