Comparison: Jarawa vs Jarawara

Today, we shall be exploring a number of the similarities and differences present between two languages with similar names, namely the Jarawa language of India and the Jarawara language of Brazil. Before we can get to this, however, our two languages must first introduce themselves.

Jarawa, also spelt Järawa or Jarwa, boasts approximately 260 speakers scattered across a number of the Andaman Islands, which belong to the nation of India, though geographically they lie far closer to the nation of Myanmar. The name Jarawa does not exist in the language itself. Rather, it means foreigner in the language of the Aka-Bea, the Jarawa’s main nemesis.

The Jarawa refer to themselves as əng, which simply means people.

This language is one of two members of the Ongan family, which occupy the Jarawa and Onge islands that comprise the main bulk of the Andaman Islands.

(If you wish to learn about the demographic make-up of the Andaman Islands, I would highly recommend that you watch the YouTube video that is included in the source list.)

Jarawara, meanwhile, enjoys a nudge over 1,000 speakers in the western part of Amazonas State in Brazil, hidden deep within the Amazon jungle. It has three distinct dialects, all of which are mutually intelligible with each other, although their speakers refer to them as separate languages in order to differentiate the separate tribes which speak them.

Jarawara is a member of the Arawan language family, which consists of around a half dozen members scattered throughout the western edge of the Amazon jungle, with a few creeping over the border into Peru.

(The location of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Andaman Islands, where Jarawa can be found, are those visible within the red rectangle, whereas the Nicobar Islands are simply too small to be visible at this scale.)

Sentence 1:

In order to ease ourselves into this comparison, we will start with a very simple sentence.

English: I am eating

Jarawa: mi tita

Jarawara: otafa oke

At first, the Jarawa language looks very simple, and in truth it is.

The first word, mi, is the 1st Person Pronoun, and it does not change depending on number. Thus, it means both I and we. 

In fact, Jarawa has the simplest pronoun paradigm I have ever seen, with only three pronouns, though there are few potential variations of the 2nd and 3rd Person.

tita, meanwhile, is composed of two parts. The first, t-, is a variant of -ɖi, which sometimes denotes either Referentiality, which refers to an event within sight of the speaker &/or hearer, or Definiteness, which refers to a non-visual object whose reference is derived from preceding context.

ita, meanwhile, is simply the root for the verb to eat.

The Jarawara sentence, meanwhile, works quite differently to its Jarawa counterpart, with one notable similarity.

Both words begin with the Prefix o-, which indicates the 1st Person Singular. In both of the words above, it acts as a Conjugation marker, though it possesses other functions.

The first word otafa, is built from the above explained prefix and -tafa, which is the root for the verb meaning to eat.

The second component of the second word is -ke, also known as the Feminine Declarative Suffix, whose purpose is to indicate that the action described is a statement of fact.

The Masculine equivalent, -ka, also serves a number of other purposes, which we shall explore below. As a Declarative Suffix, however, it is only used when the subject of the sentence is referred to as a man in the 3rd person, whether this comes in the form of a male name or 3rd person pronoun.

Thus, for the above statement, it does not matter whether the speaker is a man or a woman. 

(The approximate location of the Jarawara peoples and their languages. The state of Amazonas is the largest in the country, and is larger than the combined area of Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile.)

Section 2:

In this section, we will explore several different meanings for the Jarawara Affix ka, which appears as both a suffix and a prefix.

English: My brother-in-law is coming

Jarawa:  mawela allema

Jarawara: owabori kakeka

First, we will discuss the Jarawa sentence, which is the simpler of the two grammatically.

mawela means my brother-in-law, referring specifically to the brother of the speaker’s wife, and is comprised of the noun awela and the 1st Possessive Pronoun ma or mi, but because this is an Inalienably Possessed Noun, it is prefixed to the noun.

In Jarawa, most body parts and kinship terms are Inalienably Possessed. Put simply, this means that they are inseparable from the humans who possess them. Thus, if you did not whose brother-in-law was on the way, you would be obliged to use the term wawela, which means his/her brother-in-law.

allema, meanwhile, simply means come, though depending on context it can also mean came.

The Jarawara sentence, meanwhile, begins much the same as the Jarawa, with the word owabori, which means brother-in-law, though it can also refer to someone’s male cross-cousin (i.e. the son of either your mother’s brother or father’s sister).

The first part, o- is the 1st Person Singular Prefix to which we gave considerable attention in the previous section. When attached to a noun, it acts as a Possessive.

kakeka is comprised of three components.

First, we begin with the Applicative Prefix ka-, which has a number of effects. In this context it refers to something being in motion.

Our second component is the Suffix -ke, which refers to motion towards the place where the speaker is located. Depending on a number of phonological (sound) rules, however, it can also take the form -ki, though we will not discuss these rules here. (To add to that, there are a number of further variations which encode additional information)

Last, but not least, we have the Masculine Declarative Suffix -ka, which is used to convey that this sentence is a statement of fact.

(Within the Andaman archipelago lies North Sentinel Island, whose inhabitants are notoriously hostile to outsiders. Based on information collected via satellite, it is possible that following the tribe may have recently initiated its iron age following the washing ashore of a containment tanker.)

Section 3:

In the first two sentences, we focused on the Present Tense, which resulted in sentences that seemed to have a greater number of similarities than differences.

In this section, we will discuss the Future Tense, and how this manifests quite differently between these two enigmatic languages.

English: I will cut down the tree tomorrow

Jarawa: kahiunen mi tang odehehə

Jarawara: awa kaa onaminahabanake

The word kahiunen means tomorrow, though like in German, the same word can also mean morning, or in the morning.

The second word mi, is the 1st Person Pronoun which we discussed earlier, and can also mean we.

The third word tang, means tree. Like English, Jarawa nouns have both singular and plural forms. To build a plural, you add the Suffix -le, which gives us tangle. However, Plural Marking is not obligatory, and the above sentence could easily refer to more than one tree.

odehehə, meanwhile, is built from odehe, which is the verb stem meaning to cut, and the Hypothetical Mood Suffix -hə.

The Hypothetical Mood is used to indicate that it is doubtful whether or not the action described will occur, or a past event whose authenticity is in question. Both of these shades of meaning are indicated via the Suffix -hə.

Aside from a Word Order which tends to place the Object before the Verb, the Jarawara sentence is built very differently.

The word awa is the generic word for tree, and is a Feminine Noun. As expected for a language located deep within a rainforest, there are a number of words for specific species of tree.

(On a side tangent, the words ama and atari have several related meanings which refer to both humans and trees. ama means blood, menstruation and tree sap; while the word atari means skin, fish scales and tree bark.)

Secondly, we have kaa, which is the Infinitive of the Verb for to chop, and it does not conjugate, i.e. it remains forever unchanged.

onaminahabanake, meanwhile, is indeed the monster of a word that it appears to be. Naturally, we will slice this word into sections and examine each in turn.

To start, I will briefly mention the first and last segments, these being o- and -ke, which are the 1st Person Singular Prefix and the Feminine Declarative Marker respectively.

This leaves us with the middle -naminahabana-, which is a magic middle, in the sense that it can be divided by three.

Immediately following the 15th letter of the Latin Alphabet is the Applicative Suffix -na. This is a necessary addition to a sentence whose main verb does not conjugate.

Or in plainer English, you can think of it as meaning something like do or make. Thus, if you put kaa and -na(-) together, you get something akin to do the chopping or make the chopping, though hopefully not as clunky.

Following on we meet the suffix -mina, which means tomorrow.

In contrast to English and Jarawa, the Jarawara language has no individual words for tomorrow, today, yesterday and a number of other time markers. These all manifest themselves as Verbal Suffixes.

Our final suffix, -habana, is the Feminine Future Suffix. (The masculine equivalent is the confusingly similar -hibana.)

(The Purus river, along which the Jarawara live. On the whole they are a sedentary people who derive most of their livelihood through hunting, gathering and fishing.)

Section 4:

In this section, we explore another significant difference between these two languages. Namely, that the latter has a separate mood for Reported Speech, while the former does not.

English: The pig is reported to have eaten a banana

Jarawa: hi atyiba h^wəwə čonel ita

Jarawara: boroko jifari tafahimonaha

This time around, we will begin by analysing the Jarawara sentence.

We start with the word boroko, which is a variation of the Portuguese word porco, which means pig, and is a Masculine Noun.

Preceding this we have jifari, which means banana.

tafahimonaha is composed of two moving parts. The first part, which we have seen before, is tafa, which means to eat.

The second part, himonaha, is the Masculine Reported Speech Suffix. This means that the speaker has, at best, second-hand evidence that the event described took place. The Feminine equivalent of this is hamonehe, though with this being said, they each have a number of reduced variants depending on other grammatical factors.

Reported Speech does not exist as a separate mood in English. Instead, you use a construct along the lines of is said to have or is supposed to have.

Now we move to the Jarawa sentence.

Our first clause is the simple phrase hi atyiba, which is formed from hi, which is the 3rd person pronoun, and atyiba, which means say or said.

Word for word it means s/he said, though one could instead it is said, which sounds more natural in this context.

h^wəwə means pig, while čonel means banana.

ita, meanwhile, is formed from ita, which means either eat or ate.

Taken altogether, the Jarawa sentence translates roughly as: it is said, (that) the pig ate the banana.

(In 2017, a new species of wild banana was found within the dense jungle of the Andaman Islands. It has been named Musa paramjitiana in honour of Paramjit Singh, the director of the Botanical Survey of India.)

In conclusion, I hope that this has been an interesting comparison between two languages who are little heard of even within their own home countries, let alone outside of them.

I would also like to mention that there is another language known as Jarawa, which is spoken in Nigeria. I was unable to find any grammatical resources for this language, so for the time being there won’t be a comparison between two languages with the exact same (English) name.

This has no doubt left many people heartbroken.

Our next exploration will take us north to Alaska, where we will discuss the Eyak language of Prince William Sound. Until then,

Same Wilf-time!

Same Wilf-channel!

Sources:

Pramod Kumar, Descriptive and Typological Study of Jarawa (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University 2012)

R. M. W. Dixon, The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004)

Google Images

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad%C3%AD_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arawan_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazonas_(Brazilian_state)

https://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/musa-paramjitiana-species-wild-banana-discovered-andaman-nicobar-11201749745.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_language_(Andaman_Islands)

Yidiñ: A Study in Syllabic Pedantry

Yidiñ (more typically spelt as Yidiny, though personally I prefer the Latin flair) is a language that was once spoken by the around 2,000 members of the Yidiñdyi, Gunggañdyi and Madyañdyi tribes, who lived in the rain forests south of the city of Cairns in New Queensland.

Currently, the Yidiñ language boasts 19 speakers, at least according to the 2016 Australian National Census. It also possess a number of similarities with the neigbouring Dyirbal language, some of which may appear in the explanation that follows.

For whatever reasons, the speakers of Yidiñ seem to actively abhor the utterance of any word with an odd number of syllables. Suffice to say, we will not discuss why this is. Instead, we will explore the strategies whereby Yidiñ ensures that as many words as possible contain an even number of syllables.

At the time of writing, Yidiñ is the only language, of which I am aware, that has rules to ensure that words have either an even or odd number of syllables.  Whatever the advantages or disadvantages to such a system may be, are a question which I leave to you to consider.

(Note: When two vowels are placed together, this is to indicate the presence of a long vowel. In the grammar from which I drew most of my insights, this is demonstrated via the use of a colon, /:/, instead.)

(The area wherein the Yidiñ language spoken. Directly on its southern border lies the region where Dyirbal is/was spoken, a language which we have explored in a number of previous articles.)

Section 1:

Yidiñ: bamaal dyadyaang dyugi budiil / bamaal gamimbu dyugi budiil 

English: The small child puts the sticks down / The grandfather puts the sticks down

As one can see, the only difference between the two sentences is that we have replaced the word dyadyaang with gamimbu, which mean small child and (paternal) grandfather respectively. Both of these words are in the Ergative Case, which is used to indicate the Agent of a Transitive Verb, i.e. one that takes an object.

The Ergative Case carries two suffixes, one for words which end in a vowel, and one for words which end in a consonant, both of which are visible (in one form or another) in the above sentences.

For a word which ends in a vowel, e.g. dyadya, which means small child, the Ergative Suffix is -nggu. However, because dyadya contains an even number of syllables, this becomes reduced to -:ng. (The colon indicates that the previous vowel is lengthened.)

For a word which ends in a consonant, e.g. gamim, which means (paternal) grandfather, the Ergative Suffix is -du. However, if it is preceded by a nasal sound, then it will undergo assimilation.

Thus, when it follows the letter /m/, it becomes -bu, and when it follows the letter /ñ/, it becomes -dyu. Regardless as to which of these variations is used, however, this Suffix does not undergo any sort of modification to ensure that the word to which it is attached has an even number of syllables.

(In addition, the Ergative Suffix in the neighbouring Dyirbal language is also -nggu. Like its Yidiñ counterpart, it also undergoes a number of phonological variations, though the rules here are different.)

Now that we have explored the two words that are different between each sentence, we will now turn our attention to the rest of the words, which remain the same between the two.

Starting both sentences is the word bamaal, which is the Ergative Declension of bama, which means the person. This leads us to a discussion of the Noun Classifier, which is a very important aspect of Yidiñ.

In Yidiñ, most Noun Phrases require a generic and a specific noun, the former of which constitutes the Noun Classifier. Thus, you cannot simply say a sentence such as the man drank the water, you must instead say something along the lines of the person man drank the drinkable liquid water.

Thus, bamaal dyadyaang means the person small child, and bamaal gamimbu means the person (paternal) grandfather.

bama itself, meanwhile, is very irregular, hence why it takes the Ergative Suffix -:l. Alas, one has no option other than to learn the many different forms of this particular noun. However, it does appear quite commonly, so you should not lack for practice.

dyugi is the Absolutive Case declension of dyugi, has two meanings. In the above sentence, means stick, tree or wood. It is worth noting that Yidiñ does not have a distinction between singular and plural nouns. Here, the Absolutive Case indicates the Direct Object of the sentence, though we will explore this concept in further detail below.

budiil, meanwhile, is the Past Tense form of budi-l, which means to put down, though here we have another instance where the number of syllables comes into play.

For example, let us add the Verbal Comitative Suffix -nga-l, which gives us the new verb budinga-l, which means to put down with or to make put down.

Now, the Past Tense form now becomes budingalñu, which contains an even number of syllables.

In this section, we have seen how this concern over syllable number has affects indigenous words. In the next section, we will see this principle as it interacts with loan words also.

(Dick Moses, also known as Dyariyi. He was one of the main informants for the Yidiñ grammar listed below, and without his enthusiasm and insight our understanding of this enigmatic language would be severely impoverished. He spoke the coastal dialect of Yidiñ, one of several. This photo was taken in 1973.)

Section 2:

Yidiñ: miña gurngga dyardyii dugaal / miña gurngga biliganla dugaal

English: The kookaburras were caught in a net / The kookaburras were caught in a billy can 

Once again, we have two sentences which differ from on another in terms of a single word. In the first, we have dyardyii, which is the Instrumental Case Declension of dyardyi, which means either net trap or spider’s web. It does not seem to take any Noun Classifier.

In the second, we are treated to biliganla, which is the Instrumental Case Declension of biligan, which means billy can, and is a loan word from English. Like dyardyi, it does not take a Noun Classifier.

There does exist the Noun Classifier bundu, which refers to bags, but it only applies to traditional types of baskets, e.g. bundu dugubil, which means bark bag and bundu dyurrbal, which means (small) woven grass basket.

The Instrumental Case is used to indicate the

(For those who do not know, a billy can is a metal container used to heat water. Typically, it will also be used for other purposes throughout the day. Though the term has now spread across the Anglophone world, it is most closely associated with Australia, and the intrepid explorers who risked all to explore the Outback.)

gurngga, which means kookaburra, (a type of bird) can take two possible Noun Classifiers. The one featured here, miña, refers to edible animals, though it also covers eggs (dingal), because they are considered a type of flesh food.

Both Classifier and Noun are in the Absolutive Case, which indicates the Subject of an Intransitive Verb (i.e. one that does not affect an object), and the Object (also called Patient) of a Transitive Verb.

The second possible Classifier, dyaruy, refers to birds. In Yidiñ, it seems that all birds are considered edible.

This brings us to the two categories of Classifiers, which are Inherent and Functional. As one can infer, the former refers to the nature/identity of the noun, while the latter refers to how it is used. It is possible to use one of each in a specific Noun Phrase, though this does not seem particularly common.

The last word, dugaal, is the Past Tense Conjugation form of duga-l, which means to catch. It follows the same rules as budi-l, which we explored in the previous sentence.

Before we move on, we will briefly explore an approximate literal translation of one of the Yidiñ sentences:

Yidiñ: miña gurngga dyardyii dugaal

English: The.edible.animal kookaburra caught with.a.net (The kookaburras were caught with a net)

Unlike English, Yidiñ does not contain a Passive Voice. Instead, we have the employment of dugaal, which is a Transitive Verb, and miña gurngga, which is in the Absolutive Case. This is significant because an Absolutive subject cannot be the Agent in a Transitive Verb, it can only be the object.

As a result, we have a sentence with an object but no subject. One solution would be to add a subject: e.g. it or something/someone caught the kookaburras with the net.

However, although there is nothing grammatically wrong with either of these sentences, they require that you add something that did not previously exist these. How we avoid this potential issue is by re-conceptualising dugaal as being in the Passive Voice, even though this does not exist as a separate Verb-form in Yidiñ.

Another feature of English that is absent from Yidiñ is the Reflexive Pronoun, e.g. myself, yourself or ourselves. I think you will find one of the strategies quite bemusing.

(A Laughing Kookaburra, or Dacelo novaeguineae, which are native to Australia and Papua New Guinea. The English name kookaburra comes from the Wiradjuri word guugubarra, which is onomatopoeic, which means that it is named after the call that it makes.)

Section 3:

Yidiñ: ngañañ biwiing gundaadyiñu

English: I accidentally cut myself with the stick knife

ngañañ is the 1st Person Accusative Pronoun, or me in simple English. In Yidiñ, Pronouns follow a Nominative-Accusative Paradigm, e.g. the same as English, where the Subject of an Intransitive Sentence is the same as the Agent of a Transitive Sentence.

biwiing is the Ergative Case Declension of biwi, which means stick knife.

gundaadyiñu is built in several phases. First, we have the Infinitive gunda-l, which means to cut. However, because biwi is a Non-Animate Agent, we must add the Derivation Suffix -:dyi-n to the verb. Essentially, this serves the purpose of allowing an inanimate object to behave like an animate creature, e.g. a person or an animal.

Naturally, this switches the verb from an -l Verb to the -n Verb, which gives us the Past Tense Conjugation of -ñu.

Now, if we translate the Yidiñ sentence as directly as we can, we reach something along the lines of: The stick knife cut me

If, on the other hand, you decided to cut yourself deliberately, we get an eerily similar sentence:

Yidiñ: ngayu gundaadyiñu

English: I cut myself on purpose

ngayu is the 1st Person Singular Nominative Pronoun, or I.

gundaadyiñu is the same as in the previous sentence, though it brings us to a further explanation of the Suffix -:dyi-n.

Without going too far into it, -:dyi-n has many functions in Yidiñ grammar. As we saw earlier, it can be used to turn an Non-Animate Object into an Animate Agent. In this sentence, it serves the opposite purpose, i.e. to turn the Agent (Subject) of the sentence into its object.

As a result, ngayu becomes both the Agent and the Object of the sentence, even though it remains in its Nominative form. Essentially, -:dyi-n functions as the Reflexive Modifier, which in the English we have translated as myself, though naturally it can also mean yourself, themselves and so on, depending on the Subject of the sentence.

Other functions of the Suffix -:dyi-n, which we shall not go into detail here, include: to reference a chance event; to indicate that an action is continuous; and as an Antipassive, a grammatical feature which do not fully understand, except in that it can be used to change word order and the case marking of certain words.

(Two members of the Yidiñ tribe, taken in 1938. This photo was taken in Yarrabah, Queensland.)

In conclusion, I hope that this was an interesting introduction to some of the features of the Yidiñ language spoken in North-East Queensland. Naturally, we have barely scratched the tip of the iceberg of this enigmatic tongue, particularly the Noun Classifiers, which will certainly receive a further exploration in the future.

Of course, if you wish to explore this language in your own time, the resources with which to do so are listed in the list of sources below, most of which are available for free online. This is true for the vast majority of the sources which I used, something which I feel I could emphasise more often.

In the next article, we will explore two languages whose names may look and/or sound confusingly similar with one another. These will be Jarawa, spoken in the remote and little heard-of Andaman Islands, and Jarawara, spoken in the Southern Amazon Rainforest. Until then,

Same Wilf-time!

Same Wilf-channel!

Sources:

R. M. W. Dixon, A Grammar of Yidiny, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yidiny_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra

https://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/gallery/aacg/speakingland/story01/01_images/01_img01b.htm

Google Images