Garifuna language

Garifuna
Native to	north coast of Honduras and Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast
Region	Historically the Northern Caribbean coast of Central America from Belize to Nicaragua
Ethnicity	Garifuna people
Native speakers	unknown (possibly 190,000 cited 1997)
Language family	Arawakan languages Northern Ta-Arawakan languages Island Carib language Garifuna
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cab
Glottolog	gari1256

Garifuna (Karif) is a minority language still widely spoken in villages of Garifuna people in the western part of the north coast of Central America. It is a member of the Arawakan languages family albeit an atypical one since, 1) it is spoken outside of the Arawakan language area which is otherwise confined to the northern parts of South America, and 2) because it contains an unusually high number of loanwords, from both Carib languages and a number of European languages, attesting to an extremely tumultuous past involving warfare, migration and colonization. The language was once confined to the Antillean islands of St. Vincent and Dominica, but its speakers, the Garifuna people, were deported en masse by the British in 1797 to the north coast of Honduras from where the language and Garifuna people have since spread along the coast south to Nicaragua and north to Guatemala and Belize. It is still widely spoken in many Garifuna villages throughout this coastal region. In recent years a large number of Garifunas have settled in larger US cities, presumably as part of a more general pattern of north bound migration.

Parts of Garifuna vocabulary are split between men's speech and women's speech, i.e. some concepts have two words to express them, one for women and one for men. Moreover, the terms used by men are generally loanwords from Carib while those used by women are Arawak.

The Garifuna language was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2008 along with Garifuna music and dance.

Distribution

Garifuna is spoken in Central America, especially in Honduras (146,000 speakers), but also in Guatemala (20,000 speakers), Belize (14,100 speakers), Nicaragua (2,600 speakers), and within the USA, particularly New York City, where it is spoken in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. By the 1980s, due to the influx of Central Americans, new languages including Garifuna began having a presence in Houston. The first feature film in the Garifuna language, Garifuna in Peril, was released in 2012.

History

The Garinagu (singular Garifuna) are a mix of West/Central African, Arawak, and Carib ancestry. Though they were captives removed from their homelands, these people were never documented as slaves. The two prevailing theories is that they were either the survivors of two recorded shipwrecks, or somehow took over the ship they came on. The more West/Central African-looking people were transferred by the British from Saint Vincent to islands in the Bay of Honduras in 1796.

Their linguistic ancestors, Carib people, who gave their name to the Caribbean, once lived throughout the Lesser Antilles, and although their language is now extinct there, ethnic Caribs still live on Dominica, Trinidad, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent. The Caribs had conquered the previous population of the islands, Arawakan peoples like the Taino and Palikur peoples. During the conquest, which was conducted primarily by men, the Carib married Arawakan women. Children were raised by their mothers speaking Arawak, but as boys came of age, their fathers taught them Carib, a language still spoken in mainland South America. When European missionaries described the Island Carib people in the 17th century, they recorded two unrelated languages—Carib spoken by the men and Arawak spoken by the women. However, while the boys acquired Carib vocabulary, after a few generations they retained the Arawakan grammar of their first language. Thus Island Carib as spoken by the men was genetically either a mixed language or a relexified language. Over the generations, men substituted fewer Arawak words, and many Carib words diffused to the women, so that the amount of distinctly male vocabulary diminished, until both genders spoke Arawak with an infusion of Carib vocabulary and distinct words in only a handful of cases.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Garifuna is composed as follows:

• 45 % Arawak (Igñeri)
• 25 % Carib (Kallínagu)
• 15 % French
• 10 % English
• 5 % Spanglish

Apart from that, there also some few words from African languages.

Comparison to Carib

	Carib	Garifuna
man	wokyry	wügüri
woman	woryi	würi
European	paranakyry (one from the sea, parana)	baranagüle
good	iru'pa	irufunti (in older texts, the f was a p)
anger/hate	areku	yeregu
weapon/whip	urapa	arabai
garden	maina	mainabu (in older texts, maina)
small vessel	kurijara	guriara
bird	tonoro	dunuru (in older texts, tonolou)
housefly	werewere	were-were
tree	wewe	wewe
lizard/iguana	wajamaka	wayamaga
star	arukuma	waruguma
sun	weju	weyu
rain	konopo	gunubu (in older texts, konobou)
wind	pepeito	bebeidi (in older texts bebeité)
fire	wa'to	watu
mountain	wypy	wübü
water, river	tuna	duna (in older texts tona)
sea	parana	barana
sand	sakau	sagoun (in older texts saccao)
path	oma	üma
stone	topu	dübü
island	pa'wu	ubouhu (in earlier texts, oubao)

Gender differences

Relatively few examples of diglossia remain in common speech, where men and women use different words for the same concept, such as au ~ nugía for the pronoun "I". Most such words are rare, and often dropped by men. For example, there are distinct Carib and Arawak words for 'man' and 'women', four words altogether, but in practice the generic term mútu is used by both men and women and for both men and women, with grammatical gender agreement on a verb, adjective, or demonstrative distinguishing whether mútu refers to a man or to a woman (mútu lé "the man", mútu tó "the woman").

There remains, however, a diglossic distinction in the grammatical gender of many inanimate nouns, with abstract words generally being considered grammatically feminine by men, and grammatically masculine by women. Thus the word wéyu may mean either concrete "sun" or abstract "day"; with the meaning of "day", most men use feminine agreement, at least in conservative speech, while women use masculine agreement. The equivalent of the abstract impersonal pronoun in phrases like "it is necessary" is also masculine for women, but feminine in conservative male speech.

Grammar

Personal pronouns

With independent personal pronouns, Garifuna distinguishes grammatical gender:

	singular, male speaker	singular, female speaker	plural
1st person	au	nugía	wagía
2nd person	amürü	bugía	hugía
3rd person	ligía	tugía	hagía

The forms au and amürü are of Cariban origin, the others are of Arawakan origin.

Plural of nouns

Pluralization of nouns is irregular, it is realized by means of suffixing. For example:

• isâni "child" – isâni-gu "children"
• wügüri "man" – wügüri-ña "men"
• hiñaru "woman" – hiñáru-ñu "women"
• itu "sister" – ítu-nu "sisters"

The plural of Garífuna is Garínagu.

Possession

Possession on nouns is expressed by personal prefixes:

• ibágari "life"
• n-ibágari "my life"
• b-ibágari "your (singular) life"
• l-ibágari "his life"
• t-ibágari "her life"
• wa-bágari "our life"
• h-ibágari "your (plural) life"
• ha-bágari "their life"

Verb

For the Garifuna verb, the grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, negation, and person (both subject and object) are expressed by means of affixes, partly supported by particles.

The paradigms of grammatical conjugation are numerous.

Examples

The conjugation of the verb alîha "to read" in the present continuous tense:

• n-alîha-ña "I am reading"
• b-alîha-ña "you (singular) are reading"
• l-alîha-ña "he is reading"
• t-alîha-ña "she is reading"
• wa-lîha-ña "we are reading"
• h-alîha-ña "you (plural) are reading"
• ha-lîha-ña "they are reading"

The conjugation of the verb alîha "to read" in the simple present tense:

• alîha-tina "I read"
• alîha-tibu "you (singular) read"
• alîha-ti "he reads"
• alîha-tu "she reads"
• alîha-tiwa "we read"
• alîha-tiü "you (plural) read"
• alîha-tiñu "they (masculine) read"
• alîha-tiña "they (feminine) read"

There are also some irregular verbs.

Numerals

From "3" upwards, the numbers of Garifuna are exclusively of French origin and are based on the Vigesimal system, which in today's French language is only apparent at "80":

• 1 = aban
• 2 =biñá, biama, bián
• 3 = ürüwa (< trois)
• 4 = gádürü (< quatre)
• 5 = seingü (< cinq)
• 6 = sisi (< six)
• 7 = sedü (< sept)
• 8 = widü (< huit)
• 9 = nefu (< neuf)
• 10 = dîsi (< dix)
• 11 = ûnsu (< onze)
• 12 = dûsu (< douze)
• 13 = tareisi (< treize)
• 14 = katorsu (< quatorze)
• 15 = keinsi (< quinze)
• 16 = dîsisi, disisisi (< "dix-six" → seize)
• 17 = dîsedü, disisedü (< dix-sept)
• 18 = dísiwidü (< dix-huit)
• 19 = dísinefu (< dix-neuf)
• 20 = wein (< vingt)
• 30 = darandi (< trente)
• 40 = biama wein (< 2 X vingt → quarante)
• 50 = dimí san (< "demi cent" → cinquante)
• 60 = ürüwa wein (< "trois-vingt" → soixante)
• 70 = ürüwa wein dîsi (< "trois-vingt-dix" → soixante-dix)
• 80 = gádürü wein (< quatre-vingt)
• 90 = gádürü wein dîsi (< quatre-vingt-dix)
• 100 = san (< cent)
• 1,000 = milu (< mil)
• 1,000,000 = míñonu (< engl. million?)

Other types of words

The language uses prepositions and conjunctions.

Syntax

The word order is verb–subject–object (VSO).

References

• Langworthy, Geneva (2002). "Language Planning in a Trans-National Speech Community" (Archive). In: Barbara Burnaby and Jon Reyhner (eds), Indigenous Languages Across the Community, Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, pp. 41–48.
• Munro, Pamela (1998). 'The Garifuna gender system'. In Hill, Mistry, & Campbell (eds), The Life of Language: papers in linguistics in honor of William Bright.
• Rodriguez, Nestor P. (University of Houston) "Undocumented Central Americans in Houston: Diverse Populations." International Migration Review Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 4-26. Available at JStor.
• Suazo, Salvador (1994). Conversemos en garífuna (2nd ed.). Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras. (written in Spanish)

External links

• Garifuna Research Institute
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Garifuna version (sample text)
• A Caribbean Vocabulary Compiled in 1666 (lists of older Garifuna words) at Internet Archive
• Garifuna, Endangered Language Alliance