Tom's Miskito Mission

On Long Vowels in Writing and Basic Greetings

Naksa!

I hope your holidays were great!

Thanks for the help with pronounciation. Is there any way to tell the difference with the long and short a's when reading? How do you say goodbye, and what are the differences between naksa, nakisma and nakisa or other greetings?

Blessings,

Aubree

Hi Aubree,

Great holidays, except Saturday I sprained my knee somehow on a snowy mountainside in the Rockies ... very far from the jungle at the moment. Haven't gotten the hang of using ski poles to charge dowhill with in snow hiking.

1. LONG AND SHORT VOWELS: it is "conventional" in written Miskito to mark long vowels with a circumflex (^), especially in the case of minimal pairs, like wini (v. gerund "calling") and wîni (n. my flesh, my body), taya (n. kin, familiy) and tâya (skin, hide), tuba (n. nehpew– or affectionately–boy; shortened version of tubana) and tûba (n. species of freshwater fish, the mojarra). Some people say it is proper to place the circumflex wherever it occurs, but the truth is that hardly anybody does this in practice. Long vowels occur very frequently in first syllables of words borrowed from English. Âts is an adze while ats is the imperative form of the verb "to buy". You might assume that the first syllable of a word, if it is cv (consonant-vowel) contains a long vowel and you would be right at least 75% of the time. If you send me a vocab list I could tell you which has long or short vowels.
2. GOOD BYE: Just as in English, there are a number of ways to say goodbye. Aisabe (from yawan aisabia -we will talk) is the word most people will give you as a translation of goodbye, and it is a very common thing to say. You might say simply praubia, or praui kabia (yawan wal is iimplied ). Literally it means "we will meet" and is equivalent to saying "see ya" to a friend or acquaintance you see regularly. To someone who is going off on a journey or whom you hope to meet again someday (or if you've just met their acquaintance) you might say Kli wal praubia (we will meet again) and you might add on to it Dawan karhnika ra (in God's power) or some similar proper saying. 
3. NAKSA/NAKSMA/NAKISA: These are all, of course, ways to say hello. They are contracted forms and come from the same root construct: nahki (how) and the present tense of the verb kaia (to be). So they are questions. Naksa literally means "How is it?" Naksma literally means "How are you?" And Nakisa is a less contracted form of Naksa, but generally speaking, you will hear the non contracted form Nahki sa? not as a greeting but as a question requesting someone's opinion or description of something (Mamikam, nahki sa? = "How is your mother?"). There is a difference in REGISTER between naksa and naksma which is important to understand, especially in the context of mixed gender or older/younger greetings. If a woman says naksma to a man with whom she is not on intimate terms, or vice versa, the person and greeting might be construed as forward. In the same manner, if a child addresses an adult with naksma the adult might deem that child disrespectful. To be safe, use naksa for formal greetings and naksma with your hommies. You can also say "Nahki nahki?" to be upbeat, or "Dia taksa?" (Waddup?) to be current.

I will post this on my blog, since it might be useful for someone else. Thank you for your interest in Miskito people and language, and for caring enough to ask questions. God bless you, Aubree Snyder.

 

In Danger of Extinction?

The most commonly seen bird species around towns and villages of the Mosquitia are two kinds of buzzards -the Turkey Vulture and the Lesser Yellowhead-- and the Great Tailed Grackle. Ironicly, as these birds proliferate, the original names of two of them in the Miskito language face extinction.
The turkey vulture's status in Miskito language & lore is solidified, because of it's comical persona in local folk tradition. The song USUS MAIRIN ("Female Buzzard") is danced practically every time Miskito culture is celebrated in schools and publc venues. Everybody knows the word usus, the moniker bestowed on this all black vulture in onomatopeic representation of the sneezing sound it typically emits when hopping gimpy-footed around a slaughtered cow, dozens of them under the mango tree, waiting for the butchers with their axes and machetes to be done with their work. Even Spanish speakers know about Usus.

But what of its cousin, the Lesser Yellowhead? This buzzard is more solitary than usus, and more self-respecting, typically flying over fields and river banks, looking for its own food rather than gleaning from people's yards. Most people here will knowingly tell you this vulture is called Yangkru in Miskito, and it is. Yangkru, however, is a word that came into the language as a term borrowed from English, in the days of pidginization, sometime between the buccaneer and the mahogany eras. I'm sure of it. In the Miskito phonology, yangkru approximates "John Crow," the name by which this buzzard has been known in the southern United States for a long time. There is another Miskito word for the Lesser Yellowhead that I learned from my late father-in-law, Inglaton Jackson. That term is Inging.

In all my travels throughout the RAAN Department of Nicaragua and the Villeda Morales incorporated township of Honduras, I haven't found anybody familiar with the term Inging. It could be a word kept alive ony in the Mam dialect of Miskito spoken in the Westernmost corner of the Mosquitia, but my question would be, "What did every other Miskito call it before the term yangkru came into the language?" Nobody can tell me.

Another common and pesky bird which hangs out way too much around people is the Great-tailed Grackle. Every Miskito from the age of five and up knows this one. They call it Sanati. The males are black -so black their feathers flash iridescent blue and purple in strong sunlight- while the females rock a duller ochre hue. Sanati is really smart, and a master thief.  Both male and female are so bold they will sit out on a limb overlooking the kitchen window, watching, awaiting the slightest sign of neglect from the human occupants of the house. Now when I'm talking about a Miskito kitchen window I'm referring to the one with the wooden wash tray permanently nailed outside of it for the washing of plates, pots, and pans. No Miskito housewife who calls herself a Christian would begrudge Sanati for landing on that ledge and pecking at the slops left there after everyone has eaten their fill, but that's not what Sanati is waiting for. Sanati wants to get in ... all the way into the kitchen and pluck a morsel off the master's plate between the time his wife calls him to the table and the moment he's gotten up out of the hammock to go there. It's a thing with Sanati. Sanati thinks he's smarter than we are, and he's out to prove it. He is a terrorist, the Bin Laden of the bird kingdom who will also bomb you from a tree just because he thinks he can get away with it. When he's not bothering people, he will go terrorize bigger birds like buzzards and even hawks. Everyone knows Sanati: he's a bad one.

When I first came to the Mosquitia, in the days before the "Beta-Max" movie theater craze or pirate cable TV,  even before Jim Walter set up an old movie projector in his bodega and showed black-and-white Cantinflas films, there wasn't much canned entertainment for kids, so they had to be creative. One of the fun-nest things for them to do was fish for Sanati. This is how they would do it:

    You take a little piece of meat and you tie it to a length of fishing line, and leave it on the washing tray at the kitchen window. You have to run the line all the way out of the kitchen to the front house, well out of sight. Sanati is smart, you know, and has keen eyesight. So you sit on the steps and wait until you feel the tug on your line. Then you're pretty sure you've got him, but you have to go out to the kitchen to make sure.
    When you see that Sanati has swallowed the meat and you've actually tricked him, you feel very happy. You've captured a terrorist. Now you can have some fun, so you go out into the yard and call all your cousins over. You can take turns flying him around the yard, like those remote control airplanes that rich kids in the United States have. Only you don't need to buy gasoline or batteries or anything. After everyone has had so much fun their sides hurt from laughter, you can let him go. Mostly, it's catch and release, because we respect the animals and the environment. Some of the old Kuka ladies, however -the really old ones- will take him and eat him, though. Kuka Laisan would not eat chicken, because chickens eat poop that little children have left in the yard. But she would eat Sanati. Sanati, for all his evil antics, is a clean bird. He just eats food he sees people eating. That's how smart he is.

Well, I need to get back to my stated purpose: to tell how the original Miskito name for the Great-tailed Grackle is in danger of extinction. Everyone knows that it's called Sanate in Spanish, and that's why all the Miskito people call it Sanati these days. But I learned another term from my late father-in-law, don Inglaton Jackson. He called it Kidaiwra. A lot of people in Brus Laguna called it that, at least back in the day (it's been a long time since I've been there), but I can't find anyone over here in Nicaragua who knows Kidaiwra by that name. What's up with that? It's a word in danger of extinction, I'm afraid, so I feel the need to write it down.

Now every Miskito knows that Ki means cay, key, or island; and Daiwra derives from daiwan, which means animal. So when I tell people that Sanati's real name is Kidaiwra, they say, "Why, does he come from the islands?" I think that yes, that might have been exactly the case. As I've said before, Kidaiwra likes to hang out around people. You never see him out in the woods, hunting for his own food. He's probably not even a native to these parts, but in fact followed English or Spanish people along the path of civilization, which, historically for the Miskito Coast, points to the islands offshore; islands that seafaring Miskito men knew well.  So it was when Sanati first appeared on shore, and the Kuka ladies asked the men in the village what it was, they said, "Baha sika ki daiwra kum sa (That is indeed an animal from the islands)."

The Poetry of Hair

 

Two words in the Miskito language which I believe to be etymologically related are tawa and tangni, "hair" and "flower," respectively. Why do I think that, and why should anyone care? There's no big deal really, I just enjoy reflecting on the way words are engendered like babies, whose genetic makeup is manifest in resemblance to their kin. It's like walking into a town and figuring out who's related to who just by looking at their faces. I especially rejoice when I find poetry in a language created by a people who had never even imagined the existence of classrooms. Writing about these things won't earn me any treasure in heaven or a tenured position at the university; it would be reward enough if perhaps  somebody out there thinks it poignant that the sight of hair and flowers created associations and triggered the same neurons in the pleasure center of long dead Miskito people's brains.

1980. "Mairin pranika lika ai tawa." "The glory of a woman is her hair." I heard this Miskito truism a lot as a young man from the beginning of my sojourn in these parts, and watched it performed live by a host of girls who paraded daily past the health center in Brus Laguna where my eligible friend Scott Taylor and I were housed as Peace Corps volunteers. Repetition of this phrase cut a groove in the vinyl of my consciousness so that it could replay any time without my having to think about it.

In the summer of 1995 I was at my friend Jack Dyer's house house in La Ceiba, when I saw a book on his shelf entitled TANGWEERA, by Charles Napier Bell.  It was a series of fond boyhood recollections written by a British man who grew up with one of the Miskito kings in the first half of the 19th century. I was curious about the title, because the author was obviously making reference to the people from the area around Sandy Bay, who today are commonly known as tawira--the "hairy ones." Tawira is also the name of one of the three principle dialects of the Miskito language. I asked to borrow the book; as I read it became clear that this man had learned to speak Miskito as a young child and must have been quite fluent. I was confident that the Miskito words he recorded in his book were done so faithfully, albeit with an orthographic system that was "English friendly" with respect to the vowels. 

Tawira then, must have been Tangwira back in those days. Interesting. The suffix ira/kira means "possessing an abundance of," so the original lexeme for hair was tang. The morpheme wa denotes noun--dikwa, kuswa, etc. The early tawira word for hair, then, was tangwa; only later was it shortened to tawa.

As I said previously, the present word for flower is tangni. NI is a morpheme roughly translated "with, by means of" and as a suffix is generally used to denote adjective--pakni (deep), lalalni (slippery), twakni (thick), puputni (grey), etc. Tangni literally means tang-like, "having the quality of hair."

The original thinking of the creators of the Miskito language is revealed: a flower is to the plant as a woman's hair is to the person. The glory of a plant is its flower; a flower is beautiful as long black hair. Just because they threw lances at manatees and sea turtles, don't think that all primitive men got the girl by hitting her over the head with a club. Some hunters are tender, some have mad poetry. Just ask the Geico boys.   

Sakamhni Tanka Ba: The Meaning of Sakamhni

kuswa pilalka

hicotee turtle soup is definitely sakamhni

Friday, November 13, 2009

    Today we had Miskito-style fish chowder for lunch: kalwa tapauhka. Snook in coconut broth with green plantains. It's an extremely simple soup; there's a half fish in a huge bowl in front of you ... if you're a man or an American woman it's the tail portion of the fish, but if you're a Miskito woman you get the head. In my bowl there were also two halves of a green plantain. That's all; the soup is mostly broth. You get a bowl of rice with it, and if you're uncouth you can dump your rice into your soup bowl, but if you really want to appreciate the soup you have to take spoonfuls of rice and submerge them into the liquid in such a manner that the rice becomes saturated but the starch doesn't leech out into your soup bowl. It doesn't matter if your entire portion of soup is consumed in this manner ... sometimes you're really hungry and you eat a ton of rice ... but the proper thing to do is to have some pure, unadulterated broth left over after you've finished the fish, the plantains, and enough rice to satisfy your hunger. If you get to the bottom of the bowl and you find 0 fish scales, you must congratulate the cook.

you can tell it's good for fishing when the lagoon has

that smell to it: sakamhni

    BTW the fish head is the tastiest part; it's kind of like eating chicken wings. Once upon a time they practically threw all the chicken wings away and asked you, "What do you want, leg or breast?" but then all of a sudden chicken wings caught on and now everyone wants them. Well, here peope haven't discovered chicken wings so it's still that way; the women pick the the chicken wings out of the bottom of the pot and chow down on them (also the krukmaika--the gizzards). So anyway, my theory is that sooner or later eating fish heads is going to be the big thing. Especially the eyeballs and the brain. Try them if you don't believe me. 

    But this is not what I brought you here to talk about. No, I wanted to talk about linguistics, Miskito words. One of my favorite Miskito words is SAKAMHNI. It's a very unusual word; if the idea of a spelling bee ever comes to the Miskito school system ... hey, that would be a fantastic way to promote the standard rules of orthography in this oral language which everyone writes any way they please ... yes, if you held a Miskitu spelling bee the word sakamhni would probably stump just about everyone and determine the winner. The reason is the /h/; people have a hard time placing the letter h in its proper place in many words because its phonetic purpose is to slam the brakes on the sound of the vowel that comes before it, yet it always occurs as the last sound in the syllable, even if it doesn't immediately follow the vowel it affects. This is the case in the word sakamhni; there is a nasal /m/ between the vowel and the /h/. That's not the kicker, though. The /h/ occurs at the end of the second syllable instead of the first, accentuated one (in Miskito the first syllable is always accentuated), which is even more unusual: SA-kamh-ni

.

the essence of "sakamhni"

    But I'm digressing, getting into matters only grammar nurds care about. What makes the word sakamhni cool is that there is no adequate translation for it in any language. It's a concept that doesn't exist in English, Spanish, French, German, or Japanese. Sakamhni refers to a certain kind of smell, but it's not just a smell. In the category labelled sakamhni are all kinds of things whose odor you wouldn't normally associate with one another. Fish are the number 1 sakamhni creatures, but not just fish on your plate. When the lagoon or the ocean is good for fishing the water smells sakamhni too, just from their bodies swimming in it. So is chicken sakamhni, but you can have 100 chickens running around in your yard, scratching and pecking at bugs, but the air doesn't get sakamhni. Eating chicken makes your hands sakmhni; you've got to scrub them with plenty soap afterward to get rid of the sakamhni smell and feel ... that sticky feeling is also part of being sakmhni. Bats do make the air sakamhni; just a single bat flying by and you can smell it, but bats hardly ever fly solo. The whole place smells like bats in the jungle... it's powerful sakamhni. But I seriously can't tell you whether a cooked bat would be sakamhni, for obvious reasons. Oh yes, and eggs are sakamhni too, but you hardly ever hear of someone calling beef sakamhni. Go figure. It's the apparent randomness of the term that gets me off.

Before I go, I want you to learn how to pronounce the word sakamhni.

the key is to push some air out through your nostrils after you've closed your lips to pronounce the /m/. Just let it out easy, like a connoisseur savoring a fine wine, only this is sakamhni. Pronounce it = taste it. Ready:

SUH-comhhhhhh-nee. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Be sure to wash your hands after eating!!!

Scripture Trot; Psalms 18:1,2

Lawana Nani 18:1,2 (Psalm 18:1,2)

(miskito) Dawan, man yang karhniki

(translation) Lord,    you  my strength 

(literal/syntactical) Lord     you   I/me my strength

latwan mai kaikisni

i love you 

pain/love to you i know/see 

Dawan, man sika kaini kahbisma

Lord,    you do protect me 

Lord,    you (affirmative) my front/future  you cover

yang yukuwaiki pliska

my place of refuge

i/me my hiding place/refuge place

yang swaki ai sasakra

my savior

my slipping (1st pers obj pron.) one who extracts

yang Gadki

my God

I/me my God

walpa tara, yang ra  ai yukukisma ba,

big rock, you who hide me

rock big,     I to   to me you hide (def. art.)

yang kaini kahbaika

my shield

I my frontside/future protector/shield

ai swaki saki karhnika ba

the power of my salvation

me slipping extracting power of the

yukuwaiki kau tara ba.

my greatest refuge.

refuge more big the.

Here are the verses in the NASB:

I love you, Oh Lord, my strength

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer

My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;

My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 

 

COG Declaration of Faith in Miskito (translation draft)

I was recently asked the the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) in Honduras to translate their Declaration of Faith into Miskito. Here it is in rough draft, for anyone out there who would like to make any comments or suggestions for improvement.

Recientemente la Iglesia de Dios en Honduras me pidió hacer una traducción al Misquito de su Declaración de Fe. La rindo a continuación para que personas interesada puedan hacer comentarios o sugerencias para mejorarla.

 

Yawan nani naku kasak lukisa:

Dawan Bila ba lika Witin bui upla sinska param kwaki yan, wauhtaya ra ulbia.

Dawan kumira yumhpa ta wina ban bara sa; kumi sa, kuna Aisa, Luhpia bara Spirit Holikira natka ra sin baku sa.

Aisa Gat Luhpia aisubi takan ba kumi man sa, baha sika Jisas Krais; Spirit Holikira mita yaptika ra kwihra mangkan bara Meri, kau waikna kaikras, witin mita baikan. Jisas, dus prihni ra pruan, bikan, bara pruan nani wina buan. Hibin ra ulan bara na pyua Aisa aihkika ra iwi upla nani tawan aisisa.

Yawan nani sut ba saurka brisa bara Dawan kasakka laka sip alkras wan munisa, baha mihta Dawan la daukan: upla alsut nitka brisa ai kupya lakaia, ai saurka swih tikbia ba dukyara.

Kasakkira kulkan laka bara kli aisubi takan laka ba lika Dawan Jisas talya ra kasak lukanka laka wina balsa.

Upla, kli aisubi takan ninkara, bak sakan laka ra kau kau tihu ra dimi waia sip sa, Jisas talya ra kasak luki, Dawan Bila aisikaiki, bara Spirit Holikira bak ku.    

Dawan ai uplika nani bila kaikisa, ai rayaka ba holi brih wabia.

Spirit Holikira ni aitahbi takanka kum bara sa upla ra, ai kupya suhnu takan ninkara.

Spirit Holikira bui twisa raya nani ni aisaia wankisa, witin ai kupya laka natka ra; baha sika pas sainka sa, yawan Spirit Holikira ni rait pali aihtabi takan sa.

Li ni aihtabi takan laka ba, li munhtara dingkan natka ra daukaia sa, bara ya ya ai kupya lakan ba liura aihtabaia sa, Aisa nina ra, Luhpia nina ra, bara Spirit Holikira nina ra sin.

Dawan wan saurka mana aibapaia ra, wan winatara sin rakaia aitani lukan kan, yawan alsut dukyara.

Yawan Tibil Laka bri kaia, bara bak sakan nani mina ra tahbi kaia sin.

Jisas kli aula sa, kau tausin mani king aimakan pyua balras kainara balbia, Pas taura upla kasakkira pat pruan nani bukbia raiti ba wina, bara lalukra kau rayaka bri nani ba sin brih wabia, pasa ra wal prauaia ba dukyara.

Upla winatara sukwi luan nani ba kli aipaswi raya bubia; bara kasakkira nani raya ban kabia, sakuna saurakira nani ba panis kum ban bri kabia.       

MISKITO 101: THE COLORS

You think this is going to be easy? Here’s how to say the names of some colors in Miskito, straight up:

Black: Siksa (SIK-sa)
White: Pihni (PEEH-nee)
Red: Pauni (POW-nee)
Yellow: Lalahni (LA-lah-nee)
Blue: Blu (blew) (not BLOOOOOOOO)
Green: Siakni (SEEOK-nee)
Purple: Paisawa (PIE-sa-wah)
Grey: Puputni (POO-put-nee)

So far it’s been pretty easy, hasn’t it? I must warn you, however, that you’re going to get some controversy over the words for blue and green. I mean, if you go around asking kindergarden, first and second grade teachers (probably in Spanish, because it’s the only other language most Miskitos speak), “How do you say blue in Miskito?” they will give you a variety of answers. Some will say “blu,” others “siakni” or “sangni.” Some will tell you that “blu” is just a more recent addition borrowed from English, and the original word is either “siakni” or “sangni.” If you ask them, “Well then, how do you say green?” they will give you one of those two words. OK, so what is it then? If first grade teachers can’t get it straight, how do they expect to teach the children, unless they abandon their native language and teach the children in Spanish? Actually, that’s what usually happens.

You are probably thinking, “OK, how about orange? You didn’t give a name for orange.”
Well, the color orange is a problem. There is a plethora of terms people use for the color orange. Here are some: krabu tangni, kakamuk batanka, andris, lalahpau. Do you want to know what they mean literally? Look:

Krabu tangni: flower of the nance tree
Kakamuk batanka: iguana blubber
andris: orange (the fruit)
lalahpau reddish money, or a contraction of yellow-red

Now I’m kind of partial to “iguana blubber” because once you’ve seen iguana blubber you will never forget it. It is indeed bright orange, and it’s good in iguana stew. It doesn’t melt, it holds together, keeping a consistency of, say, silicone, but isn’t chewy. It’s good, really, not like eating implants. But you’ll probably tell me that kakamuk batanka isn’t practical, especially if you play for the Dutch national soccer team, which is known at least in Spanish as the “mechanical orange.” Most Americans would probably prefer the term andris because it would simplify things for English speakers. The problem for Miskito kids however, is that andris is a fruit with a predominantly green skin. The reason why oranges turn orange in Florida is because the temperature drops at night during the season when the fruit is ripening. That doesn’t happen on the steamy Mosquito Coast, and so the kids suck on green skinned oranges. Even the insides aren’t orange; they’re a kind of pale yellow. So I really don’t like Spanish speaking people (naranja/anaranjado) and English speaking people lobbying for that term when we try to establish a standardized lexicon for primary schools. The term lalahpau might sound like something coined by the Esperanto crowd, but I think it’s acceptable. Krabu tangni could be the emotional favorite of many Miskitos, however, both because the tree is ubiquitous and it appeals to poetic sensibilities.

See, I’m not making this up. I’m not trying to be complicated; you ask me something simple and it’s just not that simple. What you don’t want to do, however, is get a million dollar grant to create a bilingual kindergarden curriculum for Miskito children and then get so bogged down in choices, soliciting opinions from every sector, that your money runs out before you have come to any agreement. But that is the most likely scenario in Honduran public education.

If you think that with something as elemental as naming the basic colors a speech community would just naturally come to a collective agreement after a couple of hundred years, you’d be absolutely right. So it’s a mystery why this hasn’t happened. Why would we have to be inventing terms in order to fulfill the requirements of a basic primary school vocabulary? To solve the mystery, the key question to ask is, “Which colors did this speech community deem elemental before contact with Europeans?”

I think that the lack of standard terms for many colors stems from the fact that for most of their history it simply wasn’t a cultural priority to be so specific. Light is a continuum; there are no borders between the colors of a rainbow. When Miskitos looked at the rainbow, they saw the red-orange-yellow side of the spectrum and called it pauni; the blue-green side they called siakni or sangni. So then pauni first meant red, orange, and yellow. The somewhat standard modern word for yellow is lalahni. How do I know that this is a modern term? Because the word lalah probably borrowed from English (la la) means “money”; the morpheme ni denotes adjective, “having the quality of.” Lalahni literally means “having the quality of money”. Obviously then the term arose after contact with Europeans.

Pauni is presently used in terminology that supports this. Egg yokes are called “kalila mahbra paunka”, those yellow-orange Philippine coconuts are “kuku pauni”, and bronze coins are “lalah pauni.”

Blu is also certainly a borrowed term. The word sangni literally means clear, colorless. A clear stream is “li sangni.” A thin, tasteless soup is sangni. In their natural world there are few blue things; those few that are blue are also clear-- the sky (air), the ocean (water), and the eyes of white people --so you can see why the word sangni might mean both. The word siakni is to me a bit of a mystery. There is a small land turtle with a dark carapace named siakwa. The morpheme wa denotes noun, the ni adjective, leaving in both words the lexeme siak; they could be derivative. You have to stretch it a bit, but the siakwa turtle could be said to be a kind of dark green, especially if there’s any moss growing on it. The green turtle, in my opinion, isn’t very green either, so never mind me; there could have been a consensus among the old folks as they sat around the fire looking at the pot full of siakwa. The only other possible derivative I can think of is siahka, which means snot. That can be very green too.

So if sangni means blue or clear, and siakni means green, why do I think that old time Miskitos categorized blue and green as a single color? If you speak Spanish, you can try this experiment. Since there are so many houses painted blue or green, make up some questions about specific houses in a prosperous village (where they actually paint their houses now) that cleverly disguise your intent, but which elicit answers in which your informant will have to use the term “azul” or ”verde” to refer to the house in question. You will find houses that are definitely blue which many will describe as “verde” and vice versa. These people aren’t color blind. The conclusion is there is no sharp distinction between the two colors that is collectively agreed upon. If you write your findings in some linguistic journal, a group of bearded men smoking pipes may let you into their conversation!

Among my Miskito friends this theory is a delicate subject. Every major language in the world has standard terms for these colors. That some basic terms appear to be lacking in Miskito might be used as a justification for calling the language a “dialecto”, which in the vernacular denotes inferiority, is a loathsome thought. My friends have fought so hard in Honduran and Nicaraguan academic circles to have their tongue elevated to the category of “Lengua” in the eyes of the Spanish speaking people. In my thinking there is no shame. Subsistence times were hard in the jungle. Ma and Pa were too tired after a long day on the hunt and in the field to sit around on the colonnade discussing interior design. They had already taken in more natural beauty in one day than most people see in a lifetime; so what if they hadn’t filed away every nuance of color into some verbal category-- they lived it and others just talk about it.

I studied art under an old master of the Bauhaus School who had been a student of Paul Klee. He had us work with a pack of 212 different colors he called “Color Aid.” We had to learn to be familiar with them all; to know their relative hot, cold, wet, and dry properties, identify each complimentary color, and perform various and sundry other color field exercises. They were all elemental colors to us, but we didn’t have a name for each one. I suppose interior decorators might have a name for each one, but I’d be willing to bet there is no agreed upon standard. And anyway, even with all that verbal color-consciousness, interior decorators are a much maligned lot.

I say, for the sake of the school children, let’s just agree upon some terms and get outta here; go get some peccaries or something. So in conclusion, here it is again, with orange:

Black: Siksa (SIK-sa)
White: Pihni (PEEH-nee)
Red: Pauni (POW-nee)
Orange: Lalahpau (LA-lah-pow)
Yellow: Lalahni (LA-lah-nee)
Blue: Blu (blew) (not BLOOOOOOOO)
Green: Siakni (SEEOK-nee)
Purple: Paisawa (PIE-sa-wah)
Grey: Puputni (POO-put-nee)

Miskito, Misquito, or Miskitu?

Many people ask me what’s the correct way to spell the name of the people group and language called Miskito. Some people ask me in English, others in Spanish. No one has ever asked me in Miskito how to spell it, which is slightly amusing to me, considering the fact that of the three, Miskito is the language whose standard orthography is least settled.

To answer the question, I must first state a couple of principles (someone said that if you ask me for the time of day, I’ll tell you how to build a watch):

1. Every language is sovereign with respect to its orthography. That is, each native speech community has the right to determine the systems governing its written language.

2. Although representative democracy is in vogue as a system of political government, in linguistics it’s usually a select few grammar geeks who determine how we must spell a new word.

3. We acquire our sense of “correctness” concerning the spelling of words by repeatedly seeing them spelled in print in a consistent fashion. In remote fourth world places like where the Miskito live, people acquire this sense from non published materials with much orthographic inconsistency, such as personal letters and cardboard signs stapled to the walls of mom and pop stores, resulting in the linguistic equivalent of anarchy.

4. It is a good thing to have a standardized orthographic system by any means. Just as a consistent set of child rearing standards and boundaries in a community results in a stable society, a standardized orthography results in the survival of the language, an educated speech community, and a collective identity with high self esteem.

I’m going to answer the question about how to spell the word “Miskito/Misquito/Miskitu first, so as not to keep you hanging on, but what I really want to talk about is protocol, the “why” I say what I say, so you know I’m not just expressing a personal prejudice.

The English word is “Miskito”. In Spanish it’s “misquito” (when referring to the people group) and “Misquito” (when referring to the name of the language). In Miskito it is spelled “Miskitu”, and pronounced (MEES-kee-too). Got it?

There is an organism called the Real Academia Española, consisting of 46 life members from Spain, as well as up to 60 “correspondents” including Latin Americans, foreign linguists, and honorary members. These academics get to make up the rules for Spanish. If they say the word is spelled misquito, then it’s misquito, regardless of whatever anyone else might think. A lot of Miskito people chafe at that, and some hispanic anthropologists in Honduras and Nicaragua, in deference to the wishes of their native informants, spell it miskitu, but the fact remains that the orthographic rules for one language cannot, and should not be imposed upon another. There does exist a process for submitting desired changes to the Academia, but it is a such long and convoluted process that the capital of China is still Pekín.

English has no Royal Academy. If it did, we Americans probably wouldn’t pay much attention to it anyway. We spell “civilisation” the way we want: civilization. That’s because we beat England in a war, I suppose. Spain ceded independence to the American countries because of international pressure. Spanish speaking Americans still feel that they are linguistically inferior than their lisping European counterparts, and revere the Academia even though their own way of speaking is considered “lenguaje vulgo” and not appropriate for text books. We Americans instead submit to the authority of dictionaries like Merriam-Webster, which are commercial enterprises. How American is that? George and Charles Merriam bought the publishing and revision rights to Noah Webster’s work in 1843, after the famous scholar died. Ironically, Merriam Webster was bought out by the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1964, now owned by one Jaqui Safra, from Switzerland. In other words, our language is in the hands of some Swiss dude! I find that highly amusing. Not to worry, unless you spell Quick N-E-S-S-L-E-E, then expect Homeland Security tapping your phone (I always use a cell anyway).

Regardless of copyright, leaving language regulation in the hands of free enterprise has the advantage of being a whole lot more dynamic than the stodgy Academies of Spain and France. We’ve been writing Beijing for years, since this renders a more approximate pronunciation than does Peking, while still being agreeable to our phonological capabilities. Free enterprise is powered by competition, and in the dictionary business, the more new words you have, the more updated spellings, the more able you are to market your product to a public that’s always looking for “20% MORE” or “NEW FORMULA” on the label. So if we wanted to be sensitive to the native peoples of the world and adapt a more friendly spelling of their names, places, or language, we could do it a lot quicker. But still, I maintain it is we, the English Speakers, who must retain the right to decide how to write words like Miskito in our own language.

Some of you might be hearing me say with a twang, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” You’re thinking, “Now there’s a novelty: a redneck linguist! Probably not any smarter than a fifth grader. ” But the fact is that the concept of language sovereignty works on behalf of all languages, most importantly those indigenous languages such as Miskito that are in the process of establishing their writing systems as they endeavor to raise up a literate generation as well as rescue their mother tongue from the threat of extinction. I have worked for years with people who have been so dominated by the superior prestige assigned to the Spanish language that they believe they have to conform to Spanish rules of orthography when making decisions about how to write Miskito, even when the results would compromise its phonetic and phonological integrity.

I remember when my friend Sam Grey and a group of Miskito teachers created a series of Miskito language textbooks for the schools in Nicaragua under the auspices of the Moravian Church. A lot of money was spent on a high-gloss publication in Colombia, which was presented to the Education Ministers of Nicaragua and Honduras. It was then sent to a team of Miskito public school educators in each country to be evaluated and validated. The reaction was more than critical; the books were met with great indignation, in part I think because certain local people weren’t direct beneficiaries of the grant money, but also in large part because some of the orthographic decisions were viewed as violating some hard-fast laws. It seems that the name of the discoverer of the Americas was rendered “Kristubal Kulung” instead of Cristóbal Colón. Miskito educators were scandalized by the irreverence. But the Admiral of the Ocean Sea was born in Genoa, with the Latin name Christophorus Columbus. His name in modern Italian is Cristoforo Colombo; it has likewise been adapted in every major language. Nevertheless, because of this and the fact that Nicaragua was rendered “Nikarawa” in Miskito, thousands of books worth many thousands of dollars were thrown out before they ever reached the classroom. The national heads of education in Nicaragua and Honduras had made no comment about these adaptations; it was the group of Miskito professionals who considered unacceptable the idea of making a sovereign decision that would conform the spelling of proper names to the native phonology.

It is interesting to consider the impetus behind Noah Webster’s project of creating a dictionary of American English. Let me copy and paste something from Wikipedia:

As a teacher, he had come to dislike American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room school houses, poorly staffed with untrained teachers, and poorly equipped with no desks and unsatisfactory textbooks that came from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing a three volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar (published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785). His goal was to provide a uniquely American approach to training children. His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamor of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation. Webster rejected the notion that the study of Greek and Latin must precede the study of English grammar. The appropriate standard for the American language, argued Webster, was, "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions", which meant that the people-at-large must control the language; popular sovereignty in government must be accompanied by popular usage in language. "The truth is general custom is the rule of speaking—and every deviation from this must be wrong."

As a spiritual and academic mentor to my Miskito brothers, I am committed to truth and freedom. Things in the physical world are but patterns of things in the spiritual world. I’m not going to succumb to any pressure from the PC crowd to employ the word “Miskitu” when speaking or writing in English. I’m going to write Brazil with a “z” rather than with an “s” unless I’m writing in Spanish or Portuguese. And when I’m working in Miskito, I’m going to write “miriki”, not “American”, “inglis” not English. I believe that is how it should be. And I have just built you a fine watch.