Old Tupi language
Encyclopedia
Old Tupi or Classical Tupi is an extinct Tupian language
which was spoken by the native Tupi people of Brazil
, mostly those who lived close to the sea. It belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and which has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. In the early colonial period Tupi was used as a lingua franca
throughout Brazil by Europeans as well as Amerindians and had literary usage, but it was later suppressed almost to extinction, leaving only one modern descendant with an appreciable number of speakers, Nheengatu
.
The names Old Tupi or Classical Tupi are used for the language in English
and by modern scholars (it is referred to as tupi antigo in Portuguese
), but native speakers called it variously ñeengatú "the good language", ñeendyba "common language", abáñeenga "human language", in Old Tupi, or língua geral "general language", língua geral amazônica "Amazonian general language", língua brasílica "Brazilian language", in Portuguese.
. It is quite different from Indo-European languages
in phonology
, morphology
and grammar
and even so it was adopted by many Luso-Brazilians as lingua franca.
It belonged to the Tupi–Guarani language family, which stood out among other South American languages for the vast territory it covered. Until the 16th century, these languages were found throughout nearly the entirety of the Brazilian coast, from Pará
to Santa Catarina
, and the River Plate basin. Today Tupi languages are still heard in Brazil (states of Maranhão
, Pará
, Amapá
, Amazonas, Mato Grosso
, Mato Grosso do Sul
, Goiás
, São Paulo
, Paraná
, Santa Catarina
, Rio Grande do Sul
, Rio de Janeiro
and Espírito Santo
) as well as in French Guyana, Venezuela
, Colombia
, Peru
, Bolivia
, Paraguay
and Argentina
.
It is a common mistake to speak of the "Tupi–Guarani language": Tupi, Guarani
and a number of other minor or major languages all belong to the Tupian language family
, in the same sense that English
, Romanian
and Sanskrit
belong to the Indo-European
language family
. However, the level of similarity between Tupi and Guarani is considered higher than that of any given two major European languages. One of the main differences between the two languages was the replacement of Tupi /s/ by the glottal fricative /h/ in Guarani.
The first accounts of the Old Tupi language date back from the early 16th century, but the first written documents containing actual information about it were produced from 1575 onwards – when Jesuits
André Thévet
and José de Anchieta
began to translate Catholic
prayers and biblical
stories into the language. Another foreigner, Jean de Lery
, wrote the first (and possibly only) Tupi "phrasebook", in which he transcribed entire dialogues. Lery's work is very important because it is the best available record of how Tupi was actually spoken.
In the first two or three centuries of Brazilian history, nearly all colonists coming to Brazil would learn the tupinambá variant of Tupi, as a means of communication with both the Indians
and with other early colonists who had adopted the language.
The Jesuits, however, not only learned to speak tupinambá but also encouraged the Indians to keep it. As a part of their missionary work they translated some literature into it and also produced some original work written directly in Tupi. José de Anchieta reportedly wrote more than 4,000 lines of poetry in tupinambá (which he called lingua Brasilica) and the first Tupi grammar
. Luís Figueira was another important figure of this time, who wrote the second Tupi grammar, published in 1621. In the second half of the 18th century, the works of Anchieta and Figueira were republished and Father Bettendorf wrote a new and more complete catechism
. By that time the language had made its way into the clergy and was the de facto national language
of Brazil – though it was probably seldom written, as the Roman Catholic Church
held a near monopoly of literacy.
When the Portuguese
Prime-Minister Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759, the language started to wane fast, as few Brazilians were literate in it. Besides, a new rush of Portuguese immigration had been taking place since the early 18th century, due to the discovery of gold
, diamond
and gems
in the interior of Brazil; these new colonists spoke only their mother tongue. Old Tupi survived as a spoken language (used by Europeans and Indian populations alike) only in isolated inland areas, far from the major urban centres. Its use by a few non-Indian speakers in those backward places would last for over a century still.
, a very different situation from the one they left in Europe. The Portuguese (and particularly the Jesuit priests that accompanied them) set out to proselytise
the natives. In order to do so most effectively, it was convenient that they should do so in the natives' own languages; for that reason, the first Europeans to study Tupi were those same priests.
The priests modeled their analysis of the new language after the one they had already experience with: Latin
, which they had studied in the Seminary
. And in fact, the first grammar of Tupi – written by the Jesuit priest José de Anchieta
in 1595 – is structured much like a contemporary Latin grammar. While this structure is not optimal, it certainly served its purpose of allowing its intended readership (Catholic priests familiar with Latin grammars) to get a basic enough grasp of the language to be able to communicate with and evangelise to the natives. Also, the grammar sometimes regularised or glossed over some regional differences in the expectation that the student, once "in the field", would learn these finer points of the particular dialect through use with his flock.
Of importance, there was a Jesuit Catechism from 1618, with a second edition from 1686; another grammar written in 1687 by another Jesuit priest, Luís Figueira; an anonymous dictionary (again published by the Jesuits) from 1795; a dictionary published by Antônio Gonçalves Dias
, a well-known 19th Century Brazilian poet and scholar, in 1858; and a chrestomathy
published by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira França in 1859.
Considering the breadth of its use both in time and space, this language is particularly poorly documented in writing, particularly for the dialect of São Paulo spoken in the South.
rhotic consonant
/r/. It also has a rather small inventory of consonants and a large amount of pure vowels (twelve).
This led to a Portuguese pun
about this language, that Brazilians não têm fé, nem lei, nem rei (have neither faith, nor law, nor king) as the words fé (faith), lei (law) and rei (king) could not be pronounced by a native Tupi speaker (they would say pé, re'i and re'i).
Each of the six vowels has a nasalised
counterpart:
It should be noted that the nasal vowels are fully vocalic, without any trace of a trailing /m/ or /n/. They are pronounced with the mouth open and the palate relaxed, not blocking the air from resounding through the nostrils. These approximations, however, must be taken with caution, as no actual recording exists and it is known that Tupi had at least seven dialects.
equivalents in parentheses):
This scheme does not regard Ŷ as a separate semivowel, does not consider the existence of G (/ɣ/), and does not differentiate between the two types of NG (/ŋ/ and /ⁿɡ/), probably because it does not regard MB (/ⁿb/), ND (/ⁿd/) and NG (/ⁿɡ/) as independent phonemes, but mere combinations of P, T, and K with nasalization.
Santos Gomes also remarks that the stop consonant
s shifted easily to nasal consonants, which is attested by the fitful spelling of words like umbu (umu, ubu, umbu, upu, umpu) in the works of the early missionaries and by the surviving dialects.
According to most sources, Tupi semivowels were more consonantal than their IPA counterparts. The Î, for instance, was rather fricative, thus resembling a very slight [ʑ], while Û had a distinct similarity with the voiced stop [ɡʷ], thus being sometimes written gu. As a consequence of this character, Tupi loanwords in Brazilian Portuguese
often have j for Î and gu for Û.
, Nhandéva
, Kaiowá
and Paraguayan Guarani) provide material that linguistic research can make use of today in order to achieve an approximate account of the language.
Scientific reconstruction of Tupi suggests that Anchieta simplified (or merely overlooked) the phonetics of the actual language when devising his grammar and his dictionary.
The writing system employed by Anchieta is still the basis for most modern scholars. It is easily typed with regular Portuguese or French typewriters and computer keyboards (but not with character sets such as ISO-8859-1, which cannot produce ẽ, ĩ, ũ, and ỹ).
Its key features are:
ical purposes:
Interestingly, the most common words tend to be monosyllables:
Disyllabic words belong to two major groups, depending on which syllable the stress
falls:
Polysyllabic (non-compound) words, thought not as common, are frequent and follow the same scheme:
Nasal mutation of the initial consonant is always present, regardless of stress. Notice also that no polysyllabic word will be stressed on the first syllable.
Compound noun
s are formed in three ways:
Later, after the colonisation, the process was used to name things that the Indians originally did not have:
Some writers have even extended this further, creating Tupi neologisms for the modern life, in the same vein as New Latin
. Mário de Andrade
, for instance, coined sagüim-açu (saûĩ + [g]ûasú) for "elevator", from sagüim, the name of a small tree-climbing monkey.
with moderate degree of fusional
features (nasal mutation of stop consonants in compounding, the use of some prefixes and suffixes). Although agglutinative, Tupi lacked enough agglutinative power to form complex sentence-containing words (as polysynthetic
languages do).
Tupi parts of speech did not follow the same conventions of Indo-European languages in that:
Verbs were preceded by pronouns which could be subjective or objective. Subjective pronouns like a- "I" expressed the person who "did", while objective pronouns like xe- "me" signified the person who received the action. The two types could be used alone or combined:
Although Tupi verbs are not inflected, a number of pronominal variations did exist and form a rather complex set of aspects regarding who did what to whom. This, together with the temporal inflection of the noun and the presence of tense markers, like koára "today" made up a fully functional verbal system.
Word order played a key role in the formation of meaning:
Tupi had no means to inflect words for gender and used adjectives to do so. Some of these were:
Notice that the notion of gender was expressed, once again, together with the notion of age and that of "humanity" or "animality".
The notion of plural was also expressed by adjectives or numerals:
Unlike in Indo-European languages, nouns were not implicitly masculine, except for those provided with natural gender: abá "man" and kuñã[tã] "woman/girl"; for instance.
Without proper verbal inflection, all Tupi sentences are in the present or in the past. When needed, tense is indicated by adverbs like ko ara, "this day".
Adjectives and nouns, however, do have temporal inflection:
This was often used as a semantic derivation process:
With respect to syntax, Tupi was mostly SOV, but word order tended to be free, as the presence of pronouns made it easy to tell which was the subject, and which was the object. Nevertheless, native Tupi sentences tend to be quite short, as the Indians were not used to complex rhetoric
al or literary uses.
Most of the available data about Old Tupi are based on the tupinambá dialect, spoken in what is now the Brazilian state of São Paulo
, but there were other dialects as well.
According to Edward Sapir
's categories, Old Tupi could be characterized as follows:
in Tupi, according to Anchieta:
Notice that two Portuguese words, Reino (Kingdom) and tentação (temptation) have been borrowed, as such concepts would be rather difficult to express with pure Tupi words.
, spoken throughout the country by white and Indian settlers alike until the early 18th century, and still heard in isolated pockets until the early 20th century, Tupi left a strong mark on the Portuguese language of Brazil, being by far its most distinctive source of modification.
Tupi has given Brazilian Portuguese
:
Tupi is still quite "felt" in Brazil today as about 40% of the Brazilian municipalities have Tupi names:
Among the many Tupi loanwords in Portuguese, the following are noteworthy for their widespread use:
It is interesting, however, that two of the most distinctive Brazilian animals, the jaguar
and the tapir
, are best known in Brazilian Portuguese by non-Tupi names, onça (on-sa) and anta, despite being named in English with Tupi loanwoards.
A significant number of Brazilians have Tupi names as well:
Some names of distinct Indian ancestry have obscure etymology because the tupinambá, like the Europeans, cherished traditional names which sometimes had become archaic. Some of such names are Moacir (reportedly meaning "son of pain") and Moema.
used it as the source of most of its catchphrases (like Anaûé (meaning "you are my brother", the old Tupi salutation which was adopted as the Brazilian version of the German Sieg Heil, or the Roman "Ave") and terminology.
Tupian languages
The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...
which was spoken by the native Tupi people of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, mostly those who lived close to the sea. It belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and which has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. In the early colonial period Tupi was used as a lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
throughout Brazil by Europeans as well as Amerindians and had literary usage, but it was later suppressed almost to extinction, leaving only one modern descendant with an appreciable number of speakers, Nheengatu
Nheengatu
The Nheengatu language , often spelled Nhengatu, is an Amerindian language of a Tupi–Guarani family. It is also known by the Portuguese names língua geral da Amazônia and língua geral amazônica, both meaning "Amazonian General Language," or even by the Latin lingua brasilica...
.
The names Old Tupi or Classical Tupi are used for the language in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and by modern scholars (it is referred to as tupi antigo in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
), but native speakers called it variously ñeengatú "the good language", ñeendyba "common language", abáñeenga "human language", in Old Tupi, or língua geral "general language", língua geral amazônica "Amazonian general language", língua brasílica "Brazilian language", in Portuguese.
History
Old Tupi was firstly spoken by a pre-literate Tupinambá people, living under cultural and social conditions very unlike those found in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. It is quite different from Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
in phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
and grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and even so it was adopted by many Luso-Brazilians as lingua franca.
It belonged to the Tupi–Guarani language family, which stood out among other South American languages for the vast territory it covered. Until the 16th century, these languages were found throughout nearly the entirety of the Brazilian coast, from Pará
Pará
Pará is a state in the north of Brazil. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest it also borders Guyana and Suriname, and to the northeast it borders the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Belém.Pará is the most populous state...
to Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, and the River Plate basin. Today Tupi languages are still heard in Brazil (states of Maranhão
Maranhão
Maranhão is a northeastern state of Brazil. To the north lies the Atlantic Ocean. Maranhão is neighbored by the states of Piauí, Tocantins and Pará. The people of Maranhão have a distinctive accent...
, Pará
Pará
Pará is a state in the north of Brazil. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest it also borders Guyana and Suriname, and to the northeast it borders the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Belém.Pará is the most populous state...
, Amapá
Amapá
Amapá is one of the states of Brazil, located in the extreme north, bordering French Guiana and Suriname to the north. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south and west is the Brazilian state of Pará. Perhaps one of the main features of the state is the River Oiapoque, as it was once...
, Amazonas, Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest in area, located in the western part of the country.Neighboring states are Rondônia, Amazonas, Pará, Tocantins, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul. It also borders Bolivia to the southwest...
, Mato Grosso do Sul
Mato Grosso do Sul
Mato Grosso do Sul is one of the states of Brazil.Neighboring Brazilian states are Mato Grosso, Goiás, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná. It also borders the countries of Paraguay and Bolivia to the west. The economy of the state is largely based on agriculture and cattle-raising...
, Goiás
Goiás
Goiás is a state of Brazil, located in the central part of the country. The name Goiás comes from the name of an indigenous community...
, São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
, Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
, Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro (state)
Rio de Janeiro is one of the 27 states of Brazil.Rio de Janeiro has the second largest economy of Brazil behind only São Paulo state.The state of Rio de Janeiro is located within the Brazilian geopolitical region classified as the Southeast...
and Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity...
) as well as in French Guyana, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
It is a common mistake to speak of the "Tupi–Guarani language": Tupi, Guarani
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...
and a number of other minor or major languages all belong to the Tupian language family
Tupian languages
The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...
, in the same sense that English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
and Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
belong to the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
language family
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
. However, the level of similarity between Tupi and Guarani is considered higher than that of any given two major European languages. One of the main differences between the two languages was the replacement of Tupi /s/ by the glottal fricative /h/ in Guarani.
The first accounts of the Old Tupi language date back from the early 16th century, but the first written documents containing actual information about it were produced from 1575 onwards – when Jesuits
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
André Thévet
André Thévet
André de Thevet was a French Franciscan priest, explorer, cosmographer and writer who travelled to Brazil in the 16th century...
and José de Anchieta
José de Anchieta
José de Anchieta was a Canarian Jesuit missionary to Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil's history in the 1st century after its discovery on April 22, 1500 by a Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, Anchieta was one of the founders of...
began to translate Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
prayers and biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
stories into the language. Another foreigner, Jean de Lery
Jean de Léry
Jean de Léry was an explorer, writer and Reformed Pastor born in Lamargelle, Côte-d'Or, France. Little is known of his early life; and he might have remained unknown had he not accompanied a group of Protestants to their new colony on an island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil...
, wrote the first (and possibly only) Tupi "phrasebook", in which he transcribed entire dialogues. Lery's work is very important because it is the best available record of how Tupi was actually spoken.
In the first two or three centuries of Brazilian history, nearly all colonists coming to Brazil would learn the tupinambá variant of Tupi, as a means of communication with both the Indians
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
and with other early colonists who had adopted the language.
The Jesuits, however, not only learned to speak tupinambá but also encouraged the Indians to keep it. As a part of their missionary work they translated some literature into it and also produced some original work written directly in Tupi. José de Anchieta reportedly wrote more than 4,000 lines of poetry in tupinambá (which he called lingua Brasilica) and the first Tupi grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
. Luís Figueira was another important figure of this time, who wrote the second Tupi grammar, published in 1621. In the second half of the 18th century, the works of Anchieta and Figueira were republished and Father Bettendorf wrote a new and more complete catechism
Catechism
A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
. By that time the language had made its way into the clergy and was the de facto national language
National language
A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...
of Brazil – though it was probably seldom written, as the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
held a near monopoly of literacy.
When the Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
Prime-Minister Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759, the language started to wane fast, as few Brazilians were literate in it. Besides, a new rush of Portuguese immigration had been taking place since the early 18th century, due to the discovery of gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
, diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
and gems
Gemstone
A gemstone or gem is a piece of mineral, which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments...
in the interior of Brazil; these new colonists spoke only their mother tongue. Old Tupi survived as a spoken language (used by Europeans and Indian populations alike) only in isolated inland areas, far from the major urban centres. Its use by a few non-Indian speakers in those backward places would last for over a century still.
Tupi research
When the Portuguese first arrived on the shores of modern-day Brazil, most of the tribes they encountered spoke very closely related dialectsTupian languages
The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...
, a very different situation from the one they left in Europe. The Portuguese (and particularly the Jesuit priests that accompanied them) set out to proselytise
Proselytism
Proselytizing is the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion. The word proselytize is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix προσ- and the verb ἔρχομαι in the form of προσήλυτος...
the natives. In order to do so most effectively, it was convenient that they should do so in the natives' own languages; for that reason, the first Europeans to study Tupi were those same priests.
The priests modeled their analysis of the new language after the one they had already experience with: Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, which they had studied in the Seminary
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
. And in fact, the first grammar of Tupi – written by the Jesuit priest José de Anchieta
José de Anchieta
José de Anchieta was a Canarian Jesuit missionary to Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil's history in the 1st century after its discovery on April 22, 1500 by a Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, Anchieta was one of the founders of...
in 1595 – is structured much like a contemporary Latin grammar. While this structure is not optimal, it certainly served its purpose of allowing its intended readership (Catholic priests familiar with Latin grammars) to get a basic enough grasp of the language to be able to communicate with and evangelise to the natives. Also, the grammar sometimes regularised or glossed over some regional differences in the expectation that the student, once "in the field", would learn these finer points of the particular dialect through use with his flock.
Of importance, there was a Jesuit Catechism from 1618, with a second edition from 1686; another grammar written in 1687 by another Jesuit priest, Luís Figueira; an anonymous dictionary (again published by the Jesuits) from 1795; a dictionary published by Antônio Gonçalves Dias
Antônio Gonçalves Dias
Antônio Gonçalves Dias was a Brazilian Romantic poet, playwright and linguist. He is famous for writing the poem "Canção do exílio", arguably the most well-known poem of the Brazilian literature, and many other nationalist and patriotic poems that would later give him the title of national poet of...
, a well-known 19th Century Brazilian poet and scholar, in 1858; and a chrestomathy
Chrestomathy
Chrestomathy is a collection of choice literary passages, used especially as an aid in learning a foreign language.In philology or in the study of literature, it is a type of reader or anthology which presents a sequence of example texts, selected to demonstrate the development of language or...
published by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira França in 1859.
Considering the breadth of its use both in time and space, this language is particularly poorly documented in writing, particularly for the dialect of São Paulo spoken in the South.
Phonology
The phonology of tupinambá has some interesting and unusual features. For instance, it does not have the lateral approximant /l/ or the multiple vibrantTrill consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
rhotic consonant
Rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
/r/. It also has a rather small inventory of consonants and a large amount of pure vowels (twelve).
This led to a Portuguese pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
about this language, that Brazilians não têm fé, nem lei, nem rei (have neither faith, nor law, nor king) as the words fé (faith), lei (law) and rei (king) could not be pronounced by a native Tupi speaker (they would say pé, re'i and re'i).
Vowels
Tupi has twelve vowel phonemes, oral and nasal variants of six basic vowels. The oral vowels are:- A – IPA /a/
- E – IPA /ɛ/
- I – IPA /i/
- O – IPA /ɔ/
- U – IPA /u/
- Y – presumably IPA /ɨ/. The reported difficulty in understanding this sound may be a consequence of the fact that most Tupi researchers are native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, a language that lacks this specific phoneme.
Each of the six vowels has a nasalised
Nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
counterpart:
- Ã – IPA /ã/
- Ẽ – IPA /ɛ̃/
- Ĩ – IPA /ĩ/
- Õ – IPA /ɔ̃/
- Ũ – IPA /ũ/
- Ỹ – IPA /ɨ̃/
It should be noted that the nasal vowels are fully vocalic, without any trace of a trailing /m/ or /n/. They are pronounced with the mouth open and the palate relaxed, not blocking the air from resounding through the nostrils. These approximations, however, must be taken with caution, as no actual recording exists and it is known that Tupi had at least seven dialects.
Semivowels
There are three semivowels, usually written with the circumflex accent to make clear from which vowel they derive.- Î – like semivowelSemivowelIn phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
"y" in English (IPA /j/). Often affricate, becoming similar to the French or Portuguese "j" (IPA /ʒ/). - Û – like "w" in English (IPA /w/).
- Ŷ – appears to be unique to Tupi–Guarani languages, it is identical to Y in quality, but pronounced fast (like /ɰ/), with the same duration of a semivowel. It is unclear whether Ŷ actually existed in all dialects.
Consonants
The Tupi consonant system contains, in addition to the semivowels, the following 16 consonants (with their IPAInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
equivalents in parentheses):
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Coronal Coronal consonant Coronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
M (/m/) | N (/n/) | Ñ (/ɲ/) | NG (/ŋ/) | ||
| Plosive Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
prenasalized | MB (/ᵐb/) | ND (/ⁿd/) | NG (/ᵑɡ/) | ||
| voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
P (/p/) | T (/t/) | K (/k/) | |||
| Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
S (/s/) | X (/ʃ/) | H (/h/) | ||
| voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate... |
B (/β/) | G (/ɣ/) | ||||
| Flap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:... |
R (/ɾ/) | |||||
- There are four nasal consonantNasal consonantA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s: M, N, Ñ and NG (IPA /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, as in Spanish "ñ" or Portuguese "nh", and /ŋ/, as in English word final "ng", respectively). - There are no voiced stops. The unvoiced stopsStop consonantIn phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
(P, T, K) are paired with prenasalized stopPrenasalized consonantPrenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent that behave phonologically like single consonants. The reasons for considering these sequences to be single consonants is in their behavior, not in their actual composition...
s (MB, ND, NG) which Anchieta described as quite similar to M, N and Ñ. - The consonant written B is not pronounced with the mouth fully closed and has a distinctive fricative character (IPA /β/, similar to English "v" or Spanish "b", but articulated using both lips, not the bottom teeth and the top lips); it is not the voiced equivalent of the bilabial stop P.
- There are only two sibilantsSibilant consonantA sibilant is a manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, chip,...
, S and X (both unvoiced, one dental and the other palatal, IPA /s/ and IPA /ʃ/, as in English "sh", respectively). Some authors remark that the actual pronunciation of /s/ was retroflex (though still distinct from /ʃ/). - The glottal fricative H is mostly absent and often pronounced as an S. According to most sources, the two sounds were interchangeableFree variationFree variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers...
, and the prevalence of either varied from dialect to dialect (/h/ being more common in the southernmost dialects). - There is a glottal stopGlottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
, IPA /ʔ/, not written, but found between a sequence of two consecutive vowels and at the beginning of vowel-initial words (aba, y, ara, etc.). When indicated in writing, it is generally written as an apostropheApostropheThe apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
. - One rhotic consonantRhotic consonantIn phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
, an alveolar tapAlveolar tapThe alveolar flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar flaps is .-Definition:...
(like the "r" of SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, or the "t" in city as said in Australian or American English; IPA /ɾ/).
An alternative view
According to Nataniel Santos Gomes, however, the phonetic inventory of Tupi was simpler:- Consonants:
- p, t, k, ‘ (/ʔ/)
- b (/β/)
- s, x (/ʃ/)
- m, n, ñ (/ɲ/)
- û (/w/), î (/j/)
- r (/ɾ/)
- Vowels
- i, y (/ɨ/), u, ĩ, ỹ, ũ
- e, o, õ, ẽ
- a, ã
This scheme does not regard Ŷ as a separate semivowel, does not consider the existence of G (/ɣ/), and does not differentiate between the two types of NG (/ŋ/ and /ⁿɡ/), probably because it does not regard MB (/ⁿb/), ND (/ⁿd/) and NG (/ⁿɡ/) as independent phonemes, but mere combinations of P, T, and K with nasalization.
Santos Gomes also remarks that the stop consonant
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
s shifted easily to nasal consonants, which is attested by the fitful spelling of words like umbu (umu, ubu, umbu, upu, umpu) in the works of the early missionaries and by the surviving dialects.
According to most sources, Tupi semivowels were more consonantal than their IPA counterparts. The Î, for instance, was rather fricative, thus resembling a very slight [ʑ], while Û had a distinct similarity with the voiced stop [ɡʷ], thus being sometimes written gu. As a consequence of this character, Tupi loanwords in Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
often have j for Î and gu for Û.
Considerations on the writing system
It would have been almost impossible to reconstruct the phonology of Tupi if it did not have a wide geographic distribution. The surviving Amazonian Nhengatu and the close Guarani correlates (MbyáMbyá Guaraní
Mbyá Guaraní is a Tupi–Guaraní language spoken 16,050 Brazilians, 3,000 Argentines, and 8,000 Paraguayans. It is 75% lexically similar to Paraguayan Guaraní.Mbyá Guaraní is one of a number of "Guaraní dialects" now generally classified as distinct languages....
, Nhandéva
Chiripá
Chiripá Guarani , also known as Ava Guarani and Nhandéva , is a Guaraní language spoken in Paraguay, Brazil, and also Argentina. It is closely related to Paraguayan Guaraní, a language which speakers are increasingly switching to. There are 4,900 speakers in Brazil and 7,000 in Paraguay.Nhandéva is...
, Kaiowá
Guarani-Kaiowá
Guarani-Kaiowás are an indigenous people of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. They inhabit Nhande Ru Marangatu, an area of tropical rainforest. This was declared a reservation in October 2004...
and Paraguayan Guarani) provide material that linguistic research can make use of today in order to achieve an approximate account of the language.
Scientific reconstruction of Tupi suggests that Anchieta simplified (or merely overlooked) the phonetics of the actual language when devising his grammar and his dictionary.
The writing system employed by Anchieta is still the basis for most modern scholars. It is easily typed with regular Portuguese or French typewriters and computer keyboards (but not with character sets such as ISO-8859-1, which cannot produce ẽ, ĩ, ũ, and ỹ).
Its key features are:
- The tildeTildeThe tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
indicating nasalisationNasal vowelA nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
: a → ã. - The circumflex accent indicating a semivowelSemivowelIn phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
: i → î. - The acute accent indicating the stressedStress (linguistics)In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
syllable: abá. - The use of the letter x for the unvoiced palatal fricative /ʃ/, a spelling convention common in the languages of the Iberian PeninsulaIberian languagesIberian languages is a generic term for the languages currently or formerly spoken in the Iberian Peninsula.- Pre-Roman languages :The following languages were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the Roman occupation and the spread of the Latin language.* Aquitanian * Proto-Basque* Tartessian*...
, but unusual elsewhere. - The use of the digraphs yg (for Ŷ), gu (for /w/), ss (to make intervocalic S unvoiced), and of j to represent the semivowel /j/.
- Hyphens are not used to separate the components of a compound, except in the dictionary or for didactical purposes.
Morphology
Most Tupi words are roots with one or two syllables, usually with double or triple meanings that are explored extensively for metaphorMetaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ical purposes:
- a = round / head / seed
- kaa = forest / bush / plant
- oby = green, greenish / blue, bluish
- y = water / liquid / spring / lake, puddle / river, brook
Interestingly, the most common words tend to be monosyllables:
- a = head / round
- ã = shadow / ghost
- po = hand
- sy = mother / source
- u = food
- y = water, river
Disyllabic words belong to two major groups, depending on which syllable the stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
falls:
- If the stress falls on the penult, the last syllable ends with an unstressed vowel (traditionally written with the letter a). Such words usually drop the last vowel (or sometimes even the entire last syllable) to form compounds, or otherwise drop the vowel and undergo a consonant mutationConsonant mutationConsonant mutation is when a consonant in a word changes according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment.Mutation phenomena occur in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages...
(nasalisation): ñeenga (speech) + katú (good) = ñeen-ngatú (the good language). - If the stress falls on the last syllable, the syllable is unchanged: itá (rock, stone) + úna (black) = itaúna.
Polysyllabic (non-compound) words, thought not as common, are frequent and follow the same scheme:
- paranã (the sea) + mirĩ (little) = paranãmirĩ (salty lagoon)
- pindóba (palm tree) + ûasú (big) = pindobusú.
Nasal mutation of the initial consonant is always present, regardless of stress. Notice also that no polysyllabic word will be stressed on the first syllable.
Compound noun
Word formation
In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning...
s are formed in three ways:
- Simple agglutinationAgglutinationIn contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
:- arasy = ara + sy (day + mother) = mother of day: the sun
- yîara = y + îara (water + lord/lady) = lady of the lake (a mythological figure).
- BlendBlendIn linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.-Linguistics:...
ing with either apocopeApocopeIn phonology, apocope is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Historical sound change:...
or aphesisAphesisIn phonetics, apheresis is the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Apheresis as a historical sound change:...
:- Pindorama = pindoba + rama (palm tree + future aspect) = where there will be palm trees (this was the name by which some of the coast tribes called their homeland).
- Takûarusu = takûara + ûasú (bamboo + big) = big bamboo tree. Portuguese: TaquaruçuTaquarussuTaquarussu is a village of the Brazilian state of Tocantins, located 30 km. from the capital of Tocantins, Palmas....
(a variant of bambooBambooBamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....
).
- Complex blending, with both apocope and aphesis:
- Taubaté = taba + ybaté (village + high) = the name of a Brazilian town, TaubatéTaubatéTaubaté is a city in the State of São Paulo, in southeastern Brazil. Its strategic geographical location, between the two most important Brazilian cities , being crossed by Presidente Dutra Highway which connects the two megacities, and between high, cold mountains and the Atlantic Ocean has...
, which was originally the name of a village on the top of a mountain. - Itákûakesétyba = takûara + kesé + tyba (bamboo + knife + collective mark): where knives are made out of bamboo wood (the name of a Brazilian town: Itaquaquecetuba).
- Taubaté = taba + ybaté (village + high) = the name of a Brazilian town, Taubaté
Later, after the colonisation, the process was used to name things that the Indians originally did not have:
- îande + Îara (our + Lord) = a title held by ChristChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
in Catholic worship. - Tupã + sy (God + mother) = the mother of God (Mary).
Some writers have even extended this further, creating Tupi neologisms for the modern life, in the same vein as New Latin
New Latin
The term New Latin, or Neo-Latin, is used to describe the Latin language used in original works created between c. 1500 and c. 1900. Among other uses, Latin during this period was employed in scholarly and scientific publications...
. Mário de Andrade
Mário de Andrade
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...
, for instance, coined sagüim-açu (saûĩ + [g]ûasú) for "elevator", from sagüim, the name of a small tree-climbing monkey.
Grammatical structure
Unlike most European languages, Tupi was an agglutinative languageAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
with moderate degree of fusional
Fusional language
A fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment....
features (nasal mutation of stop consonants in compounding, the use of some prefixes and suffixes). Although agglutinative, Tupi lacked enough agglutinative power to form complex sentence-containing words (as polysynthetic
Polysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
languages do).
Tupi parts of speech did not follow the same conventions of Indo-European languages in that:
- Verbs are "conjugated" for personGrammatical personGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
(by means of prepositioning subject or object pronouns), but not for tense or mood (the very notion of mood is absent). In Tupi all verbs are in the present tense. - Nouns are "declined" for tenseGrammatical tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
(by means of suffixing the aspect markerMarker (linguistics)In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word, phrase, or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished. In fusional languages and polysynthetic languages, this is often not...
), but not for gender or numberGrammatical numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
. - There is a distinction of nouns in two classes: "higher" (for things related to human beings or spirits) and "lower" (for things related to animals or inanimate beingsAnimacyAnimacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is...
). The usual manifestation of this distinction was the use of the prefixes t- for high-class nouns and s- for low-class ones, so that tesá meant "human eye", while sesá meant "the eye of an animal". Some authors argue that this is a type of gender inflectionGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
. - Adjectives cannot be used in the place of nouns, neither as the subject nor as the object nucleus (in fact, they cannot be used alone).
Verbs were preceded by pronouns which could be subjective or objective. Subjective pronouns like a- "I" expressed the person who "did", while objective pronouns like xe- "me" signified the person who received the action. The two types could be used alone or combined:
- A-bebé = I-fly, "I can fly", "I flew".
- Xe pysyka = me catch, "Someone has caught me" or "I'm caught".
- A-î-pysyk = I-him-catch, "I have caught him".
Although Tupi verbs are not inflected, a number of pronominal variations did exist and form a rather complex set of aspects regarding who did what to whom. This, together with the temporal inflection of the noun and the presence of tense markers, like koára "today" made up a fully functional verbal system.
Word order played a key role in the formation of meaning:
- taba abá-im (man + tiny + village) = kid from the village
- taba-im abá = man from the small village (or "the man from Smallville"...)
Tupi had no means to inflect words for gender and used adjectives to do so. Some of these were:
- apyyaba = man, male
- kuñã = woman, female
- kunumĩ = boy, young male
- kuñãtãĩ = girl, young female
- mena = male animal
- kuñã = female animal
Notice that the notion of gender was expressed, once again, together with the notion of age and that of "humanity" or "animality".
The notion of plural was also expressed by adjectives or numerals:
- abá = man; abá-etá = many men
Unlike in Indo-European languages, nouns were not implicitly masculine, except for those provided with natural gender: abá "man" and kuñã[tã] "woman/girl"; for instance.
Without proper verbal inflection, all Tupi sentences are in the present or in the past. When needed, tense is indicated by adverbs like ko ara, "this day".
Adjectives and nouns, however, do have temporal inflection:
- abáûera "he who was once a man"
- abárama "he who shall be a man someday"
This was often used as a semantic derivation process:
- akanga "head"
- akangûera "skull" (of a skeleton)
- abá "man"
- abárama "teenager"
With respect to syntax, Tupi was mostly SOV, but word order tended to be free, as the presence of pronouns made it easy to tell which was the subject, and which was the object. Nevertheless, native Tupi sentences tend to be quite short, as the Indians were not used to complex rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
al or literary uses.
Most of the available data about Old Tupi are based on the tupinambá dialect, spoken in what is now the Brazilian state of São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
, but there were other dialects as well.
According to Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
's categories, Old Tupi could be characterized as follows:
- With respect to the concepts expressed: complex, of pure relation, that is, it expresses material and relational content by means of affixAffixAn affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es and word order, respectively. - With respect to the manner in which such concepts are expressed: a) fusional-agglutinativeSynthetic languageIn linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
, b) symbolic or of internal inflection (using reduplicationReduplicationReduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
of syllables, functionally differentiated). - With respect to the degree of cohesion of the semantic elements of the sentence: syntheticSynthetic languageIn linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
.
Colors
- îub = yellow
- (s)oby = blue, green
- pirang = red
- ting = white
- (s)un = black
Substances
- (t)atá = fire
- itá = rock, stone, metal,
- y = water, river
- yby = earth, ground
- ybytu = air, wind
People
- abá = man (as opposed to woman), Indian or Native-American (as opposed to European), human being (as opposed to the animal world)
- aîuba = Frenchman (literally "yellow heads")
- maíra = Frenchman (it's the name of a mithological figure that the Indians associated with the Frenchmen)
- karaíba = foreigner, white man (literally means "spirit of a dead person"). Means also prophet.
- kuñã = woman
- kuñãtã'ĩ = girl
- kuñãmuku = young woman
- kunumĩ = boy
- kunumĩgûasu = young man
- morubixaba = chief
- peró = Portuguese (neologism, from "Pero", old variant of "Pedro" = "Peter", a very common Portuguese name)
- sy = mother
- tapy'yîa = slave (also the term for non-Tupi speaking Indians)
The body
- akanga = head
- îuru = mouth
- îyba = arm
- nambi = ear
- pó = hand
- py = foot
- py'a = heart
- (t)esá = eye
- (t)etimã = leg
- tĩ = nose
- (t)obá = face
Animals
- aîuru = parrot, lory, lorykeet
- arara = macaw, parrot
- îagûara = jaguar
- ka'apiûara = capybaraCapybaraThe capybara , also known as capivara in Portuguese, and capibara, chigüire in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador ronsoco in Peru, chigüiro, and carpincho in Spanish, is the largest living rodent in the world. Its closest relatives are agouti, chinchillas, coyphillas, and guinea pigs...
- mboîa = snake, cobra
- pirá = fish
- so'ó = game (animal)
- tapi'ira = tapir
Plants
- ka'api = grass, ivy
- ka'a = plant, wood, forest
- kuri = pine
- (s)oba = leaf
- yba = fruit
- ybá = plant
- ybyrá = tree, (piece of) wood
- ybotyra = flower
Adjectives
- beraba = brilliant, gleamy, shiny
- katu = good
- mirĩ, 'í = little
- panema = barren, contaminated, unhealthy, unlucky
- poranga = beautiful
- pûera, ûera = bad, old, dead
- (s)etá = many, much
- ûasu, usu = big
Sample text
This is the Lord's PrayerLord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...
in Tupi, according to Anchieta:
Oré r-ub, ybak-y-pe t-ekó-ar, I moeté-pyr-amo nde r-era t'o-îkó. T'o-ur nde Reino! Tó-ñe-moñang nde r-emi-motara yby-pe. Ybak-y-pe i ñe-moñanga îabé! Oré r-emi-'u, 'ara-îabi'õ-nduara, e-î-me'eng kori orébe. Nde ñyrõ oré angaîpaba r-esé orébe, oré r-erekó-memûã-sara supé oré ñyrõ îabé. Oré mo'ar-ukar umen îepe tentação pupé, oré pysyrõ-te îepé mba'e-a'iba suí.
Notice that two Portuguese words, Reino (Kingdom) and tentação (temptation) have been borrowed, as such concepts would be rather difficult to express with pure Tupi words.
Presence of Tupi in Brazil
As the basis for the língua geralLíngua Geral
Língua Geral is the name of two distinct linguae francae spoken in Brazil, the língua geral paulista , now extinct; and the língua geral amazônica , whose modern descendant is Nheengatu....
, spoken throughout the country by white and Indian settlers alike until the early 18th century, and still heard in isolated pockets until the early 20th century, Tupi left a strong mark on the Portuguese language of Brazil, being by far its most distinctive source of modification.
Tupi has given Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
:
- A few thousand words (some of them hybrids or corrupted) for animals, plants, fruit and cultural entities.
- The English-like pronunciation of "r" in the southern states.
- The intensification of the difference between rounded and unrounded "e" and "o".
- The intensification of nasalisation
- The slang mechanism of producing compounds by blending (with both terms changing phonetically).
Tupi is still quite "felt" in Brazil today as about 40% of the Brazilian municipalities have Tupi names:
- IguaçuIguaçuIguaçu or Iguazú may refer to:City and municipality*Puerto Iguazú, Argentina*Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brazil*Nova Iguaçu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil*Nova Iguaçu de Goiás, Goiás, BrazilRegion or province*Iguaçu TerritoryRiver*Iguazú/Iguaçu Falls...
(y ûasú): great river - IpanemaIpanemaFor other uses, see Ipanema . For the British rock band, see Ipanema .Ipanema is a neighborhood located in the southern region of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between Leblon and Arpoador...
(y panema): bad, fishless water - Itanhangá (itá + añãgá): devil's rock
- ItaquaquecetubaItaquaquecetubaItaquaquecetuba is a municipality in the state of São Paulo, in Brazil. The estimated population in 2006 is 352,755, the density is 4,313.46/km² and the area is 82 km². The elevation is 790 m...
(takûakesétyba, from itá + takûara + kesé + tyba): where bamboo knives are made - ItaúnaItaúnaItaúna is a town and municipality in the state of Minas Gerais in the Southeast region of Brazil.-References:...
("itá + una"): black rock - JaguariúnaJaguariúnaJaguariúna is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2004 is 33,194 and the area is 142.88 km². The elevation is 584 m. This place name comes from the Tupi language and means the land of the black Jaguars....
(îagûara + 'í + una): small black jaguar - PacaembuPacaembuPacaembu is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2004 is 12,596 and the area is 340.69 km². The elevation is 415 m. This place name comes from the Tupi language. It is also the name of a neighborhood in São Paulo city, where is located Pacaembu stadium....
(paka + embu): valley of the pacaPacaThe Lowland Paca , also known as the Spotted Paca, is a large rodent found in tropical and sub-tropical America, from East-Central Mexico to Northern Argentina...
s. - ParaíbaParaíbaParaíba Paraíba Paraíba (Tupi: pa'ra a'íba: "bad to navigation"; Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation: is a state of Brazil. It is located in the Brazilian Northeast, and is bordered by Rio Grande do Norte to the north, Ceará to the west, Pernambuco to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the east...
(pará + aíba): bad to navigation or "bad river" - ParanaíbaParanaíba RiverThe Paranaíba River is a Brazilian river whose source lies in the state of Minas Gerais in the Mata da Corda mountains, municipality of Rio Paranaíba, at an altitude of 1,148 meters; on the other face of this mountain chain are the sources of the Abaeté river, tributary of the São Francisco River...
(paranãíba, from paranã + aíba): dangerous sea - Paraná-mirim (paranã + mirĩ): salty lagoon (literally: "small sea")
- PindoramaPindoramaPindorama is a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The population of the city is 15,039 and the area is 184.8 km². Pindorama is also the Tupi word for Land of the Palms, the natives' name for Brazil....
(from pindó, "palm tree", and (r)etama, country): palm country (this was the name that the tupiniquinTupiniquimTupiniquim is the name of an Amerindian tribe who now only live in three reservations . All three are located in the municipality of Aracruz in northern Espírito Santo state, southeastern Brazil. As of 1997 their population was 1,386...
s gave to the place where they lived). - PiraíBarra do PiraíBarra do Piraí is a Brazilian city of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Its population was 94,332 and its area is 578 km². The area is 582,1 km². It is 127 km far away from Rio de Janeiro.-References:...
(pirá + y): "fish water" - Umuarama (ũbuarama, from ũbu + arama): where the cacti will grow
Among the many Tupi loanwords in Portuguese, the following are noteworthy for their widespread use:
- abacaxi (pineapplePineapplePineapple is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. It was given the name pineapple due to its resemblance to a pine cone. The pineapple is by far the most economically important plant in the Bromeliaceae...
, literally: "fruit with thorns") - jacaré (caiman)
- minhoca (earth worm)
- mirim (small or juvenile) as in "escoteiro-mirim" ("boy scoutBoy ScoutA Scout is a boy or a girl, usually 11 to 18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement. Because of the large age and development span, many Scouting associations have split this age group into a junior and a senior section...
") - perereca (a type of small frog, also slang for vulva), literally: "hopper"
- petecaPetecaPeteca is a traditional sport in Brazil, played with a "hand shuttlecock" from indigenous origins and reputed to be as old as the country itself...
(a type of badminton game played with bare hands) literally: "slap" - piranhaPiranhaA piranha or piraña is a member of family Characidae in order Characiformes, an omnivorous freshwater fish that inhabits South American rivers. In Venezuela, they are called caribes...
(a carnivorous fish, also slang for immoral women) literally: "toothed fish" - pipoca (popcorn) literally "explosion of skin"
- piroca (originally meaning "bald", now a slang term for penis)
- pororocaPororocaThe pororoca is a tidal bore, with waves up to 4 metres high that travel as much as 13 km inland upstream on the Amazon River and adjacent rivers. Its name comes from the indigenous Tupi language, where it translates into "great destructive noise". It occurs at the mouth of the river where river...
(a tidal phenomenon in the Amazon firth) literally: "confusion" - siri (crab)
- sucuri (anaconda)
- urubu (the Brazilian vulture)
- urutu (a kind of poisonous snake)
It is interesting, however, that two of the most distinctive Brazilian animals, the jaguar
Jaguar
The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus, and is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar's present range extends from Southern United States and Mexico...
and the tapir
Tapir
A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...
, are best known in Brazilian Portuguese by non-Tupi names, onça (on-sa) and anta, despite being named in English with Tupi loanwoards.
A significant number of Brazilians have Tupi names as well:
- Araci (female): ara sy, "mother of the day"
- Bartira, Potira (female): Ybotyra, "flower"
- Iara (female): y îara, lady of the lakeIara (mythology)Iara, also spelled Uira or Yara, is the name of a figure from Brazilian mythology based on ancient Tupi and Guaraní mythology. The word derives from Old Tupi yîara = y + îara = lady of the lake . She is seen as either a water nymph, siren, or mermaid depending upon the context of the story told...
- Jaci (both): îasy, the moon
- Janaína (female): îandá una, a type of black bird
- Ubirajara (male): ybyrá îara, "lord of the trees/lance"
- Ubiratan (male): ybyrá-atã, "hard wood"
Some names of distinct Indian ancestry have obscure etymology because the tupinambá, like the Europeans, cherished traditional names which sometimes had become archaic. Some of such names are Moacir (reportedly meaning "son of pain") and Moema.
Tupi literature
Old Tupi literature was composed mainly of religious and grammatical texts developed by Jesuit missionaries working among the colonial Brazilian people. The greatest poet to express in written Tupi language, and its first grammarian was José de Anchieta, who wrote over eighty poems and plays, compiled at his Lírica Portuguesa e Tupi. Later Brazilian authors, writing in Portuguese, employed Tupi in the speech of some of their characters.Recurrence
Tupi is also remembered as distinctive trait of nationalism in Brazil. In the 1930s, Brazilian IntegralismBrazilian Integralism
Brazilian Integralism was a fascist political movement in Brazil, created on October 1932. Founded and led by Plínio Salgado, a literary figure who was somewhat famous for his participation in the 1922 Modern Art Week, the movement had adopted some characteristics of European mass movements of...
used it as the source of most of its catchphrases (like Anaûé (meaning "you are my brother", the old Tupi salutation which was adopted as the Brazilian version of the German Sieg Heil, or the Roman "Ave") and terminology.
See also
- Guaraní languageGuaraní languageGuaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...
- Guarani WarGuarani WarThe Guarani War of 1756, also called the War of the Seven Reductions, took place between the Guaraní tribes of seven Jesuit Reductions and joint Spanish-Portuguese forces...
- Jesuit ReductionsJesuit ReductionsA Jesuit Reduction was a type of settlement for indigenous people in Latin America created by the Jesuit Order during the 17th and 18th centuries. In general, the strategy of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called Indian Reductions , in order to Christianize, tax,...
- José de AnchietaJosé de AnchietaJosé de Anchieta was a Canarian Jesuit missionary to Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil's history in the 1st century after its discovery on April 22, 1500 by a Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, Anchieta was one of the founders of...
- List of Brazil state name etymologies
- Língua geralLíngua GeralLíngua Geral is the name of two distinct linguae francae spoken in Brazil, the língua geral paulista , now extinct; and the língua geral amazônica , whose modern descendant is Nheengatu....
- NheengatuNheengatuThe Nheengatu language , often spelled Nhengatu, is an Amerindian language of a Tupi–Guarani family. It is also known by the Portuguese names língua geral da Amazônia and língua geral amazônica, both meaning "Amazonian General Language," or even by the Latin lingua brasilica...
- Tupi–Guarani languages
- Tupi people
- "Nheengatu" article on Portuguese Wikipedia
External links
- Tupi Swadesh-vocabulary list (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
- "Abá nhe'enga oîebyr – Tradução: a língua dos índios está de volta", by Suzel Tunes essay in Portuguese.
- A Course of Old Tupi (in Portuguese)
- Ancient Tupi Home Page
- Tubinambá at Ethnologue
- Tupi–Portuguese dictionary (with non-standard Tupi spelling)
- Sources on Tupinambá at the Curt Nimuendaju Digital Library