Bribri, also known as Bri-bri, Bribriwak, and Bribri-wak, is a Chibchan language, from a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of those countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. As of 2002, there were about 11,000 speakers left. An estimate by the National Census of Costa Rica in 2011 found that Bribri is currently spoken by 54.7% of the 12,785 Bribri people, about 7,000 individuals. It is a tonal language whose word order is subject–object–verb.
There are three traditional dialects of Bribri: Coroma (in the western region of the Talamanca mountain range), Amubre (in the eastern region of the Talamanca mountain range) and Salitre (in the South Pacific area). Bribri is a tribal name, deriving from a word for 'mountainous' in their own language. The Bribri language is also referred to as Su Uhtuk, which means 'our language'. Bribri is reportedly most similar to sister language Cabécar as both languages have nasal harmony, but they are mutually unintelligible.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar ~Palatal |
Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Occlusive | Voiced | ~ | ~ | ~ | ||
| Short | ||||||
| Long | ||||||
| Affricate | Short | |||||
| Long | ||||||
| Fricative | ||||||
| Rhotic | ~ | |||||
| Glide | ||||||
- /b/ has allophones, the last when next to nasal vowels.
- /d/ has allophones.
- /ɟ/ has allophones.
- /ɾ/ has allophones.
- /w, j/ have nasalized allophones.
- /t͜ʃ/ has the allophones.
- Long consonants are realized by some speakers as pre-aspirated rather than geminate. They may not be separated by vowels, unlike consonant sequences.
- /t͜kʲ/ has allophones at the beginning of a word, at the end, and in the middle. It is distinct from the sequence and appears to be merging into; in Coroma dialect it apparently already has.
- /h/ is only found in Coroma dialect.
All voiced consonants have nasal allophones in the environment of (before or after) nasal vowels. In the case of /d/, flapped allophones occur initially before a consonant, and medially between vowels. Occlusive only occur initially before a vowel.
Long and short consonants contrast medially and word-finally.
Vowels
I, u and a are pronounced in the same manner as they would be in Spanish. E and o are more open than in Spanish. The sound of ë is between i and e, and ö is between u and o. The nasal vowels are pronounced similarly to the corresponding orals, with the addition of some air exiting through the nose.
In Coroma dialect, ã has merged into /ɔ̃/, and an initial unaccented vowel /a/ or /ã/ tends to be dropped.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | oral | |||
| nasal | ||||
| Near-high | ⟨ë⟩ | ⟨ö⟩ | ||
| Mid-low | oral | |||
| nasal | ||||
| Low | oral | |||
| nasal | ||||
| yì
¿quién? |
ù
casa | |
| yë
padre, papá |
tö
sí | |
| yeꞌ
yo |
só
cucaracha | |
| awá
médico |
| mĩ
madre, mamá |
ũ
olla | |
| sẽ
eso, ese |
mõ
nube | |
| ã
en; para |
Pitch accent
In stressed or 'accented' syllables, Bribri distinguishes high (allophonically rising) and falling tones; unstressed syllables do not distinguish tone and tend to have low pitch. There are past reports that high and rising tone are contrastive in Amubre dialect, for a three-way distinction in accented syllables; however, this was not confirmed with more recent investigations.
Syllable structure
The final syllable of a root is accented (tonic) and is maximally CVC. All syllables but the last are unaccented and maximally CV̆; the vowel is short and may only be /a i u/ or their nasal counterparts. The vowels in such syllables may be elided, producing phonetic consonant sequences.
Alphabet
The Linguistics Department at the University of Costa Rica has conceived a standardized spelling system that is based on several earlier attempts.
| Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A | B | D | Ch | E | Ë | I | J | K | L | M | N | Ñ | O | Ö | P | Pp | R | Rr | S | Sh | T | Tt | Tch | Tk | Ts | U | W | Y | ꞌ | |||
| Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | d | ch | e | ë | i | j | k | l | m | n | ñ | o | ö | p | pp | r | rr | s | sh | t | tt | tch | tk | ts | u | w | y | ꞌ | |||
| Value | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | d | tʃ | e | ɪ | i, j | h | k | ɽ | m | n | ɲ | o | ʊ | p | pː | ɾ | r | s | ʃ | t | tː | tːʃ | tk | ts | u | w | ɟ | ʔ | |||
Nasal vowels are indicated by a tilde: ⟨ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ⟩ (Previously indicated with a macron below: a̱, e̱, i̱, o̱, u̱), except after a nasal consonant (already indicating nasalisation of the vowel).
Tone is indicated by the grave accent for the high/rising tone and the acute accent for the falling tone. Unaccented syllables are not marked.
