Páez language

Spoken in

Language isolate

• -

Pbb

The Paez ( with span accentuation: Paez, self- designation: Nasa Yuwe ) is a language of the people, the Paez ( proper name: Nasa ) is spoken, who lives in the Andean region of Colombia, especially in the Departamento de Cauca.

Genealogical classification

There is some debate about which language the Paez family belongs. Some of it members of the Chibcha - or macro - Chibcha languages ​​, others arrange the Barbacoa - languages ​​. Others see it as a language isolate. Greenberg (1987 ) suggests a large group Chibcha Paez, Uricoechea (1887 ), however, raised the relations of Paez to the Andean languages ​​, such as the Quechua forth.

Linguistic situation

Currently, the Paez of more than 100,000 people is spoken, where the tendency to decrease the number of speakers decreases because there are well-founded phonological and grammatical studies, dictionaries and fibulae, so that the programs for the preservation of the language, the teaching of Paez and teaching amplify Paez, in the context of official and non- official programs of etnoeducación which represent a priority for the local authorities and at the same time encourage the intensification of own communication media, such as radio or radio Payumat Nasa.

Linguistic characteristics

Phonology

The Paez distinguishes the vowels a, e, i and u, which also nasalized, and may be nasalized long and long.

The language has 38 consonant phonemes, including palatalized, aspirated and pränasalierte.

Grammar

The personal pronouns of the first and second person singular, the genera are " feminine " and " masculine " distinction, the plural of both persons is derived in each case from the feminine form from. The third person is neutral in this respect:

(after Slocum / Gerdel 1983)

At the verb are indicated by means of suffixes tense, aspect, and mode, in the second person feminine or masculine in addition the genus. The verb may be provided with prefixes of intensity.

The nouns are declined by means of suffixes, which denote the Case Nominative, accusative, dative, ablative, locative and instrumental, as well as by means of postpositions.

It is an agglutinative language. The basic word order is subject-object - verb. The adjective follows the noun.

Number words

From "seven", the Spanish number words are used in the Paez, however, for " ten " There is a separate word ( according to Slocum / Gerdel 1983):