Cha'palaachi language

Cha’ Palaachi
Spoken in	Ecuador
Native speakers	10,000  (2004)
Language family	Barbacoan Southern? Cha’ Palaachi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cbi

Cha' Palaachi also known as Chachi or Cayapa is a Barbacoan language spoken in northern Ecuador by ca. 3000 ethnic Chachi people.

"Cha'palaachi" means "language of the Chachi people." This language was described in part by the missionary P. Alberto Vittadello, who, by the time his description was published in Guayaquil Ecuador in 1988, had lived for seven years among the tribe.

Cha'palaachi has an agglutinative morphology. It is also case marking, with a Subject-Object-Verb word order.

Cha'palaachi is written using the Latin Alphabet, making use of the following graphemes:

A, B, C, CH, D, DY, E, F, G, GU, HU, I, J, L, LL, M, N, Ñ, P, QU, R, S, SH, T, TS, TY, U, V, Y, and '

The writing system includes four simple vowels, and four double vowels:

A, E, I, U, AA, EE, II, UU

References

• Ethnologue on Cha'palaachi
• Native Languages on Cha'palaachi, with links