Maléku language

Maléku, also called Malecu, Guatuso, Watuso-Wétar, and Guetar, natively known as Maléku Jaíka, is an Indigenous American language of the Chibchan family spoken in 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, also called Guatusos.

Classification

Maléku is a member of the Votic branch of the Chibchan language family.
Maléku, or 'the speech of our people', is considered to be endangered by the Endangered Languages Project. According to the 2011 National Population Census, 67.5% of the population that lives in the official Maléku 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 Maleku people 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

The Maléku live in three communities called Palenques in the northern area of Costa Rica: Margarita, Tonjibe and El Sol. According to Constenla, 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.

Education

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

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 may have been a dialect.

Documentation

As pointed out by Constenla 1998:3, little documentation of Maléku was recorded before the latter half of the 19th century. All records from that period are included in Walter Lehmann's 1920 volume on Central American languages.
The first scholar modern linguist to deeply study the Maléku language, aside from sources reproduced by Lehmann, was Adolfo Constenla Umaña, in collaboration with many members of the Maléku community, including especially among many others Eustaquio Castro Castro. A major dictionary of Maléku was published in 2023.

Phonology

Vowels

Maleku has five phonemic vowel qualities, all of which occur in two different lengths, short and long, totalling 10 vowel phonemes.
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. "In Maleku, there is only one accent opposition. Every word has at least one primary accent, which is not predictable in words of two or more syllables."

Consonants

The traditional consonant system of the Maleku includes fifteen phonemes:
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'.

Phonotactics

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

Writing 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.

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.

Subjects and objects

Maleku possesses an ergative–absolutive alignment 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 person	2 person	3 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 person	2 person	3 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 singular	2° person singular	1° person plural	1° person plural
Tón~ tó→ I	pó~ púo→ you	Toí~ toí→ we	Tótiquí~ totiquí→ we

Vocabulary

kapi kapi = hello
afekapian = Thank you
w-ay = yes
hebet = no
fufu = morpho butterfly
niskak = bird
pili = toucan
pek-pen = frog
gnou-ek = red-eye frog
ti-fakara = waterfall
irri miotem? = what is your name?
mioten... = my name is...
arrachapi kahole = I would like a cup of coffee
errekeki kerakou = let's go
erreke malehila =let's go swimming

Numbers

Source:

Dooka = One
Pángi = Two
Poóse = Three
Pakái= Four
Otíni= Five

Common nouns

Source:

Ochápaká= Man
Kuríjurí= Woman
Toji= Sun
Tlijii= Moon
Laká= Earth
Oktara= Stone
Koora= Tree
Uu= House