Taíno language

Taíno
Native to	Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos
Ethnicity	Taíno, Ciboney, Lucayan
Extinct	16th century
Language family	Arawakan Northern Ta-Arawakan Taíno
Dialects	Classic Taíno Ciboney
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tnq
Glottolog	tain1254
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.

• Classic (Eastern) Taíno, spoken in Classic Taíno and Eastern Taíno cultural areas. These were the Leeward Islands north of Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, central Hispaniola, and the Turks & Caicos (from an expansion in ca. 1200). Classic Taíno was expanding into eastern and even central Cuba at the time of the Spanish Conquest, perhaps from people fleeing the Spanish in Hispaniola.
• Ciboney (Western) Taíno, spoken in Ciboney and Lucayan cultural areas. These were most of Cuba, Jamaica, western Hispaniola, and the Bahamas.

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:

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. 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'.

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:

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:

• Grand Bahama: ba-ha-ma 'large-upper-middle'
• Bimini: bimini 'twins'
• Inagua: i-na-wa 'small eastern land'
• North Caicos: ka-i-ko 'near-northern-outlier'
• Borinquen (confederated kingdom of Puerto Rico): bo-rĩ-kẽ (people's homeland)

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

• Antigua: Yaramaqui (Yaramaki)
• Cuba: Cubao (Kubao)
• Florida keys: Matacumbe (Matakumbe)
• Gonaïves (Haiti): Wanabo, Wanahibe (Wanahibo)
• Grenada: Beguia
• Grand Turk: Abawana
• Great Inagua: Babeke
• Guadalupe: Kurukeira, Wakana, Tureykeri, Turukeira
• Haiti: Ayti
• Hispaniola: Ayti, Bohio, Kiskeya (supposedly Taíno but research shows otherwise)
• Isle of Youth/Pines: Siwanea
• Jacmel (Haiti): Yakimel
• Jamaica: Xamaika, Xaymaka
• Long Island, Bahamas: Yuma
• Martinique: Iwanakairi (Iwanakaera)
• North Caycos: Kayco
• Puerto Rico: Boriken
• San Salvador (island): Wanahani
• St. Croix: Ayay, Cibukeira
• St. Vincent: Bayaruko
• Tortuga Island (Haiti): Kahimi, Waney
• Vieques: Bieke

Literature

• Payne D.L., "A classification of Maipuran (Arawakan) languages based on shared lexical retentions", in: Derbyshire D.C., Pullum G.K. (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian Languages, vol. 3, Berlin, 1991.
• Derbyshire D.C., "Arawakan languages", in: Bright, William (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. 1, New York, 1992.

External links

• Alfred Carrada, 2003. The Dictionary of Taíno Language (only partially reliable)