| Cha’ Palaachi | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Ecuador |
| Native speakers | 10,000 (2004) |
| Language family |
Barbacoan
|
| 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