Miskito language

Miskito
Mískitu
Native to Nicaragua, Honduras
Region North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, neighbouring areas
Ethnicity Miskito people
Native speakers
 150,000 Language At Risk of extinction (2005)[1]
Misumalpan
  • Miskito
Language codes
ISO 639-3 miq
Glottolog misk1235[2]

Miskito (Mískitu in the Miskito language) is a Misumalpan language spoken by the Miskito people in northeastern Nicaragua, especially in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, and in eastern Honduras.

With 150,000 speakers, Miskito is the most widely spoken of a family of languages of Nicaragua and Honduras that has come to be known as Misumalpan. This name is formed from parts of the names of the family's subgroups: Miskito, Sumo, Matagalpan. Although some aspects of the internal family tree with family are uncertain, it is clear Miskito is apart from Sumo and Matagalpan, which seem to share a common lower node, and that in the past Miskito was heavily influenced by other Misumalpan languages. Sumo is thought to have been dominant in the area before the period of Miskito ascendancy. Today the relationship has been reversed: many former Sumo speakers have shifted to Miskito, which has in turn heavily influenced the Sumo dialects. Several of these (Tawahka, Panamahka and Tuahka) constitute the Mayangna sub-branch of Sumo, while the Ulwa language is in another sub-branch. The Matagalpan branch of Misumalpan contains two languages that are now extinct: Matagalpa and Cacaopera. The latter was formerly spoken in parts of eastern El Salvador.

In addition to many elements borrowed from other Misumalpan languages, Miskito has a large number of loanwords from English via creole. Even though Spanish is the official language of Nicaragua and Honduras, its influence on Miskito is much more recent and hence more superficial. There are also many other languages that may have had influence on Miskito. Some different influences have been Sumi dialects as there has been a lot of connections with vocabulary and grammar. There have also been connections to other languages such as Arawak, Rama, Carib, and also some Western African languages.

History

Many of the Miskito are of mixed race with either African-Native American ancestry or a mix of African-Native American and British ancestry. The Miskito people had strong relationship with the British and they signed the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. Eventually, the British began to lose interest in the region, and Britain allowed Nicaragua to have uncontested claim over the Mosquito Coast. A treaty was signed in which a Miskito reserve, a self-governing entity that enjoyed semi-sovereign rights, was given to the Miskito people, but Honduras eventually took over the area.

In the 20th century the Miskito language started to dwindle. Honduras, being a former Spanish colony, officially used the Spanish language, and this stifled the proliferation of the Miskito language in the 20th century. In schools, children were forbidden from speaking Miskito for most of the 20th century and could only speak Spanish; young generations had less opportunity to practice the language.

In the 1990s, many groups lobbied against the rule and promoted bilingual schools to preserve the Miskito language. Twenty such bilingual schools exist.

Sounds

The vowels a, e, i, o, and u all represent the same sound as in German. The consonants g, j, s, w, and y sound as they do in the English words get, jet, set, wet, and yet. ch also sounds as it does with chest in English; c is not used by itself.

The other letters in the alphabet are the same as in English. h is always pronounced and sometimes must be distinctly heard in certain words, unlike English. G.R. Health wrote on Miskito grammar in American Anthropologist and wrote

[3]
Long vowels will be distinguished by the grave accent (').

The stress accent in Miskuto is almost invariably on the first syllable. Any variations from this rule will be marked by the acute accent, as in Spanish ('). When the grave and acute accents occur on the same vowel, they combine to form the circumflex (^). Nasalized vowels are sometimes met with: they resemble the ordinary vowels followed by a sound corresponding to the French n in Mon. But as this nasal sound seems to be pronounced not after, but simultaneously with, the vowels, it seems better to mark the vowels with the tilde (~), to indicate that the vowels themselves are nasalized.

There is still much controversy to the orthography and it cannot be considered settled with printed Miskito grammars, Bible translations, and other printed text.

Example nouns

Numbers

0 - Apu

1 - Kumi

2 - Wal

3 - Yumhpa

4 - WalhWalh

5 - Matsip

6 - Matlal Kahbi

7 - Matlal Kahbi pura kumi

8 - Matlal Kahbi pura Wal

9 - Matlal Kahbi pura yumhpa

10 - Matawalsip

11 - Matawalsip pura kumi

12 - Matawalsi pura wal

Months of the year

January - Siakwa Kati

February - Kuswa Kati

March - Kakamuk Kati

April - Lih Wainhka Kati

May - Lih Mairin Kati

June - Li Kati

July - Pastara Kati

August - Sikla Kati

September - Wis Kati

October - Waupasa Kati

November - Yahbra Kati

December - Trisu Kati

See also

References

  1. ↑ Miskito at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Miskito". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ HEATH, G. R. (3 January 1913). "NOTES ON MISKUTO GRAMMAR AND ON OTHER INDIAN LANGUAGES OF EASTERN NICARAGUA". American Anthropologist. 15 (1): 48–62. doi:10.1525/aa.1913.15.1.02a00060.

Further reading

Richter, Elke (1986). "Observaciones acerca del desarrollo lexical miskito en Nicaragua". Revista de filología románica. 1986 (4): 341–346. 

Gamboa, Haglan Santiago. "Easy Miskito 2 - Let's Count!" YouTube. YouTube, 17 July 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Miskito language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Miskito
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.