434 



THE AHAWACK LANGUAGE OF GUIANA 



In this way sometimes words of formidable length are manufactured, as : 



massukussukuttunnuanikaobibii, you should not have been washed to-day. 



Negation may be expressed either by the prefix m or ma, as mayahaddinikade, I do not walk (where the prefix 

 throws the pronoun to the end of the word, and gives it the form appropriate for that position), or else by the adverb 

 kurru, not. But if both these negatives are used, they make an affirmative, as madittinda Jcurru Qott, I am not 

 unacquainted with God. 



COMPOSITION OF WORDS AND SENTENCES. 



"In general," remarks Prof. Von Martius, "this language betrays tho poverty and cumbrousness of other South 

 American languages ; yet in many expressions a glimpse is caught of a far reaching, ideal background." 4 Wo see 

 it in the composition and derivation of some words ; from haikan to pass by, comes haikahu death, tho passing 

 away, and aiihaku, marriage, in which, as in death, the girl is lost to her parents ; from kansan to be pregnant, comes 

 kattakw the firmament, big with, all things which arc, and kassahu behil, tho house of the firmament, the sky, the 

 day ; from Ukkil the heart, comes ukhiiraliii, tho family, tho tribe, those of one blood, whose hearts beat in unison, and 

 UkilaM a person, one whose heart beats and who therefore lives, and also, singularly enough, ukkuraliil pus, no doubt 

 from that strange analogy which in so many other aboriginal languages and myths identified the product of suppu- 

 ration with the semen, maxculinum, the physiological germ of life. 



The syntax of the language is not clearly set forth by any authorities. Adjectives generally, but not always, 

 follow the words they qualify, and propositions are usually placed after tho noun, and often at the end of a sentence ; 

 thus, pent, (Spanish perro) assimakaka naha ci, the dog barks her at. To display more fully tho character of the 

 tongue, I shall quote and analyze a verso from the Act Apostelnu, tho 11th verso of tho 14th chapter, which in the 

 English Protestant version reads : 



And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up thoir voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, 

 The gods arc come down to us in tho likeness of men. 



In Arawack it is : 



Addikitti uijulm Paulus anissiabiru, kakannakiiku na assimakaka hurki'trcn Lycaonia adian ullukku hiddin : 

 Amallitakoananntti lukkunu dia na bute wakkarruhu, nattukuda aijumiinoria wibiti hinna. 



Literally : 



They— seeing (addin to see, gerund) the— people Paulus what— had been done (anin to do, anisna to have 

 been done), loudly they called altogether the — Lycaonia speech in, thus, The — gods (present partioiplo of amallilin to 

 make; the same appellation which the ancient Greeks gave to poets, itaiyrai makers, tho Arawacks applied to the 

 divine powers) men like, us to now (bute nota prsesentis) are — come-down from— above— down— here ourselves 

 because — of. 



AK1TLIATIONS OF THE AHAWACK. 



The Arawacks are essentially of South American origin and affiliations. Tho earliest explorers of the mainland 

 report them as living on tho rivers of Guiana,, and having settlements even south of tho Equator. 5 Do Laet in his 

 map of Guiana locates a largo tribe of "Arowaccas" three degrees south of tho Hue, on tho right bank of the 

 Amazon. Dr. Spix during his travels in Brazil met with fixed villages of them near Ponteboa, on tho river Solimoes 

 and near Tabatinga and Oast™ d'Avelaes. 6 They extended westward beyond the mouth of the Orinoco, and we even 

 hear of them in the province of Santa Marta, in the mountains south of Lako Maracaybo. 7 



While their language has great verbal differences from the Tupi of Brazil ami tho Carib, it has also many verbal 



1 Boitragt wr EthmgrqphU und Sjra thenhunde America's tumal BrasiUmi, If. L, p. 705 (Leipzig, 1867). 



3 Tin La*t, NovUt Orbit, lib. xvl!., cap. vl. 



■ Martins, EtJmographU wnd Spraefomhmd* America's, II. I,, S. 687. 



7 Antonio Julian, La 1'erla dr. la America, la Provincla dc Santa Maria, p. M9. 



