Garifuna

Facts

  • Language: Garifuna
  • Alternate names: Caribe, Central American Carib, Black Carib, Garífuna
  • Language code: cab
  • Language family: Arawakan, Caribbean Arawakan, Antillean Arawakan, Ineric, Island Carib-Garifuna
  • Number of speakers: 191974
  • Vulnerability: risk [Read more...]
  • Script: Latin script

More information:

    Introduction

    Garifuna is an Arawakan language spoken in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize by the Garifuna people. Historically it was referred to as Carib or Black Carib and Igñeri by Europeans. One interesting feature of Garifuna is a vocabulary split between terms used only by men and terms used only by women. This does not however affect the entire vocabulary but when it does, the terms used by men generally come from Carib and those used by women come from Arawak.

    Stages of Garifuna

    The verb

    On the Garifuna verb, the grammatical categories tense, aspect, mode, negation, and person (both subject and object) are expressed by means of affixes, partly supported by particles.

    The paradigms of conjugation are very numerous.

    One special feature of the verb is that the inflection differs based on whether the speaker that is referred is male or female.

    Sample verb: alîha

    Present continuous Present simple
    Sg.1 n\-alîha\-ña alîha\-tina
    Sg.2 b\-alîha\-ña alîha\-tibu
    Sg.3 masculine l\-alîha\-ña alîha\-ti
    Sg.3 feminine t\-alîha\-ña alîha\-tu
    Pl.1 wa\-lîha-ña alîha\-tiwa
    Pl.2 h\-alîha\-ña alîha\-tiü
    Pl.3 masculine ha\-lîha-ña alîha\-tiñu
    Pl.3 feminine alîha\-tiña

    Verblist