Ngäbere

Ngäbere, also known as Guaymí, is a Chibchan language spoken by the Ngäbe people of Panama and Costa Rica. It is a member of the Macro-Chibchan language family, within the Guaymi branch of Chibchan languages. The name Ngäbere reflects the language’s own designation, and Guaymí is a widely used exonym in older literature.

The language is spoken primarily in Panama, especially in the Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca and surrounding provinces, with communities in southern Costa Rica. Estimates of the number of speakers vary, but Ngäbere remains widely used in daily life within Ngäbe communities, even as many speakers are bilingual in Spanish. Dialects exist across regions, with some variation in pronunciation and vocabulary.

Ngäbere has a long tradition of oral literature and is used in family and community settings, ceremonies, and local governance. In recent decades, there have been efforts to develop written materials, standardize an orthography, and promote bilingual education in some areas, contributing to ongoing language revitalization and literacy projects.

Writing and resources: Ngäbere is written with a Latin-based script. Various orthographies have been developed for educational materials, dictionaries, and grammars, and published works help support language learning and documentation. The language is the subject of linguistic research and language documentation by universities and independent researchers, aiming to describe its phonology, morphology, and syntax, and to support transmission to younger generations.