User:Felixthecat04/Media Lengua

Origin Theories
The development trajectory of Media Lengua is unclear. Several theories exist concerning the origins of Media Lengua. According to Muysken, Salcedo Media Lengua emerged through ethnic self-identification of Indigenous populations, who no longer identified with either the rural Kichwa or the urban Spanish cultures. Lipski also claims that ethnic factors contributed to the origins of Salcedo Media Lengua but argues that the same can not be said for Imbabura Media Lengua. Instead, some speakers of Imbabura Media Lengua continue to self-identify as Kayambis, a pre-Inca ethnic group.

Gómez-Rendón claims Angla Media Lengua arose through prolonged contact between the Kichwa-speaking Indigenous populations with the Mestizo Spanish speaking populations. Gómez-Rendón suggests that when Angla men returned form working outside of their community, there was a shift to Kichwa-Spanish bilingualism in households, leading to the development of Angla Media Lengua.

Dikker believes Media Lengua was created by men who left their native communities to work in urban Spanish-speaking areas. When the men returned to the communities, they had acquired a fluent level of Spanish and had been using Kichwa infrequently. Media Lengua then served as a link between the older monolingual Kichwa-speaking generation and younger monolingual Spanish-speaking generations.

Finally, Stewart claims that Media Lengua was either brought to Pijal from Salcedo or vice versa. He bases these claims on the "striking resemblance" between the Pijal and Salcedo varieties at both the phonological and the morphological level. The claim also includes testimonies of a large migration from Cotopaxi to Pijal at the beginning of the 20th century, which can be seen in the many Cotopaxi surnames in community.

Most researchers agree, however, that Media Lengua developed linguistically through various processes of lexification (relexification, adlexification and translexification ) in a relatively short period of time.

Vitality
In 2018, Lipski visited the communities where Media Lengua was first documented. He reports that Media Lengua is no longer spoken by the community members. Since the language was first documented in the 1970's, there has been a shift to Spanish as the dominant language of the community. In the Province of Imbabura, reports reflect that Media Lengua is still spoken in the communities of Pijal, Angla, and Casco Valenzuela. However, the sociolinguistic aspects of Media Lengua differ between these communities. In Pijal, speakers of Media Lengua are typically aged 35 and above, those aged 20–35 typically have a passive knowledge of the language, and speakers aged 20 and younger are often monolingual in Spanish. In the more urban communities of Angla and Casco-Valenzuela, this is not the case. Media Lengua is preferred and spoken on a daily basis among a wider age range of individuals. There there are also cases of children acquiring Media Lengua from their parents and grandparents, which is not the case in Pijal. Lipski reports that Media Lengua is even being used by school aged children who attend a Kichwa-Spanish bilingual school in Topo. Estimates of the number of speakers vary widely. In Pijal, there is an estimate of around 600 speakers while in the communities of Angla, Uscha, Casco-Valenzuela, and El Topo, there may be as many 2000+ speakers.