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Garifuna

Karif

Garifuna is an Arawakan language spoken in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Belize, by about 190 thousand people.

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Garifuna · 15.4°N 86.9°W

Garifuna (Karif) is a minority language widely spoken in villages of Garifuna people in the western part of the northern coast of Central America.

It is a member of the Arawakan language family, but an atypical one, since it is spoken outside the Arawakan language area, which is otherwise confined to the northern parts of South America. It is also unusual because it contains a high number of loanwords, both from Carib languages and some European languages, due to a tumultuous past involving warfare, migration and colonization.

The language was once confined to the Antillean islands of St. Vincent and Dominica, but its speakers, the Garifuna people, were deported by the British in 1797 to the north coast of Honduras from where the language and Garifuna people has since spread along the coast south to Nicaragua and north to Guatemala and Belize.

From Wikipedia · Garifuna language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Written down

Sun gürigia nasíruati yuti lun, lidan úarani, lawiwanduní libágari kai le aubai labúsienra, gatu giñe lanagun lungua buidu hadan líbegu.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in Unicode).

Words in Garifuna

MeaningWordRomanization
waterduna
horsexuval
oneaban
twobiñá
threeürüwa
fourgádürü
fiveseingü
tendîsi
hundredsan

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Vocabulary

Grammar

Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.

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