Nheengatu

There are around 2000 speakers in Venezuela, 3000 in Colombia, and around 3000 in Brazil. However, there are inconsistencies across literature with regards to the number of speakers of Nheengatu: the Summer Institute of Linguistics gives an estimate of 3000 speakers in Brazil, where as other sources have cited the speakers to be at around 30,000 (Ângelo, 1998), which is highly unlikely based on the total population of 41,885 of São Gabriel da Cachoeira.[3]

There are perhaps around 19,000 Nheengatu speakers worldwide according to The Ethnologue (2005),[5] although some journalists have reported as many as 30,000.[6][7] The language has recently regained some recognition and prominence after having been suppressed for many years. It is spoken in the Upper Rio Negro region of Amazonas state, in the Brazilian Amazon, and in neighboring portions of Colombia and Venezuela. It is the native language of the area's rural population, and it is also used as a common language of communication between Indians and non-Indians, and between Indians from different tribes. Its use is also a way for some of the native peoples who have lost their original languages to affirm their ethnic identity, as in the case of the Barés, the Arapaços, the Baniwa people, the Werekena and others.

In 1998, University of São Paulo professor Eduardo de Almeida Navarro founded the organization Tupi Aqui (Tupi Here) dedicated to promoting the teaching of historic Tupi and Nheengatu in high schools in São Paulo and elsewhere in Brazil.[3][8] Professor Navarro has written a textbook for the teaching of Nheengatu which Tupi Aqui makes available, together with other teaching materials, on a website hosted by the University of São Paulo.[9]

In December 2002, Nheengatu gained the status of official language alongside Portuguese in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Brazil, where many speakers are concentrated, pursuant to local law 145/2002.[3]

Ethnologue classifies Nheengatu as “shifting”, with a ranking of 7 on the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) (Simons and Fennig 2017). According to this scale, this rating suggests that “the child-bearing population can use the language amongst themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children”. According to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, Nheengatu is classified as “severely endangered” (Moseley 2010).

To understand Nheengatu as it exists today, it is crucial to understand its historical origins and its evolution. Moore (2014) documents the historical development of Nheengatu, which is a case of language contact that has stretched over five hundred years, ever since the Portuguese landed in Brazil in 1500. Upon European contact, there was a lot of cultural and commercial exchange. European men also sought after local women and started families, producing children (or mestizos) who would speak their native language, which is the now-extinct precursor of Nheengatu called Tupinambá (also known as Brasílica or Coastal Tupi). Europeans also learned this language in order for them to act as middlemen, and Tupinambá went on to be used in the colony after the Portuguese settled down in the new lands permanently.[4] By the mid-16th century, Jesuits arrived in Bahia, Brazil. These missionaries were active learners of the native languages, even producing language manuals. Better-known linguistic works from the 16th and early 17th century are Arte da Grammatica da Lingoa mais usada na costa do Brasil by Father José de Anchieta (1595) and Arte da Língua Brasilíca by Luis Figueira (1621).[4][10]

Amazonia was established as the second colony at the beginning of the 17th century. At the mouth of the Amazon, the state of Maranhão was linguistically diverse, and faced an influx of immigrants from Brazil who spoke Tupinambá: “Indians, whites, blacks, mulattos and mestizos leaving their homes in Brazil to populate the northern colony brought the Brasílica with them”.[4] The number of speakers of other languages immensely outnumbered the Portuguese settlers in this second colony. With this influx of immigrants from Brazil, Tupinambá was the language that people would go to within the colony. (Rodrigues 1996a and Freire 2004)

Língua Geral was established as an official language from 1689-1727, after which Portuguese was promoted instead, but to no avail. By the mid 18th century, Língua Geral Amazônica (distinct from Língua Geral Paulista, a similar variety used farther south) was used throughout the colony. At this point, Tupinambá remained intact, but as a “liturgical language”.[4] The languages used in daily life had evolved drastically over the century due to language contact, with Tupinambá as the “language of the ritual acts, and Língua Geral Amazônica the language of popular communication and, therefore, of religious instruction”.[11] Moore (2014) observes that by the mid-18th century, Língua Geral Amazônica and Tupinambá were already distinct from each other.[4] By then, the original Tupinambá community was facing a decline, but other speech communities were still required by the Portuguese missionaries to learn the Tupinambá language. Efforts to communicate between communities resulted in the ‘corruption’ of the Tupinambá language, hence the distinction between Tupinambá and Língua Geral Amazônica.

Also during the mid 18th century, however, the indigenous population then faced a sharp decline due to disease, being forced into hard labour and being oppressed by their Portuguese colonisers. There was an active push by the colonisers to increase the Portuguese presence: villages were eradicated along the Amazon, and there was an effort to replace Língua Geral Amazônica with Portuguese. There were different varieties of Tupinambá within the different communities along the Amazon, but these varieties were largely replaced by Portuguese at the beginning of the 19th century.[11] 1822 marked Brazil’s independence; after which there was a large revolt, called the Cabanagem, against the Europeans. This involved Indians, caboclos and blacks, over a decade, and much blood was shed. 40,000 lives were lost; all of which were from the Nheengatu-speaking community.[12] With the increase in immigration due to urbanization, remaining speakers of Língua Geral Amazônica, or Nheengatu, were pushed to more remote areas in western Amazonia. Linguistic documents were also published during this time, due to increased interest in Nheengatu.

Nheengatu continued to evolve in the 20th century, as it expanded in the Upper Rio Negro region. There was contact with other languages such as Baré, Baniwa, Warekana, Tukano and Dâw (Cabalzar; Ricardo 2006 in Cruz 2015) Due to significant economic and political events such as the Rubber Booms, Portuguese presence was once again felt due to these events, forcing indigenous populations to relocate or into hard labour. Their language, naturally, was once again influenced with the increased presence of Portuguese speakers.[4]

Hence, Nheengatu has evolved tremendously over the course of time, since its origins as Tupinambá.

Nheengatu developed from the now-extinct Tupinambá language, and belongs to the Tupi-Guarani branch of the Tupi language family.[4] The Tupi-Guarani language family accounts for a large, diverse group of languages “including, for example, Xetá, Sirionó, Araweté, Ka’apor, Kamayurá, Guajá, and Tapirapé”. Many of these languages had differentiated years before the Portuguese arrived in Brazil. Over time, the term Tupinambá was employed to describe groups that were “linguistically and culturally related”, even though the original tribe was mostly gone.

Over the course of its evolution since its beginnings as Tupinambá, extensive research has been done on Nheengatu. There have been studies done at each phase of its evolution, but much has been focused on how aspects of Nheengatu, such as its grammar or phonology, have changed upon contact over the years. (Facundes et al. 1994 and Rodrigues 1958, 1986).

As mentioned earlier, the first documents that were produced were by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Arte da Grammatica da Lingoa mais usada na costa do Brasil by Father José de Anchieta (1595) and Arte da Língua Brasilíca by Luis Figueira (1621). These were detailed grammars that served their religious purposes. Multiple dictionaries have also been written over the years (Mello 1967, Grenand and Epaminondas 1989, Barbosa 1951). More recently, Stradelli (2014) also published a Portuguese-Nheengatu dictionary.

There have also been several linguistic studies of Nheengatu more recently, such as Borges (1991)’s thesis on Nheengatu phonology and Cruz (2011)’s detailed paper on the phonology and grammar of Nheengatu. She also studied the rise of number agreement in modern Nheengatu, by analyzing how grammaticalization occurred over the course of its evolution from Tupinambá (Cruz 2015). Cruz (2014) also studies reduplication in Nheengatu in detail, as well as morphological fission in bitransitive constructions. A proper textbook for the conducting of Nheengatu classes has also been written. (Navarro 2011). Lima and Sirvana (2017) provides a sociolinguistic study of Nheengatu in the Pisasu Sarusawa community of the Baré people, in Manaus, Amazonas.

Language documentation agencies (such as SOAS, Museu do Índio, Museu Goeldi and Dobes) are currently not engaged in any language documentation project for Nheengatu. However, research on Nheengatu by Moore (1994) was supported by Museu Goeldi and the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq), and funded by the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) and the Inter-American Foundation. In this study, Moore focused on the effects of language contact, and how Nheengatu evolved over the years with the help of a Nheengatu-speaking informant. Moore (2014) urges for the “location and documentation of modern dialects of Nheengatu”, due to their risk of becoming extinct.[4]

Anthropological research has been done on the changing cultural landscapes along the Amazon, as well as life of the Tupinambá people and their interactions with the Jesuits.[13] Floyd (2007) describes how populations navigate between their “traditional” and “acculturated” spheres.[14] Other studies have focused on the impact of urbanization on Indigenous populations in the Amazon (de Oliveira 2001).

There are eight word classes in Nheengatu: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, postpositions, pronouns, demonstratives and particles.[4] These eight word classes are also reflected in Cruz (2011)’s Fonologia e Gramática do Nheengatú. In her books, Cruz includes 5 chapters in the Morphology section that describes lexical classes, nominal and verbal lexicogenesis, the structure of the noun phrase and grammatical structures. In the section on lexical classes, Cruz discusses personal pronominal prefixes, nouns and their subclasses (including personal, anaphoric and demonstrative pronouns as well as relative nouns), verbs and their subclasses (such as stative, transitive and intransitive verbs) and adverbial expressions. The subsequent chapter on nominal lexicogenesis discusses endocentric derivation, nominalization and nominal composition. Under verbal lexicogenesis in Chapter 7, Cruz covers valency, reduplication and the borrowing of loanwords from Portuguese. The following chapter then discusses the distinction between particles and clitics, including examples and properties of each grammatical structure.