Arawakan languages
Encyclopedia
Macro-Arawakan is a proposed language family
of South America
and the Caribbean
based on the Arawakan languages
. Sometimes the proposal is called Arawakan, in which case the central family is called Maipurean.
Originally the name "Arawak" was used exclusively for a powerful tribe in Netherlands Antilles
, Guyana
and Suriname
. The tribe became allies of the Spanish because they traditionally were enemies of the Carib groups with whom the Spanish were at war. Forms of the Arawak language are still spoken in Suriname
.
recognized the unity of the Maipure language
of the Orinoco and Moxos
of Bolivia in 1783, and named their family Maipure. It was renamed Arawak by Von den Steinen (1886) and Brinten (1891) after one of the most important languages of the family, Arawak
in the Guianas. The modern equivalents are Maipurean or Maipuran and Arawak or Arawakan. The term Arawakan is now used in two senses. In South America, Aruák is generally used for the family demonstrated by Gilij and subsequent linguists. In North America, however, it has been extended to a hypothetical proposal that includes that adds the Guajiboan
and Arawan
families. The name Maipurean was then resurrected to distinguish the core family, though this is sometimes called core Arawak(an) or Arawak(an) proper instead.
Kaufman (1990: 40) relates the following:
The Arawak language family, as constituted by L. Adam, at first by the name of Maypure, has been called by Von den Steinen "Nu-Arawak" from the prenominal prefix " nu " for the first person, common to all the Arawak tribes scattered along the coasts from Dutch Guiana to British Guiana.
In upper Paraguay, are also found tribes speaking the Arawak tongue; the Quinquinaos, the Layanas, etc. (This is the Moho-Mbaure group of L. Quevedo). In the islands of Marajos, in the middle of the estuary of the Amazon, there dwelt a few decades ago the Aruan people, who spoke an Arawak dialect, and in the peninsula of Goajira (north of Venezeula) is the Goajires tribe, which also belongs to the same language family. In 1890–95 De Brette estimated there to be 3,000 individuals.
C. H. de Goeje's published vocabulary of 1928 outlines the Lokono/Arawak (Dutch and Guiana) 1400 items, mostly morphemes (stems, affixes) and morpheme partials (single sounds) – rarely compounded, derived, or otherwise complex sequences; and from Nancy P. Hickerson's British Guiana manuscript vocabulary of 500 items. However, most entries which reflect acculturation are direct borrowings from one or another of three model languages (Spanish, Dutch, English). Of the 1400 entries in de Goeje, 106 reflect European contact; 98 of these are loans. Nouns which occur with the verbalizing suffix described above number 9 out of the 98 loans.
The Caribs clearly borrowed their word for maize from the Arawaks, for the Arawak radical is used by the females of that tribe, the males using an entirely different noun.
The German pilgrim, Henry Beutel had established the village Pilgerhut by Fort Nassau on the Berbice River in 1739 and six years later a gentleman presented them with a Mulatto boy, who assisted them in acquiring a more correct knowledge of the Arawak language. The pilgrims found him of great use as an interpreter and he helped greatly in the translation of their bible.
and Bolivia
, across the Amazon basin
of Brazil
,
southward into Paraguay
and northward into to Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela
, and Colombia
on the northern coast of South America, and even as far north as Belize
and Guatemala
. It is the largest family in the Americas with the respect to number of languages (also including much internal branching) and covers the widest geographical area of any language group in Latin America
.
Taíno
, commonly called Island Arawak, was spoken on the Caribbean islands of Cuba
, Hispaniola
, Puerto Rico
, Jamaica
, and the Bahamas. Many of the Taino descendants today speak English
or Spanish
peppered with a few Taino words. The Taíno language was very scantily attested; however, its classification within the Arawakan family is uncontroversial. Its closest relative among the better attested Arawakan languages seems to be the Goajiro language, spoken in Colombia. It has been suggested that the Goajiro are descended from Taíno refugee
s, but the theory seems impossible to prove or disprove.
The Carib people (after whom the Caribbean was named) formerly lived throughout the Lesser Antilles
. In the seventeenth century, the language of the Island Carib was described by European missionaries as two separate unrelated languages—one spoken by the men of the society and the other by the women. The language spoken by the men was a language of the Carib family very similar to the Galibi language spoken in what later became French Guyana. The language spoken by the woman belonged to the Arawakan language family. One might conclude, though there is a minimum of supporting evidence, that the Carib language was first spoken in eastern Venezuela and the Guyanas
. Also, because this peculiar dual gender-specific language arrangement was unstable and dynamic and cannot have been very old, the Carib speakers had only recently migrated north into the Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact, displacing or assimilating the Arawaks in the process.
The Island Carib language is now extinct
, although Caribs still live on Dominica
, Trinidad
, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. Despite its name, Island Carib was an Arawak language, as is its derived modern language Garífuna
(or Black Carib), which is thought to have about 590,000 speakers in Honduras
, Nicaragua
, Guatemala
and Belize
. The Garifuna are the descendants of Caribs and black
escaped slaves
of Africa
n origin, transferred by the British from Saint Vincent
to islands in the Bay of Honduras in 1796. The Garifuna language continues the women's Arawak-based Island Carib language and only a few traces remain of the men's Carib speech.
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
and the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
based on the Arawakan languages
Arawakan languages
Macro-Arawakan is a proposed language family of South America and the Caribbean based on the Arawakan languages. Sometimes the proposal is called Arawakan, in which case the central family is called Maipurean....
. Sometimes the proposal is called Arawakan, in which case the central family is called Maipurean.
Originally the name "Arawak" was used exclusively for a powerful tribe in Netherlands Antilles
Netherlands Antilles
The Netherlands Antilles , also referred to informally as the Dutch Antilles, was an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, consisting of two groups of islands in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao , in Leeward Antilles just off the Venezuelan coast; and Sint...
, Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
and Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
. The tribe became allies of the Spanish because they traditionally were enemies of the Carib groups with whom the Spanish were at war. Forms of the Arawak language are still spoken in Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
.
Arawakan vs. Maipuran
Filippo GiliiFilippo Salvatore Gilii
Filippo Salvatore Gilii was an Italian Jesuit priest who lived in Nueva Granada on the Orinoco river...
recognized the unity of the Maipure language
Maipure language
Maipure , once spoken along the Ventuari, Sipapo, and Autana rivers and, as a lingua franca, in the Upper Orinoco region, became extinct around the end of the eighteenth century...
of the Orinoco and Moxos
Moxos language
Mojos are a pair of Maipurean languages spoken by the Moxos people of Northeastern Bolivia. The two Mojo 'dialects', Trinitario and Ignaciano, are as distinct from one another as they are from neighboring Maipurean languages.-Mojos:...
of Bolivia in 1783, and named their family Maipure. It was renamed Arawak by Von den Steinen (1886) and Brinten (1891) after one of the most important languages of the family, Arawak
Arawak language
Arawak is the eponymous language of the Arawakan language family. The term is often used to cover the closely related Taino language of the Caribbean islands. The ethnonym Lokono may be used more specifically....
in the Guianas. The modern equivalents are Maipurean or Maipuran and Arawak or Arawakan. The term Arawakan is now used in two senses. In South America, Aruák is generally used for the family demonstrated by Gilij and subsequent linguists. In North America, however, it has been extended to a hypothetical proposal that includes that adds the Guajiboan
Guajiboan languages
Guajiboan is a language family spoken in the Orinoco River region in eastern Colombia and southwestern Venezuela, which is a savannah-like area known in Colombia as the Llanos.-Family division:...
and Arawan
Arauan languages
Arawan is a family of languages spoken in western Brazil and Peru.-Family division:Arauan consists of 8 or 9 languages:...
families. The name Maipurean was then resurrected to distinguish the core family, though this is sometimes called core Arawak(an) or Arawak(an) proper instead.
Kaufman (1990: 40) relates the following:
[The Arawakan] name is the one normally applied to what is here called Maipurean. Maipurean used to be thought to be a major subgroup of Arawakan, but all the living Arawakan languages, at least, seem to need to be subgrouped with languages already found within Maipurean as commonly defined. The sorting out of the labels Maipurean and Arawkan will have to await a more sophisticated classification of the languages in question than is possible at the present state of comparative studies.
Characteristics
The languages called Arawakan or Maipuran were originally recognized as a separate group in the late nineteenth century. Almost all the languages now called Arawakan share a first-person singular prefix nu-, but Arawak proper has ta-. Other commonalities include a second-person singular pi-, relative ka-, and negative ma-.The Arawak language family, as constituted by L. Adam, at first by the name of Maypure, has been called by Von den Steinen "Nu-Arawak" from the prenominal prefix " nu " for the first person, common to all the Arawak tribes scattered along the coasts from Dutch Guiana to British Guiana.
In upper Paraguay, are also found tribes speaking the Arawak tongue; the Quinquinaos, the Layanas, etc. (This is the Moho-Mbaure group of L. Quevedo). In the islands of Marajos, in the middle of the estuary of the Amazon, there dwelt a few decades ago the Aruan people, who spoke an Arawak dialect, and in the peninsula of Goajira (north of Venezeula) is the Goajires tribe, which also belongs to the same language family. In 1890–95 De Brette estimated there to be 3,000 individuals.
C. H. de Goeje's published vocabulary of 1928 outlines the Lokono/Arawak (Dutch and Guiana) 1400 items, mostly morphemes (stems, affixes) and morpheme partials (single sounds) – rarely compounded, derived, or otherwise complex sequences; and from Nancy P. Hickerson's British Guiana manuscript vocabulary of 500 items. However, most entries which reflect acculturation are direct borrowings from one or another of three model languages (Spanish, Dutch, English). Of the 1400 entries in de Goeje, 106 reflect European contact; 98 of these are loans. Nouns which occur with the verbalizing suffix described above number 9 out of the 98 loans.
Some examples
The Arawak word for maize is marisi, and various forms of this word are found among the other tribes:-- Arawak, marisi, Guiana.
- Cauixana, mazy, Rio Jupura.
- Goajiro, maique, Goajiros Peninsula.
- Passes, mary, Lower Jupura.
- Puri, maky, Rio Paraiba.
- ...
The Caribs clearly borrowed their word for maize from the Arawaks, for the Arawak radical is used by the females of that tribe, the males using an entirely different noun.
The German pilgrim, Henry Beutel had established the village Pilgerhut by Fort Nassau on the Berbice River in 1739 and six years later a gentleman presented them with a Mulatto boy, who assisted them in acquiring a more correct knowledge of the Arawak language. The pilgrims found him of great use as an interpreter and he helped greatly in the translation of their bible.
Geographic distribution
The Arawakan languages are spoken over a large swath of territory, from the eastern slopes of the central Andes Mountains in PeruPeru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
and Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, across the Amazon basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
,
southward into Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
and northward into to Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, and Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
on the northern coast of South America, and even as far north as Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
and Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
. It is the largest family in the Americas with the respect to number of languages (also including much internal branching) and covers the widest geographical area of any language group in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
.
Taíno
Taíno language
Taíno, an Arawakan language, was the principal language of the Caribbean islands at the time of the Spanish Conquest, including the Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys, and the Lesser Antilles...
, commonly called Island Arawak, was spoken on the Caribbean islands of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, Hispaniola
Hispaniola
Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...
, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, and the Bahamas. Many of the Taino descendants today speak English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
peppered with a few Taino words. The Taíno language was very scantily attested; however, its classification within the Arawakan family is uncontroversial. Its closest relative among the better attested Arawakan languages seems to be the Goajiro language, spoken in Colombia. It has been suggested that the Goajiro are descended from Taíno refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s, but the theory seems impossible to prove or disprove.
The Carib people (after whom the Caribbean was named) formerly lived throughout the Lesser Antilles
Lesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles are a long, partly volcanic island arc in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, with the remainder located in the southern Caribbean just north of South America...
. In the seventeenth century, the language of the Island Carib was described by European missionaries as two separate unrelated languages—one spoken by the men of the society and the other by the women. The language spoken by the men was a language of the Carib family very similar to the Galibi language spoken in what later became French Guyana. The language spoken by the woman belonged to the Arawakan language family. One might conclude, though there is a minimum of supporting evidence, that the Carib language was first spoken in eastern Venezuela and the Guyanas
Guyanas
Guyana is a country in South America.Guyana, Guayana, or Guiana may also refer to:*Guayana Esequiba, the territory of Guyana claimed by Venezuela*Guayana Region, an administrative region of Venezuela...
. Also, because this peculiar dual gender-specific language arrangement was unstable and dynamic and cannot have been very old, the Carib speakers had only recently migrated north into the Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact, displacing or assimilating the Arawaks in the process.
The Island Carib language is now extinct
Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
, although Caribs still live on Dominica
Dominica
Dominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...
, Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. Despite its name, Island Carib was an Arawak language, as is its derived modern language Garífuna
Garifuna language
Garifuna is an Arawakan language spoken in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize by the Garifuna people. The language is also spoken to a lesser extent in Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. Historically it was referred to as Carib or Black Carib and Igñeri by Europeans. Garifuna has a vocabulary split between...
(or Black Carib), which is thought to have about 590,000 speakers in Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
, Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
and Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
. The Garifuna are the descendants of Caribs and black
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
escaped slaves
Maroon (people)
Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together...
of Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n origin, transferred by the British from Saint Vincent
Saint Vincent (island)
Saint Vincent is a volcanic island in the Caribbean. It is the largest island of the chain called Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is located in the Caribbean Sea, between Saint Lucia and Grenada. It is composed of partially submerged volcanic mountains...
to islands in the Bay of Honduras in 1796. The Garifuna language continues the women's Arawak-based Island Carib language and only a few traces remain of the men's Carib speech.
See also
- MaipureanMaipureanArawakan , also known as Maipurean , is a language family that spans from the Caribbean and Central America to every country in South America except Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile...
- Arawak peoples
- List of Taínos
- Taínos
- List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin
- Cariban languagesCariban languagesThe Cariban languages are an indigenous language family of South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, but also appear in central Brazil. Cariban languages are relatively closely related, and number two to three...
- Carib languageCarib languageCarib, also known as Caribe, Cariña, Galibi, Galibí, Kali'na, Kalihna, Kalinya, Galibi Carib, Maraworno and Marworno, is an Amerindian language in the Cariban language family....
- TainoTaíno languageTaíno, an Arawakan language, was the principal language of the Caribbean islands at the time of the Spanish Conquest, including the Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys, and the Lesser Antilles...
- Garifuna languageGarifuna languageGarifuna is an Arawakan language spoken in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize by the Garifuna people. The language is also spoken to a lesser extent in Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. Historically it was referred to as Carib or Black Carib and Igñeri by Europeans. Garifuna has a vocabulary split between...
- Neo-Taíno nationsNeo-Taíno nationsNeo-Taino nations are defined here as the assorted nations of the Caribbean islands, that together with the Tainos, were described on the arrival of European chroniclers or which arose after this historic record was established.-Introduction:...
- Moxos languageMoxos languageMojos are a pair of Maipurean languages spoken by the Moxos people of Northeastern Bolivia. The two Mojo 'dialects', Trinitario and Ignaciano, are as distinct from one another as they are from neighboring Maipurean languages.-Mojos:...
External links
- Ethnologue: Arawakan
- Ethnologue: Arawakan, Maipuran
- Proel: Tronco Arahuacano
- Proel: Sub-tronco Maipureano
- Proel: Familia Macro-Arahuacana
- Etnolingüística: online resources on native South American languages