The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations

by Daniel G. Brinton

The syllables wa our, and da my, prefixed to the parts of the human body, will readily be recognized. When it is remembered that the dialect of Trinidad no doubt differed slightly from that on the mainland; that the modern orthography is German and that of De Lact’s list is Dutch; and that two centuries intervened between the first and second, it is really a matter of surprise to discover such a close similarity. Father and mother, the only two words which are not identical, are doubtless different expressions, relationship in this, as in most native tongues, being indicated with excessive minuteness.

The chain of islands which extend from Trinidad to Porto Rico were called, from their inhabitants, the Caribby islands. The Caribs, however, made no pretence to have occupied them for any great length of time. They distinctly remembered that a generation or two back they had reached them from the mainland, and had found them occupied by a peaceful race, whom they styled Ineri or Igneri. The males of this race they slew or drove into the interior, but the women they seized for their own use. Hence arose a marked difference between the languages of the island Caribs and their women. The fragments of the language of the latter show clearly that they were of Arawack lineage, and that the so-called Igneri were members of that nation. It of course became more or less corrupted by the introduction of Carib words and forms, so that in 1674 the missionary De la Borde wrote, that “although there is some difference between the dialects of the men and women, they readily understand each other;”[11] and Father Breton in his Carib Grammar (1665) gives the same forms for the declensions and conjugations of both.

As the traces of the “island Arawack,” as the tongue of the Igneri may be called, prove the extension of this tribe over all the Lesser Antilles, it now remains to inquire whether they had pushed their conquests still further, and had possessed themselves of the Great Antilles, the Bahama islands, and any part of the adjacent coasts of Yucatan or Florida.

All ancient writers agree that on the Bahamas and Cuba the same speech prevailed, except Gomara, who avers that on the Bahamas “great diversity of language” was found.[12] But as Gomara wrote nearly half a century after those islands were depopulated, and has exposed himself to just censure for carelessness in his statements regarding the natives,[13] his expression has no weight. Columbus repeatedly states that all the islands had one language though differing, more or less, in words. The natives he took with him from San Salvador understood the dialects in both Cuba and Haiti. One of them on his second voyage served him as an interpreter on the southern shore of Cuba.[14]

In Haiti, there was a tongue current all over the island, called by the Spaniards la lengua universal and la lengua cortesana. This is distinctly said by all the historians to have been but very slightly different from that of Cuba, a mere dialectic variation in accent being observed.[15] Many fragments of this tongue are preserved in the narratives of the early explorers, and it has been the theme for some strange and wild theorizing among would-be philologists. Rafinesque christened it the “Taino” language, and discovered it to be closely akin to the “Pelasgic” of Europe.[16] The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg will have it allied to the Maya, the old Norse or Scandinavian, the ancient Coptic, and what not. Rafinesque and Jegor von Sivors[17] have made vocabularies of it, but the former in so uncritical, and the latter in so superficial a manner, that they are worse than useless.

Although it is said there were in Haiti two other tongues in the small contiguous provinces of Macorix de arriba and Macorix de abajo, entirely dissimilar from the lengua universal and from each other, we are justified in assuming that the prevalent tongue throughout the whole of the Great Antilles and the Bahamas, was that most common in Haiti. I have, therefore, perused with care all the early authorities who throw any light upon the construction and vocabulary of this language, and gathered from their pages the scattered information they contain. The most valuable of these authorities are Peter Martyr de Angleria, who speaks from conversations with natives brought to Spain by Columbus, on his first voyage,[18] and who was himself, a fine linguist, and Bartolomé de las Casas. The latter came as a missionary to Haiti, a few years after its discovery, was earnestly interested in the natives, and to some extent acquainted with their language. Besides a few printed works of small importance, Las Casas left two large and valuable works in manuscript, the Historia General de las Indias Occidentales, and the Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentals. A copy of these, each in four large folio volumes, exists in the Library of Congress, where I consulted them. They contain a vast amount of information relating to the aborigines, especially the Historia Apologetica, though much of the author’s space is occupied with frivolous discussions and idle comparisons.

In later times, the scholar who has most carefully examined the relics of this ancient tongue, is Señor Don Estevan Richardo, a native of Haiti, but who for many years resided in Cuba. His views are contained in the preface to his Diccionario Provincial casi-razonado de Voces Cubanas, (Habana, 2da ed, 1849). He has found very many words of the ancient language retained in the provincial Spanish of the island, but of course in a corrupt form. In the vocabulary which I have prepared for the purpose of comparison, I have omitted all such corrupted forms, and nearly all names of plants and animals, as it is impossible to identify these with certainty, and in order to obtain greater accuracy, have used, when possible, the first edition of the authors quoted, and in most instances, given under each word a reference to some original authority.

From the various sources which I have examined, the alphabet of the lengua universal appears to have been as follows: a, b, d, e, (rarely used at the commencement of a word), g, j, (an aspirated guttural like the Catalan j, or as Peter Martyr says, like the Arabic ch), i (rare), l (rare), m, n, o (rare,) p, q, r, s, t, u, y. These letters, it will be remembered, are as in Spanish.

The Spanish sounds z, ce, ci (English th,) ll, and v, were entirely unknown to the natives, and where they appear in indigenous words, were falsely written for l and b. The Spaniards also frequently distorted the native names by writing x for j, s, and z, by giving j the sound of the Latin y, and by confounding h, j, and f, as the old writers frequently employ the h to designate the spiritus asper, whereas in modern Spanish it is mute.[19]

Peter Martyr found that he could reduce all the words of their language to writing, by means of the Latin letters without difficulty, except in the single instance of the guttural j. He, and all others who heard it spoken, describe it as “soft and not less liquid than the Latin,” “rich in vowels and pleasant to the ear,” an idiom “simple, sweet, and sonorous.”[20]