Chaüpalaa (also known as Chachi or Cayapa) is a Barbacoan language spoken in northern Ecuador by around 5,870 Chachi people.
"Chaüpalaa" means "language of the Chachi people."
This language was described in part by the missionary P. Alberto Vittadello, who, by the time his description was published in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1988, had lived for seven years among the tribe.
Cha'palaa has four vowels: /a, e, i, u/.
Cha'palaa has 23 consonant phonemes.
Chaüpalaa is written using the Latin alphabet, making use of the following graphemes:
A, B, C, CH, D, DY, E, F, G, GU, HU, I, J, L, LL, M, N, ÃÂ, P, QU, R, S, SH, T, TS, TY, U, V, Y, and .
The writing system includes four simple vowels, and four double vowels:
Chaüpalaa has agglutinative morphology, with a Subject-Object-Verb word order.