Andaqui language

Andaqui (or Andaki) is an extinct language from the southern highlands of Colombia. It has been linked to the Paezan or Barbacoan languages, but no connections have been demonstrated. It was spoken by the Andaqui people of Colombia. The language may still be spoken.^[1]

There are two main sources of information about Andaqui. The first is a list sent to Madrid by Mutis, about twenty pages long, that contains words and expressions in the language that was published in the catalogue of the Royal Library in 1928. A second list was collected by Manuel María Albis in 1854.

Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with Paez, Chibcha (also proposed by Rivet 1924^[4]), and Tinigua-Pamigua due to contact.^[5]

Paez and Andaqui have a significant amount of common culture-specific vocabulary, which suggests some amount of borrowing. Several similar words between the two languages are also part of the core lexis. However, the general aspects of words in Andaqui differ greatly from those of Paez. Andaqui words tend be long and have open syllables.

Paez and Andaqui have a significant amount of lexical parallels.^[3] Marcelo Jolkesky found that the similar vocabularies of Andaqui and Paez indicated that the two groups had maintained close contact with each other during the pre-Columbian era.^[5]

He also outlined some parallels between Andaqui and Tinigua:^[5]

Other unattested varieties possibly related to Andaqui that are listed by Loukotka (1968):^[6]

• Timane [Timaná] – once spoken on the Magdalena River and Guarapas River around the city of Timaná.
• Yalcon / Cambi – once spoken between the Magdalena River and La Plata River.

The available sources of information for Andaqui use 30 distinct graphemes between consonant and vowel symbols. Mutis's vocabulary list contains several unusual combinations of letters whose phonetic value can only be conjectured. The one that appears with most frequency is fsrr- as in fsrragua (a type of liana) and fsrrixa ("agave fiber"). The sequences fs, sz, sh also were used, but by the 19th century they were generally replaced by s. Thus, it could be interpreted that in the 150 years between the sources, phonemes like /ʃ/, /ʂ/ and /ʈʂ/ disappeared from Andaqui speech.^[7]

According to an analysis by Gabriela Coronas Urzía, the existing graphemes are interpreted as 12 consonant phonemes, 3 oral vowels (/i a u/), and 3 nasal vowels (/ĩ ã ũ/).^[7]

Three diacritics were also used: the grave (à), the acute (á), and the circumflex (â). The grave and acute accents probably represented a fixed stress on the final syllable, which was not phonemic due to its predictable nature. The circumflex likely represented nasalization.^[7]

Andaqui was likely an agglutinative language given the large amount of long words. It used both prefixes and suffixes.

The subject was marked on the verb using prefixes. For example, the prefix ka- marked the second person.

Nominalization, grammatical mood, and some parts of person reference were marked using suffixes. For instance, the suffix for the imperative in the second person was -zá:

Case was also indicated by suffixes:

cogo "house" / cogora "(go to a) house"

Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items.^[6]

gloss	Andaquí
one	guhigo
two	nashihishe
ear	sun-guaxo
tongue	shonaé
hand	sakaá
foot	soguapaná
water	xixi
stone	guatihi
maize	kike
fish	nengihi
house	kogo

• Macro-Paesan languages