Wayuu
Guajiro
Wayuunaiki
Pronunciation[waˈjuːnaiki]
Native toVenezuela, Colombia
Ethnicity790,000 Wayuu people (2011 & 2019 censuses)[1]
Native speakers
420,000 (2008–2012)[1]
Arawakan
Latin script
Official status
Regulated byCentro Etnoeducativo Kamusuchiwoꞌu
Language codes
ISO 639-3guc
Glottologwayu1243
ELPGuajiro
Extent of the Wayuu people and language
PeopleWayuu
LanguageWayuunaiki
CountryWajiira

Wayuu (Wayuu: Wayuunaiki [waˈjuːnaiki]), or Guajiro, is a major Arawakan language spoken by 400,000 indigenous Wayuu people in northwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia on the Guajira Peninsula and surrounding Lake Maracaibo.

There were an estimated 300,000 speakers of Wayuunaiki in Venezuela in 2012 and another 120,000 in Colombia in 2008, approximately half the ethnic population of 400,000 in Venezuela (2011 census) and 400,000 in Colombia (2018 census).[1] Smith (1995) reports that a mixed Wayuu—Spanish language is replacing Wayuunaiki in both countries. However, Campbell (1997) could find no information on this.

Recent developments

To promote bilingual education among Wayuu and other Colombians, the Kamusuchiwoꞌu Ethno-educative Center (Spanish: Centro Etnoeducativo Kamusuchiwoꞌu) came up with the initiative of creating the first illustrated Wayuunaiki–Spanish, Spanish–Wayuunaiki dictionary.[2]

In December 2011, the Wayuu Taya Foundation and Microsoft presented the first ever dictionary of technology terms in Wayuunaiki,[3][4] after having developed it for three years with a team of technology professionals and linguists.

Dialects

The two main dialects are Wüinpümüin and Wopumüin, spoken in the northeast and southwest of the peninsula, respectively. These dialects are mutually intelligible, as they are minimally distinct. The extinct Guanebucan language may actually have been a dialect of Wayuunaiki.. The main difference between Wüinpümüin and Wopümüin is that Wüinpümüin uses jia as the 3rd person feminine pronoun, and jaya for the second person plural, while Wopümüin uses shia as the 3rd person feminine, and jia as the second person plural. There are minor vocabulary differences, but the main one is only related to the pronouns, and their respective prefixes.[5]

Phonology

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i ⟨i⟩ ɨ ⟨ü⟩ u ⟨u⟩
Mid ɛ ⟨e⟩ ɔ ⟨o⟩
Open a ⟨a⟩

Note: ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ are more open than in English. ⟨a⟩ is slightly front of central, and ⟨ü⟩ is slightly back of central. All vowels can either occur in short or long versions, since vowel length is distinctive.

Consonants
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m ⟨m⟩ n ⟨n⟩
Plosive p ⟨p⟩ t̪ ⟨t⟩ t͡ʃ ⟨ch⟩ k ⟨k⟩ ʔ ⟨ꞌ⟩
Fricative s ⟨s⟩ ʃ ⟨sh⟩ h ⟨j⟩
Flap ɺ ⟨l⟩
Trill r ⟨r⟩
Semivowel w ⟨w⟩ j ⟨y⟩

⟨l⟩ is a lateral flap pronounced with the tongue just behind the position for the Spanish ⟨r⟩, and with a more lateral airflow.

Grammar

The personal pronouns in Wayuunaiki are [5][6][7]

Wayuunaiki personal pronouns
singular plural
1st person taya waya
2nd person pia jia/jaya
3rd person nia (he)

shia/jia (she)

 naya

Wayuunaiki uses personal prefixes derivated from the pronouns, along with 3 extra non-pronoun derived prefixes (ka- - posessive, ma- - negative, pa- - dual (not commonly used)). There also exists a 10th personal prefix for the unspecified/indefinite, labeled as the “zero person”, a-. The vowels in the personal prefixes change depending on the first vowel and consonants of the verb, noun, or preposition it is placed on, dubbed vocalic mutation. The prefixes that correspond with the -aya ending pronouns typically follow the beginning vowel of the mentioned word classes, while the ones that correspond with the -ia ending pronouns almost always go through vocalic mutation. There are rules to what vowel is used when, but typically, aya- pronoun derived and the 4 non-pronoun derived prefixes use a, e, or o, while the remaining 3 -ia pronoun derived use ü, i, and u respectively to the previous. These prefixes are used when expressing a verb with the objective construcion, or, for the pronoun-derivated prefixes, when expressing someone’s ownership of something.[7]

There are 9 triads of suffixes for the singular masucline animate, singular feminine animate/general inanimate, and the general plural. These suffixes can manifest in tense, aspect, and mood suffixes for verbs, derivational words, the definite article suffixes, or in the case of triad G, the negative ma- verb prefix’s suffixes.[7]

The most common triad of suffixes in verbs is triad A (shi/sü/shii), the general time suffixes, also named as “present-past time”, where it combines the English and Spanish equivalents of the basic present and the basic past tense. Whichever equivalent is being implied depends on the context of the situation, and sometimes can be interpreted or translated as a completely different tense, the present-continuous (named “future imminent” in the studies done over Wayuunaiki), which has its own suffix triad, using triad B and combining it with -i- (-ichi, -irü, -ina).[7]

Wayuunaiki is agglutinative, with the majority of ways of expressing aspect and mood being used with suffixes, attached to the end of a verb. There are alienable and inalienable nouns, where the former requires possessive suffixes to express possession, while the latter is seen as inherently possessed by something, does not require possessive suffixes, and is usually accompanied by the pronoun derived prefixes. Words can be combined together to form new ones, with the typical 2 patterns being alienable + inalienable or inalienable + inalienable, where the 0 person (a-, e-, o-) prefix of the latter is removed and fully mixed with the former, with necessary vocalic and consonantal mutations. Another form of this is combining any noun or preposition with a verb, the verb going first, to for a new word that could either be a noun or verb. The latter form of this requires a suffix from triad F (chi, lü ~ rü, chii) to be added at the end of the new word.[7]

The verb infinitive is formed by taking the root of the verb, adding an indefinite prefix following those rules if it is an active verb, and lengthening the final vowel. If the final vowel is already doubled in the root (-aa, -ee, -ii, -oo, -uu, -üü), then it gets cut in half, and -wVV is added to the end.[7]

Vocabulary examples

The following are examples of Wayuunaiki.[8]

  • (Anasü) watta'a maat/lü 'Good morning'
  • (Anasü) Aliika 'Good afternoon'
  • (Anasü) Aipa’a 'Good night'
  • Jamaya pia? 'How are you (singular)?'
  • Jamaya jia/jaya? 'How are you (plural)?'
  • Atpanaa 'Rabbit'
  • Alama 'Grass'
  • Amüchi 'Clay jar'
  • Anayaawatsü saa'u 'Thank you'
  • Pümayaa 'Hurry up'
  • Kasaichi pünülia? 'What is your name?'
  • Aishi ma’i pia tapüla 'I love you so much (to a man)'
  • Aisü ma'i pia tapüla 'I love you so much (to a woman)'

Wayuunaiki itself comes from wayuu 'human being/people' and the suffix -naiki, from anüiki 'speech' ('word' or 'language'), literally meaning '[the] people’s speech'.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Wayuu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ↑ "El Wayuunaiki impreso". Semana.com (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 22 October 2006. Retrieved 1 December 2006.
  3. ↑ "Fundación Wayuu Tayá y Microsoft Venezuela presentan Diccionario de Computación en Wayuunaiki". UniversoTek (in Spanish). 5 December 2011. Archived from the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 7 December 2011.
  4. ↑ Chang, Tatiana (27 December 2011). "Venezuela: New computing dictionary enriches Wayuu language". Infosur hoy. Archived from the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
  5. 1 2 Sabogal, Andres. "The Variable Expression of Transitive Subject and Possesor in Wayuunaiki (Guajiro)". Digital Repository of the University of New Mexico. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  6. ↑ Mansen, Karis; Mansen, Richard A. (1984). Aprendamos guajiro: Gramática pedagógica de guajiro (in Spanish). Bogotá: Editorial Townsend. p. 44.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Álvarez, José (2017). MANUAL DE LA LENGUA WAYUU ( KARALOUTA ATÜJAAYA SAA’U WAYUUNAIKIKUWA’IPA) (in Spanish) (1st ed.). La Guajira, Colombia: Organización Indígena de La Guajira YANAMA. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  8. ↑ Tutorial I - ¿Cómo saludar en Wayuunaiki? – via YouTube.
Wayuu edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wayuu language test of Wiktionary at Wikimedia Incubator
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