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
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Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
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“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)