Macorix (also spelled Maçorís or Mazorij) was the language of the northern coast of what is today the Dominican Republic. Spanish accounts only refer to three languages on the island: Taíno, Macorix, and neighboring

Ciguayo The Ciguayos (Spanish: Ciguayos) were a group of Indigenous people who inhabited the Samaná Peninsula and its adjoining regions in the present-day Dominican Republic. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taíno who inhabited mu ...

. The

Macorix people At the time of first contact between Europe and the Americas, the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean included the Taíno of the northern Lesser Antilles, most of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles, the Cigua ...

appear to have been semi-sedentary and their presence seems to have predated the agricultural

Taíno The Taíno are the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The ...

who came to occupy much of the island. For the early European writers, they shared similarities with the nearby Ciguayos. Their language appears to have been moribund at the time of the

Spanish Conquest The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It ...

, and within a century it was extinct.

Dialects

Upper Macoris was spoken on the north-central coast of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

from Puerto Plata to

Nagua Nagua is the capital of María Trinidad Sánchez province, in the northeastern Dominican Republic. A medium-sized city, Nagua's economy relies on the production of agricultural products, principally rice, coconuts, and cocoa bean. Located on t ...

, and inland to

San Francisco de Macorís San Francisco de Macorís is a city in the Dominican Republic located in the northeast portion of the country, in the Cibao region. It is the capital of the Duarte Province and the sixth most populated city in the country since 2010. The name ...

and further. It was also distributed on the southeast coast of

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ) is an island between Geography of Cuba, Cuba and Geography of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by List of C ...

around

San Pedro de Macorís San Pedro de Macorís is a city and municipality (''municipio'') in the Dominican Republic. The capital of its eponymous province in the east region of the country, it is among the ten largest cities of the Dominican Republic. The city has approx ...

. Lower Macoris was spoken in the northwestern part of the

from Monte Cristi to Puerto Plata, and from the coast inland to the area of

Santiago de los Caballeros Santiago de los Caballeros ("James, son of Zebedee, Saint James of the Knights"), often shortened to Santiago, is the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic and the fourth-largest city in the Caribbean by population. It is the capital of ...

Lexicon

Little is known of Macorix apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Ciguayo. A negative form, ''baeza'' , is the only element of the language that is directly attested. ''Baeza'' could be Arawakan (though not Taino or Iñeri), analyzable as ''ba-ésa'' 'no-thing' = 'nothing'. (Cf. Manao ''ma-esa'' 'no, not',

Paresis In medicine, paresis (), compound word from Greek , (πᾰρᾰ- “beside” + ἵημι “let go, release”), is a condition typified by a weakness of voluntary movement, or by partial loss of voluntary movement or by impaired movement. Whe ...

''ma-isa'' 'not'. The negative prefix is ''ba-'' in Amarakaeri which, even if it is related to the Arawakan languages, is not close enough to be relevant here.)

Toponyms

There are also some non-Taino toponyms from the area that Granberry & Vescelius (2004) suggest may be Waroid: (Cf. a similar list at

Guanahatabey language Guanahatabey (Guanajatabey) was the language of the Guanahatabey people, a hunter-gatherer society that lived in western Cuba until the 16th century. Very little is known of it, as the Guanahatabey disappeared early in the period of Spanish colo ...

References

*Granberry, Julian, & Gary Vescelius (2004) ''Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles'', University Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, {{North American languages Languages of the Dominican Republic Languages of Haiti Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 16th century Indigenous peoples in Haiti Indigenous peoples in the Dominican Republic

Dialects

Lexicon

Toponyms

See also

References