Language
Chibchan, also known as muysca, mosca, or muska kubun, belongs to the language family of Paezan languages, or Macro-Chibcha. It was spoken across several regions of Central America and the north of South America. The Tayrona Culture and the U'wa, related to the Muisca Culture, spoke similar languages, which encouraged trade.
Many Chibcha words were absorbed or "loaned" into Colombian Spanish:
- Geography: Many names of localities and regions were kept. In some cases, the Spanish named cities with a combination of Chibchan and Spanish words, such as Santa Fe de Bogotá. Most of the municipalities of the Boyacá and Cundinamarca departments are derived from Chibchan names: Bogotá, Sogamoso, Zipaquirá, and many others.
- Fruits, such as curuba and uchuva.
- Relations: The youngest child is called cuba, or china for a girl; muysca means people.
Read more about this topic: Muisca People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Now stamp the Lord’s Prayer on a grain of rice,
A Bible-leaved of all the written woods
Strip to this tree: a rocking alphabet,
Genesis in the root, the scarecrow word,
And one light’s language in the book of trees.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“The language of the younger generation ... has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.”
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)