Nheengatu language

The name of the language derives from the words nhẽẽga (meaning "language" or "word") and katu (meaning "good").^[3][9] Nheengatu is referred to by a wide variety of names in literature, including Nhengatu, Tupi Costeiro, Geral, Yeral (in Venezuela), Tupi Moderno,^[10]: 13 Nyengato, Nyengatú, Waengatu, Neegatú, Is'engatu, Língua Brasílica, Tupi Amazônico^[3], Ñe'engatú, Nhangatu, Inhangatu, Nenhengatu,^[9] Yẽgatú, Nyenngatú, Tupi, and Lingua Geral. It is also commonly referred to as the Língua Geral Amazônica (LGA) in Brazil.^{[citation needed]}

Nheengatu is descended from the extinct Tupinambá language and belongs to the Tupi–Guarani branch of the Tupi language family.^[11] The Tupi–Guarani language family is a large and diverse group of languages, including, for example, Xeta, Siriono, Arawete, Kaapor, Kamayura, Guaja, and Tapirape. Many of these languages differed years before the Portuguese colonization of what is now Brazil. Over time, the term "Tupinamba" was used to describe groups that were "linguistically and culturally related".

Comparison between Brazilian Portuguese, Old Tupi, and Nheengatu with personal pronouns:

Eduardo de Almeida Navarro, a Brazilian philologist specializing in Nheengatu, argues that with its current characteristics, Nheengatu would only have emerged in the 19th century as a natural evolution of the Tupi language.

Comparison between Tupi, Portuguese, and Nheengatu variants:

In addition to the previously mentioned general language of São Paulo, now extinct, Nheengatu is closely related to ancient Tupi, an extinct language, and to Guarani of Paraguay, which, far from being extinct, is the most spoken language in the country and one of its official languages. Ancient Nheengatu and Guarani were mutually intelligible.^[12]

Belonging to the Tupi–Guarani linguistic family, Nheengatu emerged in the 18th century, descending from the now-extinct Amazonian Tupinambá, a regional Tupi variant that originated in the Odisseia Tupínambá. The exodus of that nation, fleeing from Portuguese invaders on the Bahia coast, entered the Amazon and settled first in Maranhão, and from there to the Guajará Bay (Belém), the mouth of the Tapajós river, to the Tupinambarana island (Parintins), between the borders of Pará and Amazonas. The language of the Tupinambás then became a lingua franca, which in contact with the conquered languages gained its differentiation, hence why the Arawak peoples of the Parintins region came to be called Tupinambaranas (meaning "fake Tupinambá").

By the early 17th century, the Portuguese had conquered the Amazon and established the colonial state of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, whose capital, Belém, was known as Cidade dos Tupinambás or Tupinambá Marií. In pursuit of catechism, Franciscan and Jesuit priests codified the grammar and orthography of the local lingua franca, which over time developed into the Northern General Language, also known as the Amazonian General Language, a name still in use today. Its development occurred in parallel with that of the São Paulo General Language. Nheengatu subsequently spread throughout the Amazon as a tool of colonization, Portuguese dominion, and linguistic standardization. Many peoples came to adopt it as their primary language at the expense of their own; the Hanera, better known as the Baré, are one such example; their shift to Nheengatu ultimately led to the extinction of their native tongue. The Maraguá people, themselves longstanding Nheengatu speakers, have more recently undertaken efforts to revitalize their own language, and today Maraguá is taught alongside Nheengatu in local schools.

The number of speakers of other languages vastly outnumbered the Portuguese settlers in the Amazon, so much so that the Portuguese themselves adapted to the native language. A Portuguese colonist stated: "To speak or converse in the colony of Grão Pará, I had to use Nheengatu; if not, I would be talking to myself, since no one used Portuguese, except in the government palace in Belém and among the Portuguese themselves."^[13][4]

The General Language was established as the official language from 1689 to 1727 in Grão Pará and Maranhão. In order to erase the Amazonian identity, the Portuguese language was promoted, but did not see much success. In the mid-18th century, the Amazonian General Language, along with the related São Paulo General Language, was used throughout the colony. At this point, Tupinambá remained intact, but as a chiefly liturgical language, while the General Language was used for commmunication. By the mid-18th century, the Amazon and Tupinambá General Languages were already distinct.^[14]

Nheengatu continued to evolve as it expanded into the Alto Rio Negro region through contact with other languages such as Marawá, Baníwa, Warekana, Tucano, and Dâw (Cabalzar; Ricardo 2006 in Cruz 2015).

The General Language evolved into two branches, the Northern General Language (Amazonian) and the Southern General Language (Paulista), which at its height became the dominant language of the vast Brazilian territory.

An anonymous manuscript from the 18th century is emblematically titled Dictionary of the general language of Brazil, spoken in all the towns, places, and villages of this vast State, written in the city of Pará, year 1771.

If Nheengatu was the major obstacle for the cultural and linguistic domination of Portuguese in the region, the colonizers saw that it was necessary to take it away from the people and impose the Portuguese language, which at first was not successful since the general language was very well rooted both among indigenous people and in the speech of blacks and whites themselves. The language was banned by Pombal's government, who intended to impose the Portuguese language in Brazil. Hence, many places had their names changed from the Northern General language to names of places and cities in Portugal, such as Santarém, Aveiro, Barcelos, Belém, Óbidos, Faro, Alenquer, and Moz.

A regional ban on the Northern General language came right after the Cabanagem (a separatist revolt on the Grão-Pará province caused by insatisfaction of the people by their living conditions and the elite's ressentment after the Brazilian independence and the abdication of Pedro I of Brazil), after the rebels were defeated (1860), the regencial Brazilian government imposed a harsh persecution on the speakers of Nheengatu. Half of the male population of Grão-Pará was murdered and anyone who was caught speaking in Nheengatu was punished. The imposition of the Portuguese language this time had an effect and with the advent of Portuguese schools, the population was shepherded to the new language.^{[citation needed]}

Also in the 20th century, economic and political events like the Amazon Rubber Boom, which brought huge waves of government encouraged settlers from the Northeast to the Amazon, led to an increased Portuguese presence. This again forced indigenous peoples to move or be subjected to forced labor. The language was again influenced by the increased presence of Portuguese speakers.

Nheengatu remained mainly among the most distant inhabitants of the urban centers, in the families descended from the cabanos and among unconquered peoples. Furthermore, "tapuios"^{[citation needed]} (ribeirinhos) kept their accent and part of their speech tied to their language. Until 1920 it was common for Nheengatu to be used in traditional commercial centers in Manaus, Santarém, Parintins, and Belém.

Nheengatu is spoken in the Alto Rio Negro region, in the state of Amazonas, in the Brazilian Amazon and in neighboring parts of Colombia and Venezuela. There are potentially as many as 19,000 Nheengatu speakers worldwide, according to Ethnologue (2005),^[15] although some journalists have reported as many as 30,000.^[16][17] Currently, it is still spoken by around 73.31% of the 29,900 inhabitants of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (IBGE 2000 Census), around 3,000 people in Colombia, and around 2,000 people in Venezuela, especially in the Rio Negro river basin (Uaupés and Içana rivers).^[15] Furthermore, it is the native language of the rural caboclo population of the area and is a common language of communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, or between Indigenous peoples of different languages. It is also an instrument of ethnic affirmation of Amazonian indigenous peoples who have lost their native languages, such as Barés, Arapaços, Baniuas, Uarequenas, and others.

Ethnologue rates Nheengatu as "changing" with a rating of 7 on the Gradual Intergenerational Interruption Scale (GIDS) (Simons and Fennig 2017). According to this scale, this classification suggests that "the population of children may use the language among themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children". According to the UNESCO Atlas of Endangered Languages of the World, Nheengatu is classified as "severely endangered".^[18] The language has recently regained some recognition and prominence after being suppressed for many years.

In December 2002, Nheengatu gained official language status alongside Portuguese in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in accordance with local law 145/2002.^[3] Now Nheengatu is one of the four official languages of the municipality.^[19]

In 1998, University of São Paulo professor Eduardo de Almeida Navarro founded the Tupi Aqui organization dedicated to promoting the teaching of historical Tupi and Nheengatu in high schools in São Paulo and elsewhere in Brazil.^[3] Professor Navarro wrote a textbook for teaching Nheengatu that Tupi Aqui makes available, along with other teaching materials, on a website hosted by the University of São Paulo.^[20]

In 2007, USP established the first Brazilian university extension course dedicated to the study of Nheengatu. In 2012, the language was incorporated into the graduate program in translation studies. Consequently, in 2016 Graciliano Ramos's A terra dos meninos pelados was translated into Nheengatu.^[21] Translations contribute to lexical revitalization; this translation of Ramos's work included linguistic and lexical research on Nheengatu, allowing for the use of obsolete words remembered only by the elders or already completely forgotten and replaced by borrowings from Portuguese,^[22] although borrowings adopted more than a century ago—now fully integrated into the language's tradition—were also employed.^[23] In 2017, The Little Prince was also translated as part of a master's dissertation supervised by USP professor Eduardo de Almeida Navarro. Likewise, in many instances the translation employed equivalent terms, adaptations, neologisms, and the revival of archaic words; for example, the tiger was replaced with yawareté-pinima (jaguar) and wheat with awatí (corn), and the very title revived an old expression which served "to connect a word that had fallen out of use with the naming of a character in the book who was mysterious and little known".^[24]

In 2021, "Nheengatu App" was launched, becoming the first application for teaching an Indigenous language in Brazil. It teaches the Tapajoara variant of the language.^[25] Its release was supported by the Aldir Blanc Law [pt] and the Secretariat of Culture of Pará.^[25][26][27] According to its creator Suellen Tobler, the app was used in Indigenous schools in the Lower Tapajós region, and by September 2023 approximately 2,200 users had registered.^[25] In March 2024, the project was presented at Campus Party Brasília.^[25][27] Other Brazilian Indigenous groups showed interest in the initiative, and Tobler went on to co-author two other apps for teaching native Brazilian languages.^[27]

In 2023, the Brazilian Constitution was translated into Nheengatu, marking the first time it was rendered into an Indigenous language—until then, it had been translated only into Spanish and English.^[28][29][30] The translation was carried out by 15 bilingual Indigenous individuals from the Upper Negro River and Middle Tapajós regions,^[a] through a project sponsored by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and the National Council of Justice, within the framework of the United Nations's International Decade of Indigenous Languages.^[28][30] They worked for at least three hours a day over the course of three months; project curator and then National Library president Marco Lucchesi stated the work was intense with specialists available around the clock to answer any questions.^[31] Then STF president Rosa Weber attended the launch event in São Gabriel da Cachoeira^[b] and stated Nheengatu was chosen because of its significance to the Amazon region.^[30] Later, Weber presented a copy to Lucchesi at the National Library, the first time in 100 years that a head of the judiciary had visited it.^[29][32]

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.^[20] Lima and Sirvana (2017) provides a sociolinguistic study of Nheengatu in the Pisasu Sarusawa community of the Baré people, in Manaus, Amazonas.

In 2023, the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (Brazilian Constitution) promulgated in 1988, was translated into Nheengatu for the first time.^[33]

There are eight word classes in Nheengatu: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, postpositions, pronouns, demonstratives, and particles.^[11]

Pedro Luiz Sympson (1876)

A! xé ánga, hu emoté i Iára. / Xé abú iu hu rori ána Tupã recé xá ceiépi. / Maá recé hu senú i miaçúa suhi apipe abasáua: / ahé recé upáem miraitá hu senecáre iché aié pepasáua. / Maá recé Tupã hu munha iché áramau páem maá turuçusáua, / i r'ira puranga eté. / Y ahé icatusáua xé hu muçaim ramé, r'ira péaca upáem r'iapéaca ramé, maá haé aitá hu sequéié.

Pe. Afonso Casanovas (2006)

Aikwé paá yepé tetama puranga waá yepé ipawa wasú rimbiwa upé. Kwa paá, wakaraitá retama. Muíri akayú, paá, kurasí ara ramé, kwá uakaraitá aywã ta usú tawatá apekatú rupí. Muíri viaje, tausú rundé, aintá aría waimí uyupuí aitá piripiriaka suikiri waá irũ, ti arã tausaã yumasí tauwatá pukusawa.

Eduardo de Almeida Navarro (2011)

1910 ramé, mairamé aé uriku 23 akaiú, aé uiupiru ana uuatá-uatá Amazônia rupi, upitá mími musapíri akaiú pukusaua. Aé ukunheséri ana siía mira upurungitá uaá nheengatu, asuí aé umunhã nheengarisaua-itá marandua-itá irũmu Barbosa Rodrigues umupinima ana uaá Poranduba Amazonense resé.

Aline da Cruz (2011)

A partir di kui te, penhe nunka mais pesu pekuntai aitekua yane nheenga. Yande kuri, mira ita, yasu yakuntai. Ixe kuri asu akuntai perupi. Ixe kua mira. Ixe asu akuntai perupi. Penhe kuri tiã pesu pekuntai. Pepuderi kuri penheengari yalegrairã yane felisidaderã.

Sample from book Yasú Yapurũgitá Yẽgatú (2014)

Se mãya uyutima nãnã kupixawa upé. Nãnã purãga yaú arama yawẽtu asuí purãga mĩgaú arama yuiri. Aikué siya nãnã nũgaraita. Purãga usemu mamé iwí yumunaniwa praya irũmu.

Roger Manuel López Yusuino (Venezuelan Nheengatu) (2013)

Tukana aé yepé virá purangava asoi orikú bando ipinima sava, ogustari oyengari kuemaite asoi osemo ara ramé osikari arama ombaó vasaí iyá. Tukana yepé virá porangava yambaó arama asoi avasemo aé kaáope asoi garapé rimbiva ropí.^{[Where are the English glosses for the texts?]}

• Afonso Casasnovas
• Língua Geral
• Region of Cabeça do Cachorro