Chorotega

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chorotega [tʃoro'tega] is the name of an indigenous people of Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua the ethnic population number around 795 according to the ethnologue 2000 survey [1]. The Chorotega language which was a member of the Manguean branch of the Oto-Manguean linguistic family is now extinct.

The Oto-Manguean languages are spoken mainly in Mexico and it is thought that the Chorotega moved south from Mexico together with the speakers of Subtiaba and Chiapanec well before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas.

Some sources list "Cholutega" as an alternative name of the people and their language and this has caused some, for example Terrence Kaufman (2001) to speculate that they were the original inhabitants of the city of Cholula, who were displaced with the arrival of Nahua people in central Mexico. The etymology for the nomenclature "Chorotega" in this case would come from the Nahuatl language where "Cholōltēcah" means "inhabitants of Cholula".

[edit] References

• Kaufman, Terrence, (2001) Nawa linguistic prehistory, published at website of the Mesoamerican Language Documentation Project
• Ethnologue report on Chorotega