Everything about The Cora Language totally explained
The
Cora language is an
indigenous language of Mexico of the
Uto-Aztecan linguistic family. It is spoken by the ethnic group that's widely known as the
Cora but who refer to themselves as
Naáyarite. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state
Nayarit which is named after its indigenous inhabitants. Cora is a
Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits defining the
Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Under the "Law of Linguistic Rights" it's recognized as a "national language" along with 62 other indigenous languages and
Spanish which have the same "validity" in Mexico
(External Link
).
Geographic distribution
There are two main variants of Cora. One is that spoken in the
Sierra de Nayarit ranges of
Jalisco, called
Cora del Nayar or
Cora Meseño, with approximately 9,000 speakers (1993 census). The other variant is called
Cora de Santa Teresa and is spoken by approximately 7,000 people (1993 census) in north-central Nayarit. Cora de Santa Teresa has such a low degree of
mutual intelligibility with other Cora speech communities that
Ethnologue considers it a separate variety. Due to recent migrations a small community of Coras exist in the United States in western Colorado.
Genealogy
The closest relatives of the Cora language is the
Huichol language together with which it forms the
Coracholan subgroup of the
Uto-Aztecan languages. The Taracahitan group of languages containing among others the languages
Tarahumara,
Yaqui and
Mayo is also related to Cora.
- General Uto-Aztecan
- Coracholan branch
- Huichol language
- Cora languages
- Cora (also called Cora of Nayar or Cora Meseño)
- Santa Teresa Cora
Phonology
The phonology of Cora is typical of southern Uto-aztecan languages with five vowels and a relatively simple consonant inventory. However atypically of Uto-aztecan languages Cora has developed a simple
tonal system or
pitch accent with an harmonic accent taking high falling tone.
Consonants
Vowels
Grammar
Cora is a verb-initial language; its grammar is agglutinative and polysynthetic, particularly inflecting verbs with many affixes and clitics. There are a number of adpositional clitics that can also be used as
relational nouns.
Nominal morphology
Nouns are marked for possession and exhibit several different plural patterns.
Pluralization
Different classes of nouns mark the plural in different manners. The most common way is by means of suffixes - The suffixes used for pluralization are the following: -
te, -
mwa, -
mwa'a, -
tse, -
tsi, -
kʉ, -
sʉ, -
se, -
si, -
ri and -
i. Other ways to form the plural is by reduplication of the final vowel of a noun stem or by shifting the accent from one syllable to the other. Another class of works form their plurals by
suppletion.
Possession
Possessed nouns are marked with a prefix expressing the person and number of their possessor.
The forms of the prefix expressing first person singular is
ne-,
na-, or
ni-, for second person singular it's
a-,
mwa'a-,
a'a-. The third person singular is marked by the prefix
ru-. A first person plural possessor is marked by the prefix
ta-, second person plural by
ha'amwa- and third person plural by
wa'a-. Furthermore there are two suffixes. One, -
ra'an is used to mark an
obviative or
fourth person possessor. The other is -
me'en used to mark a plural possessum of a singular possessor.
| Number/person of Possessor |
Singular |
Plural |
| 1. person |
nechi'i "my house" |
tachi'i "our house" |
| 2. person |
achi'i "your house" |
há'amwachi'i "Your (pl.) house" |
| 3. person |
ruchi'i "his/her own house" |
wa'áchi'i "Their house" |
| 4. person |
chí'ira'an "the house of the other" |
|
| pl. possessum + 3.p.sg. possessor |
chí'imeen "his/her houses" |
|
Verbal morphology
Verbs are inflected for person and number of subject and direct object and object prefixes for 3rd person inanimate objects also show the basic shape of the object. Verbs are also inflected for location and direction.
Syntax
Typologically Cora is interesting because it's a VSO language but also has postpositions, a trait that's rare cross-linguistically but does occur in a few Uto-Aztecan languages (
Papago,
Tepehuán, and some dialects of
Nahuatl).
Media
Cora-language programming is carried by the
CDI's radio station
XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from
Jesús María, Nayarit.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Cora Language'.
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