Data collected by the UNICEF

Data on the Terena language

Alternative names: Guana, Tereno, Kinikinau, Kinikináwa.

Main dialects: Kinikinau.

Knowing if Kinikinau is a dialectal variation of Terena or if it is an independent language, yet close to Terena, is a tricky question given actual knowledge. Kinikinau has been rarely studied and considered as a dead language for a long time. The Kinikinau also have been confused with the Terena by Brazilian institutions (see below). Fabre (2005) treats Kinikinau as a dialect of Terena “by default”, pending further knowledge.

Classification: Arawak family, Southern Arawak branch.

It appears Terena and Kinikinau are the only two surviving variations of Guana. Guana was also spoken by the Chanés, before they were “colonized” by the Ava and dropped their language for their colonizers’.

Geographical area: Brazil.

The Terena live on a scattered territory, small “islands” surrounded by ranches and farms, especially in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, in the cities of Miranda, Aquidauana, Anastácio, Dois Irmãos do Buriti, Sidrolândia, Nioaque and Rochedo. There are also Terenas on the indigenous territory of Kadiwéu and in the states of São Paulo and Mato Grosso.

The Kinikinau mainly live in São João, Kadiwéu indigenous territory in Mato Grosso do Sul.

Number of speakers: According to the ISA, the Terena population was of 19,961 people in 2006, but not all of them speak the language. The estimated number of speakers varies from 9,000 to 15,000 people.

The Kinikinau population would be of 250 people (FUNASA, 2005), but the number of speakers is unknown. The UNESCO mentions 11 speakers, but this number is to be taken with precaution.

Status of the language: No official status.

According to Linguamón: “Portuguese is Brazil’s only official language. The country’s only linguistic legislation concerning other tongues refers to schooling and is restricted to bilingual and intercultural primary education (exclusively in indigenous communities), although there are actually few trained bilingual teachers.”

Vitality and transmission: The UNESCO considers Terena as “severely endangered” (step 3 on a scale from 1 to 5) and Kinikinau as “critical” (step 4).

It is increasingly common for Terena youngsters to want to work in cities, and proficiency in Portuguese is thus held in ever-higher regard. Only half of the younger Terena population speak their own language fluently. It is expected that Portuguese will be the mother tongue of all Terena children in two generations’ time.

According to Linguamón: “The Terena do not consider their language as essential for integration into their society or something which ought to be protected in order to preserve their collective identity. On the contrary, parents take pride in their children learning Portuguese as early as possible and there is a belief that bilingualism contributes to academic failure. Terena is almost exclusively spoken in family “settings.”

The Kinikinau children would almost all be Portuguese speakers and very few of them would have knowledge of the ancestral language.

Historical and ethnographic observations

– The Terena:

Such as the Chanés, the Terena and the Kinikinau descend from the Guana, Arawak population from Chaco, one of the largest in the region before colonization. Recent studies tend to show that the Guana used to be farmers and were strictly organized as a hierarchy, divided between the “nobility” and the “working class”.

They shared their land with Mbaya tribes (from which the current Kadiwéu descend) and like them, they were forced by colonial pressure to move over the Rio Paraguay and settle on the west bank.

As did the Kadiwéu, they played an important part in the war of Paraguay, but unlike the Kadiwéu, the Terena, allied with the Brazilians, had their territory serve as a battlefield. The villages and land they used to live on have been taken over. At the end of the war, they couldn’t get their land back where farmers and breeders – often war veterans – had settled.

The war deeply altered the lifestyle of the Terena, limited to reduced territories and unable to carry on with ancestral farming, forced to work as labour force for the very same producers who deprived them of their territory. The very structure of the Terena society was altered and the traditional social organisation disappeared at the turn of the 20th century.

The Terena remain one of the biggest indigenous populations in Mato Grosso do Sul. Street pedlars in the city, daily workers in ranches, their “visibility” contributes to the stereotype implying that the Terena have no culture, that they are “urban Indians”.

But this stereotype masks the never-ending fight of the Terena to keep their language and culture alive despite the drastic changes to their environment and lifestyle, changes imposed by the colonial society and the state institutions.

For more information on the Terena, see pages dedicated to them on the must-see website of the ISA, Povos Indígenas no Brasil.

– The Kinikinau:

In the 1970’s, several researchers concluded that the Kinikinau ethnic group no longer existed. That mistake was probably due to a bad classification by the protection service of Indians who labelled the members of this ethnic group in the Terena community whom they were close to. More recently, about 200 Kinikinau were found in the village of São João in Murtinho.

It’s one of the rare indigenous communities to which the Brazilian state did not assign any territory. Since their own land isn’t officially delimited, most of them live on the Kadiwéu indigenous territory and a few families on the Terena territory. All through their history, they never stopped claiming their right to have their own territory. To date, no action has ever been taken regarding those demands.

For more information on the Kinikinau, see pages dedicated to them on the must-see website of the ISA, Povos Indígenas no Brasil.

Sources

De Castro Alves, Flávia (2010). Brasil no Amazónico. In « Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina », UNICEF. Part 1, pp 265-280.

Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos. Available online [18/05/2011]

Online sources

Data collected by the UNICEF on Terena [18/05/2011]

Page dedicated to Terena on the Povos Indígenas no Brasil website [18/05/2011]

Pages dedicated to the Kinikinau on the Povos Indígenas no Brasil website [18/05/2011]

Page dedicated to Terena on the Linguamón website [18/05/2011]

Additional bibliography

Almeida, Mariene de Brito Kling 2005. O léxico da língua Terêna: proposta do dicionário infantil bilingüe Terêna-Português. Dissertação de Mestrado do Instituto de Letras. Brasília: UnB.

Bendor-Samuel, John T. 1961. An outline of the grammatical and phonological structure of Terena I. Brasília: SIL-AL 90.

Butler, Nancy E. 1978. Modo, extensão temporal, tempo verbal e relevância contrastiva na língua Terena. Brasília: SILEL 1.

Ladeira, Maria Elisa & Gilberto Azanha.1999. Terena

Netto, Waldemar Ferreira & Maria Elisa Ladeira. 2000. A língua Terêna no município de Miranda (MS): análise macrosociolingüística. Lingüística 12. Madrid: ALFAL.

Oliveira, Dercir Pedro de & Miriam Moreira Alves 2005. Os Kinikinau: dados históricos, vocabulares e lingüísticos. Campo Grande, MS.

Oliveira, Roberto Cardoso de. 1968. Urbanização e tribalismo: a integração dos índios Terêna. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Zahar.

Souza, José Luiz de & Giovani José da Silva. 2005. Kinikinau.

See the Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas en América Latina and Fabre (2005) for a complete bibliography.