Garifuna language

Not to be confused with Karipuna 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	120,000 (2001–2019)
Language family	Arawakan Northern Caribbean Garifuna
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Belize Guatemala
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cab
Glottolog	gari1256
ELP	Garífuna

Language, dance and music of the Garifuna
UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
Country	Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua
Reference	00001
Region	Latin America and the Caribbean
Inscription history
Inscription	2008 (3rd session)
List	Representative

Recording of a Garifuna speaker

Garifuna (Karif) is a minority language widely spoken in villages of Garifuna people in the western part of the northern coast of Central America.

It is a member of the Arawakan language family but an atypical one since it is spoken outside the Arawakan language area, which is otherwise now confined to the northern parts of South America, and because it contains an unusually high number of loanwords, from both Carib languages and a number of European languages because of 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 by the British in 1797 to the north coast of Honduras from where the language and Garifuna people has since spread along the coast south to Nicaragua and north to Guatemala and Belize.

Parts of Garifuna vocabulary are split between men's speech and women's speech, and 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 the US, particularly in New York City, where it is spoken in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and in Houston, which has had a community of Central Americans since the 1980s. The first feature film in the Garifuna language, Garifuna in Peril, was released in 2012.

Sociolinguistic 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 are that they were the survivors of two recorded shipwrecks or they somehow took over the ship on which they came. The more Western and Central African-looking people were deported 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 took Arawakan women for wives. 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.

Descriptions of Island Carib people in the 17th century missionaries from Europe record the use of two languages: Carib as spoken by the men, and Arawak as spoken by the women. It is conjectured that the males retained the core Carib vocabulary while the grammatical structure of their language mirrored that or Arawak. As such, Island Carib as spoken by males is considered either a mixed language or a relexified language. The West African influence in Garifuna is limited to a handful of loanwords and perhaps intonation. Contrary to what some believe, there is no influence from "African phonetics" as there is no such thing as a singular African phonetic system as languages in West Africa and Africa in general have extremely diverse phoneme inventories. The distinction between Garifuna and the Kalinago language can be explained by simple evolution due to the separation of the Garifuna being sent to Central America.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Garifuna is composed as follows:

  Arawak (Igneri) (45%)

  Carib (Kallínagu) (25%)

  French (15%)

  English (10%)

  Spanish or English technical terms (5%)

Also, there also some few words from African languages.

Comparison to Carib

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

Gender differences

Relatively few examples of diglossia remain in common speech. It is possible for men and women to use different words for the same concept such as au ~ nugía for the pronoun "I", but 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 "person" 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.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Fricative		f	s			h
Approximant		w	l	j
Tap/Flap			ɾ

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	ɛ~e		ɔ~o
Open	a

[o] and [e] are allophones of /ɔ/ and /ɛ/.

Grammar

Personal pronouns

Independent personal pronouns in Garifuna distinguish the social gender of the speaker:

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

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

Number

Garifuna distinguishes singular and plural numbers for some human nouns. The marking of in nouns is realized through suffixes:

• 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.

Plural animate nouns use animate plural agreement on verbs and other sentence elements. Inanimate nouns do not show plural agreement.

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 affixes (mostly suffixes), partly supported by particles (second-position enclitics).

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/past 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, is 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 (< English million?)

The reason for the use of French borrowings rather than Carib or Arawak terms is unclear, but may have to do with their succinctness, as numbers in indigenous American languages, especially those above ten, tend to be longer and more cumbersome.

Syntax

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

Morphology

Garifuna is an agglutinative language.

Further reading

• Abtahian, Chaturvedi, Greenop, Maya, Manasvi, Cameron (2023). "Garifuna". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association: 1–18. doi:10.1017/S0025100323000038{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), with supplementary sound recordings.

References

• "Garifuna (Black Carib)". Native Languages of the Americas. Archived from the original on 14 March 2007. Retrieved 14 March 2007.
• Langworthy, Geneva (2002). "Language Planning in a Trans-National Speech Community". In Burnaby, Barbara; Reyhner, Jon (eds.). Indigenous Languages Across the Community (PDF). Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University. pp. 41–48. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 July 2013. Retrieved 14 March 2007.
• Munro, Pamela (1998). "The Garifuna gender system". In Hill, Jane H.; Mistry, P. J.; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright. Mouton de Gruyter.
• Rodriguez, Nestor P. (1987). "Undocumented Central Americans in Houston: Diverse Populations". International Migration Review. 21 (1): 4–26. doi:10.2307/2546127. JSTOR 2546127.
• Suazo, Salvador (1994). Conversemos en garífuna (2nd ed.). Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras.
• Haurholm-Larsen, Steffen (2016). A Grammar of Garifuna (PhD thesis). University of Bern. doi:10.7892/boris.91473. Archived from the original on 26 May 2024. Retrieved 19 December 2019.

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 Archived 5 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine