The Mawayana
Documentation of the endangered languages in Suriname
An Arawakan people in Suriname
UNIQUE LINGUISTIC FEATURES
Mawayana has a 5-vowel system: ï, i, e, u, a
Within the consonant phonemes Mawayana has several
fricatives and affricates: nj, j, dz, ch, s, (f), and a
retroflex affricate.
Mawayana has two implosive consonants, ! and , for
example, in sasa!enu ‘old woman’ and jimaa!a ‘jaguar’.
Mawayana makes extensive use of ideophones,
for example:
rïïrïïrïïrïïrïïr
ideo.anaconda winding itself around s/thing
a-sawa"a-!a'a
3coref-arm-about.loc
the (baby) anaconda wound itself around her arm
From left to right: Mauwiya, Saana, and her husband
Yapoma in Kwamalasamutu, January 2004.
kaartbron: Carlin, Eithne B. en Jacques Arends 2002: Atlas of the languages of Suriname. Leiden: KITLV Press. bldz. 36
GENERAL ORIENTATION
Mawayana is a moribund Arawakan language spoken in Kwamalasamutu, a
predominantly Trio (Cariban) village, in the south of Suriname. There are at
present three fluent speakers of Mawayana, all over 70 years of age, and four
more who have a good passive knowledge of the language. The Mawayana
speakers are bilingual in Mawayana and Waiwai (Cariban) since they lived among
the Waiwai group in the neighbouring countries Guyana and Brazil. At present
their day-to-day language in the Trio village is Trio. In the 1960s, these
Mawayana speakers – three men and their wives and children - were brought to
Suriname by an American missionary, Claude Leavitt, to help to evangelize the
Trio and other native people of Suriname. When their task was done, they
remained in Suriname, among the Trio, and their children’s children were raised
speaking Trio, which quickly became the dominant language of the area. The
Mawayana ethnic community itself in Kwamalasamutu now comprises
approximately 80 people. The oldest generation, that is, three of those original
six Mawayana from Guyana, who were bilingual in Mawayana and Waiwai, all
speak Mawayana among themselves; they speak Waiwai (and sometimes
Mawayana) to the generation immediately below them, that is, those who are
roughly between fifty and sixty years of age, including their children, and they
speak Trio in their daily and intense interaction with the Trio and with the
younger generations of Mawayana who are monolingual Trio speakers.
CONTACT AND COOPERATION WITH THE
MAWAYANA COMMUNITY
Since starting my work with the Mawayana-speaking community, a great
desire has arisen among these infomants and their children to have their
(former) language documented and published in book form, thereby
documenting in their own language, the former, pre-missionary way of
life of this group of people. An intense consciousness has grown among
them that this is the only chance left since the younger generations no
longer speak the language. The informants themselves and their
children realize that this work must be completed within the next one
or two years given the old age of the speakers. All the informants, Mr.
Yapoma, his wife, his brother and his wife have promised to help me in
any way they can in order to complete this task.
ma-sï_koso
meku"a
petaru
see
neg-3s_reprt
appear.pst
petaru
ideo.quiet
petaru didn't appear (didn't show his face), he stayed
quiet
As an Arawakan language that has been in contact with
Cariban languages (Waiwai and Trio) for almost 100 years,
Mawayana has adopted and intergrated some pertinent
aspects of the Cariban languages such as evidentiality
(reportative); a frustrative marker and a facsimile
marker, all of which form part of a ‘truth and knowledge’
system of grammatical marking.
In addition, Mawayana has become alive now in the eyes of the Trio who
continually ask us “how do say xxx in Mawayana?” They repeat what we
say and think this whole process hilarious. The fact that their language
is being written down has given the Mawayana community a tremendous
psychological boost.
Already in the late 1950s – early 1960s ethnographers studying the Waiwai groups
noticed the speed at which the Waiwai were absorbing the smaller groups such
as the Mawayana; they predicted that the language of the Mawayana would
disappear within a short period of time. This has happened in Guyana but
apparently it was the migration of those few missionary Mawayana to Suriname
that has saved the language thus far, making Kwamalasamutu the only
Mawayana-speaking community of importance left. In contrast to other dying
languages with such few speakers, the three remaining speakers are highly
competent speakers who form a close-knit mini-speech community.
The Mawayana hunt and fish with the Trio in
Kwamalasamutu
The younger generation of Mawayana
SAMPLE SENTENCES FROM THE STORY OF THE AMERINDIAN AND OPPOSSUM
na etaana nkïwa"ekusï waata!a’are
na
etaana
n-kïwa"-e-ku-sï
waata-!a’a-re
disc
now
1s-tell-pres-persist-3o
oppossum-about-nom
now I’m going to tell another story, this time one about Oppossum
nnaakayã sijo ïsúbabeba nwïnï rïmakoso rï’i
n-naaka-yã
sijo
ï-súbabe-ba
n-wïnï
rï-ma_koso
rï-’i
1o-bring-while
dp.prox.dir
2poss-liver-pst
1poss-meat
3-say.pst_reprt
3-dat
“bring me your liver here (as) my meat”, he (the spirit) said to him
Yapoma (holding sunflower) and his wife Saana, Kwamalasamutu 2003
CONTACT DETAILS
THE “REDISCOVERY” OF MAWAYANA
Dr. Eithne B. Carlin
Languages and Cultures of Native America (TCIA)
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL)
Leiden University
Postbus 9515
2300 RA Leiden
It had generally been assumed, since the 1960s, that Mawayana no longer
existed as a spoken language, and that it had been replaced by Waiwai.
However, in 2001, while again in Kwamalasamutu after an absence of 3
years, I called in with the Mawayana, Yapoma and his wife Saana, to say
hello and as we chatted a tarantula fell from one of the beams onto the
floor beside us. There was a great flurry of excitement and Yapoma shouted
at his wife to manoeuver the spider into the fire, “uwaa!a, uwaa!a!” he
said, ‘burn it! Burn it!’ While they were both dealing with the spider the
realization hit me that they were speaking Mawayana.
THE NETHERLANDS
telephone: +31 (0) 71 527 2624
e-mail: [email protected]
After the commotion had died down I asked if they had any stories they
could tell me in Mawayana to which they answered “we have many many
stories. You should write them down because our children don’t know our
language now, nor our stories”. And so we started writing down the stories
of the Mawayana, the “Frog-People”.
Never been so glad to have a tarantula fall
at my feet!