Taíno language

Taíno
Native to Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos
Ethnicity Taíno, Ciboney, Lucayan
Extinct 16th century[1]
Arawakan
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3 tnq
Glottolog tain1254[2]

Taíno dialects, among other precolombian languages of the Antilles
  Ciboney Taíno
  Classic Taíno

Taíno is a language historically spoken by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. At the time of Spanish colonization, it was the principal language throughout the Caribbean. Classic Taíno (Taíno proper) was the native language of the northern Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and most of Hispaniola, and was expanding into Cuba. Ciboney is essentially unattested, but colonial sources suggest it was a dialect of Taíno. It was the language of westernmost Hispaniola, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and most of Cuba.

By the late 15th century, Taíno/Ciboney had displaced earlier languages except for western Cuba and pockets in Hispaniola. As the Taíno declined during Spanish colonization, the language was replaced with Spanish and other European languages. As the first native language encountered by Europeans in the New World, it was a major source of new words borrowed into European languages.

Dialects

Granberry & Vescelius (2004) distinguish two dialects, one on Hispaniola and further east, and the other on Hispaniola and further west.

The Lucayo (Bahamian) subdialect (or perhaps the Ciboney dialect) had /n/ where other dialects (or perhaps Classic Taíno) had /r/. There is variation in accounts between "e" ~ "i" and "o" ~ "u", perhaps reflecting transcription of the three stable vowels of Arawakan into the five vowels of Spanish.

Phonology

The Taíno language was not written. The following phonemes are reconstructed from Spanish records:[3]

Reconstructed Taíno consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive voiceless p t k
voiced b d
Fricative s h
Nasal m n
Approximant w l j

There was also a flap [ɾ], which appears to have been an allophone of /d/.

Reconstructed Taíno vowels
Front Central Back
Close i
Mid e
ɛ		 o
Open a

A distinction between /ɛ/ and /e/ is suggested by Spanish transcriptions of e vs ei/ey, as in ceiba "ceiba". The /e/ is written ei or final é in modern reconstructions. There was also a high back vowel [u], which is often interchangeable with /o/ and may have been an allophone.

There was a parallel set of nasal vowels. The only consonant which could occur at the end of a syllable or a word was /s/.

Grammar

Taíno is very poorly attested.[1] Nouns appear to have had noun-class suffixes as in other Arawakan languages. Attested Taíno possessive prefixes are da- 'my', wa- 'our', ni- 'his' (sometimes with a different vowel), and ta- 'her'.[3]

Attested verbs are ka 'be', ka 'kill', ibá 'go', hiya 'speak', ã 'hear', (a)rikẽ (/dikɛ̃/?) 'see', ya 'do', bu 'be important'. Verb-designating affixes are a-, ka-, -a, -ka, -nV (where "V" is an unknown or variable vowel). A few conjugated verbs, da-ka "I am", wa-ibá "we go", and wa-rikẽ "we see" suggest that verbal conjugation for subject resembled the possessive prefixes on nouns. The one attested object suffix is -wo 'us', as in ahiyaka-wo 'speak to us'. The negative prefix is ma-, as in ma-kabuka 'it is not important'.

Vocabulary

Taíno words in English

As the language of first contact, Taíno was one of the most important sources of Native American vocabulary in Spanish, involving hundreds of words for unfamiliar plants, animals, and cultural practices, and through Spanish to other European languages such as French and English. Below is a list of several English words derived from the Taíno language:[4]

Taíno meaning English
barabakoa cooking frame barbecue
kasikɛ chief cacique
kaimã crocodile caiman
kaniba Carib cannibal
kanowa boat canoe
kasabi cassava cassava
kaya island cay
seiba ceiba tree ceiba
wayaba guava guava
hamaka hammock hammock
hurakã (/hodakã/?) storm? hurricane
iwana iguana iguana
mahis, máhisi maize maize
manatí manatee manatee
papaya papaya papaya
batata sweet potato
sabana (few trees?) savanna
taí-no good people Taíno
tabako tabacu tobacco

Place names

Taíno etymologies of place names:[3]

The following are the major geographic features of the Caribbean, with their Taíno names (Carrada 2003):

Literature

References

  1. 1 2 Alexandra Aikhenvald (2012) Languages of the Amazon, Oxford University Press
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Taíno". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. 1 2 3 Granberry, Julian & Vescelius, Gary. Languagues of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. The University of Alabama Press 2004. p. 92.
  4. ↑ Granberry, Julian & Vescelius, Gary. Languagues of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. The University of Alabama Press 2004. pp. 101-122
  5. ↑ The Dictionary of the Taino Language (plate 8) Alfred Carrada
  6. ↑ Anglería, Pedro Mártir de (1949). Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, Tercera Década, Libro VII (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Editorial Bajel.
  7. ↑ "Taíno Dictionary" (in Spanish). The United Confederation of Taíno People. Archived from the original on October 16, 2007. Retrieved 18 October 2007.

External links

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