Garifuna language

Sociolinguistic history

The Garinagu (singular Garifuna) are a mix of West/Central African, Arawak, and Kalinago 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.

In the 16th century, Cariban peoples expanded into the Lesser Antilles. There they killed or displaced, and also mixed with the Arawak peoples who already inhabited the islands. The resulting language—Kalhíphona or Island Carib—was Kalinago in name but largely Arawak in substance. The Kalinago male conquerors took Arawak women as wives, and the latter passed on their own language on to the children. For a time, Arawak was spoken by women and children and Kalinago by adult men, but as each generation of Kalinago-Arawak boys reached adulthood, they acquired less Kalinago until only basic vocabulary and a few grammatical elements were left. That form of Kalinago became extinct in the Lesser Antilles in the 1920s, but it survives as Garífuna, or "Black Carib," in Central America. The gender distinction has dwindled to only a handful of words. Dominica is the only island in the eastern Caribbean to retain some of its Indigenous population, descendants of the Kalinago people, about 3,000 of whom live on the island's east coast.

The Kalinago people (Island Caribs), who gave their name to the Caribbean, once lived throughout the Lesser Antilles, and although their language is now extinct there, ethnic Kalinago still live on Dominica, Trinidad, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent. The Kalinago 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 Kalinago took Arawakan women for wives. Children were raised by their mothers speaking Arawak, but as boys came of age, their fathers taught them Kalinago, a language still spoken in mainland South America.

Descriptions of Kalinago people in the 17th century missionaries from Europe record the use of two languages: Kalinago as spoken by the men, and Arawak as spoken by the women. It is conjectured that the males retained the core Kalinago vocabulary while the grammatical structure of their language mirrored that or Arawak. As such, Kalinago 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.

1. Arawakan (Igneri) (45.0%)
2. Kalinago (Kallínagu) (25.0%)
3. French (15.0%)
4. English (10.0%)
5. Spanish or English technical terms (5.00%)

There are also a few words from African languages.

Comparison to Kalinago

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 not currently used by men. For example, there are distinct Kalinago and Arawak words for "man" and "women", four words altogether, but often the generic terms mútu or gürígiya "person" are used by both men and women and for both men and women, with grammatical gender agreement on a verb, adjective, or demonstrative, distinguishing whether these words refer 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 a few 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

and are allophones of and respectively.

Grammar

Morphology

Garifuna is an agglutinative language.

Personal pronouns

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

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:

• isáni "child" – isáni-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.

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

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

The conjugation of the verb alíha "to read" in the simple present/past tense:

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

There are also some irregular verbs which use a different stem for these two conjugations — for instance, "eat" is éigi in the progressive sentences and hóu in the simple non-future tense.

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 = dísi (<dix)
• 11 = únsu (<onze)
• 12 = dúsu (<douze)
• 13 = tareisi (<treize)
• 14 = katorsu (<quatorze)
• 15 = keinsi (<quinze)
• 16 = dísisi, disisisi (< "dix-six" →seize)
• 17 = dísedü, 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 dísi (< "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).