| States | Nicaragua |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity | 20,000 (2005)[1]-49,000 (2006)[2] |
| Extinct | 1920s |
| Ref | e25 |
| Familycolor | oto-manguean |
| Fam 1 | Oto-Mangue |
| Fam 2 | Tlapanecan |
| Iso 3 | sut |
| Glotto | subt1250 |
| Glottorefname | Subtiaba |
Subtiaba, also known as Maribio, is an extinct Oto-Manguean language which was spoken on the Pacific slope of Nicaragua, especially in the Subtiaba district of León. Edward Sapir established a connection between Subtiaba and Tlapanec. When Lehmann wrote about it in 1909 it was already very endangered or moribund.
The name "Subtiaba" may be of Nahuatl origin, from the roots xoctli ("black snail"), atl ("water"), pan ("on").[2]
Phonology
Lehmann thought there may have been some sort of variation between voiceless and voiced stops, which may account for some discrepancies between datasets. Stops were voiced after nasals. and were used in transcriptions to represent ʂ, a phonological correspondence shared with some local registers of Spanish and other Central American indigenous languages.
Lexicon
Subtiaba evidently had some loanwords from Mangue, a neighboring language only distantly related. These include chitú "cat" (Mangue chitu), sidáa "rooster" (M. sitaraca), ñusi "tiste" (from M. ñusi, "cacao"), dagaba "frog/toad" (M. na-tokopó). Both Subtiaba words for corn may have ultimately derived from Mayan languages.
There were also loans from Spanish. For example, jabón "soap" became Subtiaba rabuni /ʂabuni/, having been borrowed at a time when the Spanish word was still pronounced with an initial /ʃ/.
Lexical comparison with Tlapanec
Lexical comparison from Native American Language Net:[3][4][better source needed]
| English | Subtiaba | Tlapanec |
|---|---|---|
| One | i·mba | mba1 |
| Two | a·pu· | a3hma3 |
| Three | a·su | a2cu1 |
| Four | axku | a2kho3 |
| Man | ra·bu | ša3bo3 |
| Woman | ra·bagu· | a'3go3 |
| Dog | ru·wa | šu3wã1 |
| Sun | ahka | a3kha'3 |
| Moon | uku | gő'3 |
| Water | i·lu | i2ya2 |
Note that Subtiaba represents ʂ.
See also
References
- ^ e25
- ^ "8. Xiu". Territorio Indígena y Gobernanza
- ^ "Subtiaba Words". Native-Languages.org
- ^ "Tlapanec Words". Native-Languages.org
- Campbell, Lyle (1979). "Middle American Languages". The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Campbell, Lyle & Mithun, Marianne (eds.). Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 902–999.
- Campbell, Lyle (1975). "Subtiaba 1974". International Journal of American Linguistics. 41 (1): 80–84. doi:10.1086/465341. JSTOR 1264899
- Sapir, Edward (1925). "The Hokan affinity of Subtiaba in Nicaragua". American Anthropologist. 27 (3,4): 402–435, 491–527. New Series. doi:10.1525/aa.1925.27.3.02a00040
- Suárez, Jorge A. (1977). El tlapaneco como lengua Otomangue (in Spanish). Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México.
External links
- Subtiaba, at Summer Institute of Linguistics
- OLAC resources in and about the Subtiaba language