Garifuna (Karif) is a minority language widely spoken in villages of

Garifuna people The Garifuna people ( or ; pl. Garínagu in Garifuna) are a people of mixed free African and indigenous American ancestry that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language, and Vincentian Cre ...

in the western part of the northern coast of

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

. It is a member of the

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

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

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...

s, from both Carib languages and a number of

European languages Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Ro ...

because of an extremely tumultuous past involving warfare, migration and colonization. The language was once confined to the Antillean islands of

St. Vincent Saint Vincent may refer to: People Saints * Vincent of Saragossa (died 304), a.k.a. Vincent the Deacon, deacon and martyr * Saint Vincenca, 3rd century Roman martyress, whose relics are in Blato, Croatia * Vincent, Orontius, and Victor (died 305) ...

and

Dominica Dominica ( or ; Kalinago: ; french: Dominique; Dominican Creole French: ), officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island country in the Caribbean. The capital, Roseau, is located on the western side of the island. It is geographical ...

, but its speakers, the Garifuna people, were deported by the British in 1797 to the north coast of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

from where the language and Garifuna people has since spread along the coast south to Nicaragua and north to

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by Hon ...

and

Belize Belize (; bzj, Bileez) is a Caribbean and Central American country on the northeastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a wa ...

. 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 Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greate ...

. The Garifuna language was declared a

Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity The Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity was made by the Director-General of UNESCO starting in 2001 to raise awareness of intangible cultural heritage and encourage local communities to protect them and th ...

in 2008 along with

Garifuna music Garifuna music is an ethnic music and dance with African, Arawak, and Kalinago elements, originating with the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna people from Central America and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. In 2001, Garifuna music, dance, and language ...

and dance.

Distribution

Garifuna is spoken in

, especially in

(146,000 speakers), but also in

(20,000 speakers),

(14,100 speakers),

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the coun ...

(2,600 speakers), and the US, particularly in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, where it is spoken in

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, and in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 ...

, which has had a community of Central Americans since the 1980s. The first feature film in the Garifuna language, ''

Garifuna in Peril ''Garifuna in Peril'' is a low-budget independent fiction docufiction feature film directed, written, and produced by Alí Allié and Rubén Reyes. The film depicts historical and contemporary issues within the Garinagu (plural of Garifuna) Afro ...

'', was released in 2012.

Sociolinguistic history

The Garinagu (singular ''Garifuna'') are a mix of West/Central African,

, 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 The Gulf or Bay of Honduras is a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea, indenting the coasts of Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. From north to south, it runs for approximately 200 km (125 miles) from Dangriga, Belize, to La Ceiba, Honduras. ...

in 1796. Their linguistic ancestors, Carib people, who gave their name to the Caribbean, once lived throughout the

Lesser Antilles The Lesser Antilles ( es, link=no, Antillas Menores; french: link=no, Petites Antilles; pap, Antias Menor; nl, Kleine Antillen) are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. Most of them are part of a long, partially volcanic island arc be ...

, and although their language is now

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

there, ethnic Caribs still live on

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

Saint Lucia Saint Lucia ( acf, Sent Lisi, french: Sainte-Lucie) is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. The island was previously called Iouanalao and later Hewanorra, names given by the native Arawaks and Caribs, two Ameri ...

, and Saint Vincent. The Caribs had conquered the previous population of the islands, Arawakan peoples like the Taino and

Palikur people The Palikur are an indigenous people located in the riverine areas of the Brazilian state of Amapá and in French Guiana, particularly in the south-eastern border region, on the north bank of the Oyapock River. The Palikur Nation, or ''naoné'', ...

s. 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 A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

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 The Kalinago, also known as the Island Caribs or simply Caribs, are an indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. They may have been related to the Mainland Caribs (Kalina) of South America, but they spoke an unrelated languag ...

as spoken by males is considered either a

mixed language A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgin ...

or a relexified language.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Garifuna is composed as follows: *45% Arawak (Igneri) *25% Carib (Kallínagu) *15% French *10%

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

*5% Spanish or English technical terms Also, there also some few words from African languages.

Comparison to Carib

Gender differences

Relatively few examples of

diglossia In linguistics, diglossia () is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled ...

remain in common speech. It is possible for men and women to use different words for the same concept such as ' 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 ' "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 ' refers to a man or to a woman (' "the man", ' "the woman"). There remains, however, a diglossic distinction in the

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

of many inanimate nouns, with abstract words generally being considered grammatically feminine by men and grammatically masculine by women. Thus, the word ' 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 ''One'' is an English language, gender-neutral, indefinite pronoun that means, roughly, "a person". For purposes of verb agreement it is a third-person singular pronoun, though it sometimes appears with first- or second-person reference. It is ...

in phrases like "it is necessary" is also masculine for women but feminine in conservative male speech.

Grammar

Personal pronouns

Independent personal pronouns in Garifuna distinguish the social gender of the speaker: The forms ''au'' and ''amürü'' are of

Cariban The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocket ...

origin, and the others are of Arawakan origin.

Number

Garifuna distinguishes singular and plural numbers. 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''.

Possession

Possession on nouns is expressed by personal

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...

es: *''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 A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

, the

grammatical tense In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, presen ...

grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to ...

grammatical mood In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of ...

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...

, and

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

(both subject and

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

) are expressed by

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...

es, partly supported by particles. The paradigms of

grammatical conjugation In linguistics, conjugation () is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). For instance, the verb ''break'' can be conjugated to form the words ''break'', ...

are numerous.

Examples

The conjugation of the verb ''alîha'' "to read" in the

present The present (or here'' and ''now) is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly and in the first time, not as a recollection (perceived more than once) or a speculation (predicted, hypothesis, uncertain). It is a period of ...

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 French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

origin and are based on the

vigesimal vigesimal () or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten). '' Vigesimal'' is derived from the Latin adjective '' vicesimus'', meaning 'twentieth'. Places In a ...

system, which, in today's French, is apparent at "80": *1 = ''aban'' *2 = ''biñá, biama, bián'' *3 = (< ) *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. ?) 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.

Phonology

and are allophones of /ɔ/ and /ɛ/.

Syntax

The

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

is verb–subject–object (VSO, fixed).

Morphology

Garifuna is an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to rem ...

Notes

References

* * * * * *

External links

Garifuna Research InstituteUniversal Declaration of Human Rights: Garifuna version
(sample text)

(lists of older Garifuna words) at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Garifuna, Endangered Language Alliance
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garifuna Language

Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

Arawakan languages Indigenous languages of Central America Languages of Honduras Languages of Belize Languages of Guatemala Languages of Nicaragua Verb–object–subject languages Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity Languages of the African diaspora