Episode 30 The Original American Languages Part 4

Dr John McWhorter (2019)

Film Review

Originally there were 250 languages in Central America, belong to seven family groups.  South America had 600 languages belonging to 15 families.

The most studied languages in pre-Columbian Latin America are Nahuatt, spoken by the Aztecs in Mexico, and Quechua, spoken by the Incas in Peru.

Some languages in Central America were monosyllabic and tonal, like Chinese and parts of Africa. In fact, many of these languages could be “whistled,” enabling people to communicate complex messages through dense forests and from the top of steep mountains. An example is the Chinantec language, which had short and long vowels but no consonant. Only men used whistled speech.

Other well-known Central American languages include Arawak, spoken in Central America and the Caribbean, and Garifana (a combination of Arawak grammar and Carib words), spoken in northern Central America and adjacent Caribbean islands.*

The South American languages are the least well documented in the world. Some of those studied (including Tuyuca spoken in the Colombian Amazon) have “evidential” markings (like Mongolian). These are prefixes used to show whether you saw something happen, heard about it or only saw evidence it happened.

Lixkryana, spoken in Brazil, has a unique object verb-subject-sentence structure (like Māori in New Zealand). English has a subject-verb-object structure and Latin and German a subject-object-verb structure.

There are also several South American languages with no words for numbers, as in Australian hunter gatherer groups.

In Jarawara, spoken in Brazil, there are only four vowels and 11 consonants, which means some words have multiple different meanings. For example, they use the same word for eat, drink or smoke. They also have no pronouns for he, she and it. They have a pronoun for they but it only applies to living things.

*Following conquest by South American Caribs.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120060