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Kali’na
Details collected by the Latin Union who work to promote the cultural heritage of its 37 member countries.
Details about the Kali’na language
Alternative names: Galibi, Kaliña, Carib, Kariña, Maraworno.
The name “Galibi”, which comes from the colonial period, is considered out-dated and is universally rejected (it was used to denote all Carib populations indiscriminately). We stick to the spelling used by the Kali’na of French Guyana.
Where it is spoken: Kali’na is spoken very widely – all along the north-eastern coast of South America. This encompasses 5 countries: Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana and Brazil (along the Oyapock). It is said that the Kali’na people migrated there from the Mana region of French Guyana in the 1950s.
Classification: Kali’na is considered to be one of the central branches of the Family of Carib Languages. Study of Kali’na has played an important role in the genetic classification of the Cariban language family.
Main dialects: According to Lescure (1988), there are two groups of Kali’na dialects: the eastern dialect (of French Guyana and eastern Surinam), and the western dialect (going from Venezuela to western Surinam).
Number of speakers: Around 10,000.
Note: In French Guyana, the Federation of Amerindian Organizations of French Guyana estimates up to of 4,000 speakers. According to F. and P. Grenand, there are 2,800 Kali’na (who do not all speak the language). Elsewhere, there are 11,150 Kali’na in Venezuela, of whom only 30% speak the language (1992 census) and 3,000 Kali’na in Guyana of whom 80% are speakers (according to J. Forte). There are no figures available for Surinam, and there are only about forty speakers in Brazil. There are also Kali’na immigrants in the Netherlands. The total number of Kali’na is around 20,000 to 25,000 people (but according to F. and P. Grenand, the number of people who really speak the language well does not exceed 10,000).
Status of the language: No official status.
Vitality and transmission: According to UNESCO, Kali’na is an endangered language. How much vitality there is varies according to the country of the speakers, again according to UNESCO.
In Venezuela, according to Fabre (2005), all speakers are bilingual (Kali’na/Spanish). We don’t know exactly how many Kali’na still speak the language, but it seems like it is currently being abandoned in favour of Spanish.
We know little about the vitality of Kali’na in Guyana and Surinam. In French Guyana, only a part of the Kali’na population speaks the language. The situation of the language varies widely according to different communities: in Awala-Yalimapo the language is still transmitted, while in other places, such as Bellevue-Yanou, there is a tendency to abandon the language in favour of Guayanese Creole, or French, as is the case in Kourou. In Surinam, it is being abandoned in favour of Srnan Tongo, the local creole.
Media:
Newspapers: Oka Mag’ (a newsletter reporting Amerindian events, essentially those of the Kali’na, written in French, but containing a story in Kali’na in each edition).
Radio: Epanamatoko (programme of a few minutes length broadcast on RFO)
Education:
Until 2009 there were bilingual lessons in culture in the Yanamale School in Awala-Yalimapo, French Guyana.
Ethnographical observations
The Kali’na, like other peoples from the same linguistic family, probably originate from the outlying region of Mount Roraima (Brazil and Venezuela) but they lived on the coast during their first contact with the Europeans in the 16th century. From the start of colonialisation, their language was of interest to chroniclers, travellers and missionaries who left behind grammars, vocabularies and rules.
Sociolinguistic observations
Many different spellings are used, depending on the country. Venezuela’s is notoriously erratic, in Surinam it is better but has the disadvantage of being heavily based on the spelling of Dutch. The majority of Kali’na in French Guyana adopted an internationalised version in 1997.
Linguistic observations
Eastern Kali’na, the variant of the Kali’na language spoken in French Guyana, has 6 vowels (of which one is a closed central unrounded vowel, written with a y, ï, or i, the latter being preferred at the moment) and 12 consonants (one of which is glottal, denoted by an apostrophe, and a lateral retroflex spelled with an r or l, the latter again being the most common). There is systematic progressive palatalization (palatalization of the consonant following an /i/), and voicing of stop consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ in certain contexts. There are wide variations in these according to geography and age.
Morphology is very complex, something which Kali’na shares with other languages of the same family. Many morphophonological phenomena can be found at the limits of the morphemes inside the word (vocalic harmony, consonant assimilation, vocalic alternations, syllable reductions).
In the word, prefixes generally indicate the person or the change of the valency (reflected form, intransitivization of the verb) and the suffixes indicate the number, the possessive relationship, the time-aspect-mode aspect or the changes of grammatical class.
Verbs are divided into transitive and intransitive. In transitive verbs, the personal prefixes mark the subject when the interlocutors (1st, 2nd inclusive 1st person “you and me”) act on the 3rd object (person): m-eyukui you invited her (where m- marks a 2nd subject pronoun with a 3rd object pronoun). The hierarchy of people is neutralised in the event of interaction between interlocutors: k-ayukui I invited you or you invited me; in this case of a 3rd person acting towards a 3rd person, it is the object that is marked: n-eyukui he/she invited him/her. Intransitive verbs are divided into two subclasses, of which each one takes one of the series of personal markers of the transitive verbs: thus m-aimokii you took, but ay-auwai is you laughed. This split from intransitivity is characteristic of many Cariban languages, in which we can also find a parallel between the markers of people prefixed onto the verbs, to nouns, and to postpositions, thus ay-emali your path, ay-apolito next to you.
Nouns are either alienable (they can be possessed or not), or inalienable (always possessed): for parts of the body, parenting terms, personal possessions like the hammock, small bench, weapon, carrying basket, pet…) Sometimes there is suppletion, for example small bench mule, but ay-aponi your small bench.
The syntax of simple declarations is constructed following subject-object-verb or object-verb-subject (with a close similarity between the object and the verb), elements around which circonstants can appear. Possessive nouns have the determinant (possessor)-determined (possessed) relationship, for example maina apolito next to the sweet bread. Negation is made with the help of a copula (“to be”) and the adverbialised verb: auwa’pa I do not laugh, literally “not-laughing I am”.
Numerous modal particles, indicating the degree of engagement of the speaker with relation to what he is saying, are always placed in the second position in the statement, while non-modal particles are found immediately after the verb, noun or noun group, postpositional group or adverb of which they specify the meaning. Subordination is generally constructed by nominalized verbs.
Sources
Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France
IRD-Guyane, CNRS-CELIA (Eliane CAMARGO, Laurence GOURY, Françoise GRENAND, Pierre GRENAND, Michel LAUNEY, Odile LESCURE, Françoise LOE-MIE, Barbara NIEDERER, Marie-France PATTE, Francisco QUEIXALOS)
Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos. Consultable en ligne.
Renaut-Lescure, Odile. 2010. “Guyana Francesa”. In Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina, UNICEF. Tome 1, Pp 380-394.
Links
Page dedicated to Kali’na on the Linguamón website
Page dedicated to Kali’na on Le corpus de la parole wesbsite
Bibliography
Alby, Sophie 2001. Contacts de langues en Guyane française: une description du parler bilingue kali’na-français.Thèse de Doctorat. Lyon: Université de Lyon II.
Alby, Sophie 2002. “Morts des langues ou changement linguistique? Contact entre le kali’na et le français dans le discours bilingue d’un groupe d’enfants kali’naphones en Guyane française”. Les Cahiers du RIFAL. Développement linguistique: enjeux et perspectives. Bruxelles.
Gildea, Spike 1994. “Semantic and pragmatic inverse: ‘inverse alignment’ and ‘inverse voice’ in Carib of Surinam”. In T. Givón (ed.), Voice and inversion: 187-230. Amsterdam.
Mosonyi, Jorge C. 2002. Diccionario básico del idioma kariña. Barcelona: Fondo Editorial del Caribe.
Renault-Lescure, Odile. 1985. “Les Galibi. La question amérindienne en Guyane”. Ethnies 1/2: 19-20.
Renault-Lescure, Odile.1991. “Contacts interlinguistiques entre le Karib et les créoles des côtes guyanaises”. Études Créoles 13/2: 86-94.
Renault-Lescure, Odile. 2001. “Dynamique des relations actancielles en kali’na de Guyane française”. Amerindia 26/27: 67-86. París.
Please see the Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina and Fabre (2005) for a more complete bibliography.
Translated into English by Benjamin Dennis
Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have more information on this language: contact@sorosoro.org
