Tupi language


Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinologist Eduardo Navarro, "it is the classical indigenous language of Brazil, and the one which had the utmost importance to the cultural and spiritual formation of the country".
Old Tupi belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. In the early colonial period, Tupi was used as a lingua franca throughout Brazil by Europeans and Amerindians, and had literary usage, but it was later suppressed almost to extinction. Today, its sole living descendant is the Nheengatu language.
As the most important native language of Brazil, it is the origin of most city names of indigenous origin. It also names several plants and animals, and many proper names are Tupi names, such as Moacir, Iara, Iracema and Jandaia. It has a rich literature, which includes catechisms, poems and plays.
The names Old Tupi or Classical Tupi are used for the language in English and by modern scholars. It has previously been known, in Portuguese, as língua brasílica "Brazilian language".

Linguistic description

The following is a summary of the main characteristics of Classical Tupi, its typology and other distinguishing features.
  • Tupi is a SOV language but was influenced by its Portuguese superstratum toward the latter's SVO,
  • It presents a system of vowel symmetry where each of the six phonemic oral vowels has its nasal phonemic counterpart:, ;, ;, ;, ;, ;,.
  • Its consonantal inventory, on the other hand, is considered "relatively small".
  • It is neither isolating, fusional, agglutinative or polysynthetic, rather displaying features of each, with none significantly more prevalent.
  • There is no number, case or gender distinction in nouns.
  • There are no marks of definiteness.
  • It contains an inclusive first person plural, as well as an exclusive one, which does not include the listener.

    History

Old Tupi was first spoken by the Tupinambá people, who lived under cultural and social conditions very unlike those found in Europe. It is quite different from Indo-European languages in phonology, morphology, and grammar, but it was adopted by many Luso-Brazilians born in Brazil as a lingua franca.
It belonged to the Tupi–Guarani language family, which stood out among other South American languages for the vast territory it covered. Until the 16th century, these languages were found throughout nearly the entirety of the Brazilian coast, from Pará to Santa Catarina, and the Río de la Plata basin. Today, Tupi languages are still heard in Brazil, as well as in French Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.
It is a common mistake to speak of the "Tupi–Guarani language": Tupi, Guarani and a number of other minor or major languages all belong to the Tupian language family, in the same sense that English, Romanian, and Sanskrit belong to the Indo-European language family. One of the main differences between the two languages was the replacement of Tupi by the glottal fricative in Guarani.
The first accounts of the Old Tupi language date back from the early 16th century, but the first written documents containing actual information about it were produced from 1575 onwards – when Jesuits André Thévet and José de Anchieta began to translate Catholic Church|Catholic] prayers and biblical stories into the language. Another foreigner, Jean de Lery, wrote the first Tupi "phrasebook", in which he transcribed entire dialogues. Lery's work is the best available record of how Tupi was actually spoken.
In the first two or three centuries of Brazilian history, nearly all colonists coming to Brazil would learn the tupinambá variant of Tupi, as a means of communication with both the Indigenous people and with other early colonists who had adopted the language.
The Jesuits, however, not only learned to speak tupinambá, but also encouraged the natives to keep it. As a part of their missionary work, they translated some literature into it and also produced some original work written directly in Tupi. José de Anchieta reportedly wrote more than 4,000 lines of poetry in tupinambá and the first Tupi grammar. Luís Figueira was another important figure of this time, who wrote the second Tupi grammar, published circa 1628. In the second half of the 18th century, the works of Anchieta and Figueira were republished and Father João Filipe Bettendorff wrote a new and more complete catechism. By that time, the language had made its way into the clergy and was the de facto national language of Brazil – though it was probably seldom written, as the Roman Catholic Church held a near monopoly of literacy.
When the Portuguese Prime Minister Sebastião [José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquess of Pombal|Marquis of Pombal] expelled the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759, the language started to wane quickly, as few Brazilians were literate in it. A new rush of Portuguese immigration had been taking place since the early 18th century, due to the discovery of gold, diamonds, and gems in the interior of Brazil, and these new colonists spoke only their mother tongue. Old Tupi survived as a spoken language only in isolated inland areas, far from the major urban centres. Its use by a few non-Indian speakers in those isolated areas would last for over a century still.

Tupi research

When the Portuguese first arrived on the shores of modern-day Brazil, most of the tribes they encountered spoke very closely related languages. The Portuguese set out to proselytise the natives. To do so most effectively, doing so in the natives' own languages was convenient, so the first Europeans to study Tupi were those priests.
The priests modeled their analysis of the new language after the one with which they had already experienced: Latin, which they had studied in the seminary. In fact, the first grammar of Tupi—written by the Jesuit priest José de Anchieta and published in 1595—is structured much like a contemporary Latin grammar. While this structure is not optimal, it certainly served its purpose of allowing its intended readership to get enough of a basic grasp of the language to be able to communicate with and evangelise the natives. Also, the grammar sometimes regularised or glossed over some regional differences in the expectation that the student, once "in the field", would learn these finer points of the particular dialect through use with his flock.
Significant works were a Jesuit catechism of 1618, with a second edition of 1686; another grammar written in 1687 by another Jesuit priest, Luís Figueira; an anonymous dictionary of 1795 ; a dictionary published by Antônio Gonçalves Dias, a well-known 19th century Brazilian poet and scholar, in 1858; and a chrestomathy published by Dr Ernesto Ferreira França in 1859. The most recent dictionary is the Old Tupi Dictionary, by the Brazilian scholar Eduardo de Almeida Navarro.

Tupinology

In Brazil, tupinology is the study of Tupi language and literature. It began in 1901, with the work of Theodoro Sampaio. An individual who dedicates themselves to the field of tupinology is a tupinologist.

Phonology

The phonology of tupinambá has some interesting and unusual features. For instance, it does not have the lateral approximant or the multiple vibrant rhotic consonant. It also has a rather small inventory of consonants and a large number of pure vowels.
This led to a Brazilian pun about this language, that native Brazilians não têm fé, nem lei, nem rei as the words fé, lei and rei could not be pronounced by a native Tupi speaker. It is also a double pun because Brazil has not had a king for more than two centuries.

Vowels

The nasal vowels are fully vocalic, without any trace of a trailing or. They are pronounced with the mouth open and the palate relaxed, not blocking the air from resounding through the nostrils. These approximations, however, must be taken with caution, as no actual recording exists, and Tupi had at least seven known dialects.

Consonants

Alternative view

According to Nataniel Santos Gomes, however, the phonetic inventory of Tupi was simpler:
  • Consonants:
  • * p, t, k, '
  • * b
  • * s, x
  • * m, n, ñ
  • * û, î
  • * r
  • Vowels
  • * i, y, u, ĩ, ỹ, ũ
  • * e, o, õ, ẽ
  • * a, ã
This scheme does not regard Ŷ as a separate semivowel, does not consider the existence of G, and does not differentiate between the two types of NG, probably because it does not regard MB, ND and NG as independent phonemes, but mere combinations of P, T, and K with nasalization.
Santos Gomes also remarks that the stop consonants shifted easily to nasal stops, which is attested by the fitful spelling of words like umbu in the works of the early missionaries and by the surviving dialects.
According to most sources, Tupi semivowels were more consonantal than their IPA counterparts. The Î, for instance, was rather fricative, thus resembling a very slight, and Û had a distinct similarity with the voiced stop , thus being sometimes written gu. As a consequence of that character, Tupi loanwords in Brazilian Portuguese often have j for Î and gu for Û.

Orthography

It would have been almost impossible to reconstruct the phonology of Tupi if it did not have a wide geographic distribution. The surviving Amazonian Nhengatu and the close Guarani correlates provide material that linguistic research can still use for an approximate reconstruction of the language.
Scientific reconstruction of Tupi suggests that Anchieta either simplified or overlooked the phonetics of the actual language when he was devising his grammar and his dictionary.
The writing system employed by Anchieta is still the basis for most modern scholars. It is easily typed with regular Portuguese or French typewriters and computer keyboards.
Its key features are:
Tupi features clusivity, i.e., a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns. Personal pronouns in Tupi come in two series, each with its own uses.
1st series2nd seriesTranslation
ixéxeI
endéndeYou
a'e*iHe/she
oréoréWe
îandéîandéWe
peẽpeYou
a'e*iThey

First series pronouns are generally used alone or along with verbs of the first class. For example: ixé a-karukatu: I ate well. Abápe morubixaba? – Ixé: who's the ? - I.
Second series pronouns are used in many different cases:
  • alongside adjectives: xe porang, I'm beautiful.
  • with verbs of the second class : nde ma'enduar ixé resé, you remember me.
  • in a genitive construction: i membyra, her son.

    Verbs

Old Tupi verbs are divided in two classes. First class are conjugated, with person markers coming at the beginning of the word. In addition, verbs can represent a present, past, or future action because, unlike Portuguese, they do not express time.
Pron.karu gûatá ker pererek nhan Translation
Ixé akaruagûatáakerapererekanhanI eat/ate, walk/walked...
Endé erekarueregûatáerekererepererekerenhanYou eat/ate, walk/walked...
A'e okaruogûatáokeropererekonhanHe eats/ate, walks/walked...
Oré orokaruorogûatáorokeroropererekoronhanWe eat/ate, walk/walked...
Îandé îakaruîagûatáîakerîapererekîanhanWe eat/ate, walk/walked...
Peẽ pekarupegûatápekerpepererekpenhanYou eat/ate, walk/walked...
A'e okaruogûatáokeropererekonhanThey eat/ate, walk/walked...

Verbs from the second class are not conjugated and are used only with pronouns of the second series. This is because they are actually adjectives generally indicating a state or characteristic.
  • xe ma'endurar
  • nde u'u
  • i membyrar
  • oré rambûer
  • îandé nhyrõ
  • pe poasem
  • ''i pytu''

    Transitive verbs

Objects of transitive verbs in Old Tupi may come in many positions relative to the verb: either before, after or incorporated into it. In the last case, it comes after the person markers in first class verbs, but before the root. For an example of incorporation:
  • a-pirá-kutuk
When the object is not incorporated, then in it is replaced by a pleonastic third-person pronoun-i-, even if the object is present elsewhere in the phrase. Monosyllabic verbs use -îo- instead of -i-, and a few others use -s- instead. Some examples:
  • pirá a-î-kutuk or a-î-kutuk pirá
  • ere-îo-sub oré: you visit us.
  • a-îo-mim ''u'ubá: I hide the arrow.
  • São Pedro itangapema o-s-ekyî: Saint Peter pulled the sword.
  • pe-îuká îagûareté'': you killed the jaguar.

    Future

To express something happening in the future, the clitic -ne is always added to the last word in the sentence, independent of its grammatical class. This clitic has other meanings and may then be used as a particle in different positions.
  • Abá kori ka'ape osóne. The indian will go to the woods today.
  • Oro'u onhemongyraba'eramane. We shall eat what fattens us.
  • Pytuna i ro'yne. The night shall be cold
  • Kururu opererekypyne. The frog will begin to jump
  • Pytuna o'aryne. The night will fall.

    Verb moods

Tupi verbs are divided into its verbal and its nominal forms. Each division contains its respective verb moods.

Nouns

All nouns in old Tupi end in a vowel. In the case of a verb or adjective substantivized, the suffix -a is added, if it does not already end in a vowel.
  • Sem: to exit. Sema: the going out, the exit
  • Pererek: to jump. Perereka: the jump, the leap.
  • Só : to go. Só : the going, the going away.
  • Porang: beautiful. Poranga: the beauty
The same occurs when a noun and an adjective are in composition. In this way:
  • Kunhãporanga: beautiful woman

    Noun tenses

Unlike the Portuguese language, the tense of an action, in old Tupi, is expressed by the noun, not the verb. Such tenses are future, past and a time called "unreal", which is similar to the future perfect, of Portuguese. They are indicated, respectively, by the adjectives -ram, -pûer and -rambûer. These, when in composition with the noun, receive the suffix -a, as explained above.
  • Future: ka'a-ram-a = forest that will be
  • Past: ka'a-pûer-a = forest that was
  • Unreal: ybyrá-rambûer-a = tree that would be

    Augmentative and diminutive

The degrees of the noun are made by the suffixes "-'ĩ' or '-'i'", for the diminutive, and "-ûasu' or '-usu'" for the augmentative (these suffixes may suffer several phonetic transformations. Here are some examples with their explanations:

Numerals

In Old Tupi, there are only numerals from one to four, both cardinal and ordinal, as the need for mathematical precision was small in a primitive economy. Cardinal numerals can either come after or before the noun they refer to, while ordinals only come after. For example, in the case of cardinal numbers, mokõî pykasu and pykasu mokõî are equivalent terms, meaning "two pigeons". In the case of ordinals, ta'yr-ypy means "first son " and 'ara mosapyra means "third day".

Postpositions

They are the same as prepositions, but they come after the term they refer to. They are divided into unstressed postpositions, which are appended to the previous word, and stressed postpositions, which are written separately.
PostpositionMeaningExampleNotes
suífrom Morubixaba osem taba suí
The leader left the village
supéto Abá onhe'eng Maria supé
The Indian speaks to Maria.
-pein, to Ixé asó Nhoesembé-pe
I went to Nhoesembé		Unstressed postposition
pupéinside, with Kunumĩ oîkó ygara pupé
The boy is in the boat
reséfor, in favor ofTuba oma'ẽ o a'yra resé
The father looks at his son		Postposition with several meanings

Just like in Portuguese or English, some verbs require certain postpositions:
  • Pedo osykyîé o sy suí
  • Tuba oma'ẽ o a'yra resé

    Negation

There are many ways to negate a sentence in Old Tupi.

''na ... i''

Used to negate verbs in the indicative mood. Before a vowel, na just becomes n.
  • n'a-syk-i: I didn't arrive
  • n'ere-só-î: you didn't go
  • n'o-karuî: he/she didn't eat
  • n'oro-petymbu-î: we didn't smoke
  • n'îa-nhe'eng-i: we didn't speak
  • na pe-'ytab-i: you didn't swim
  • n'o-sykyîé-î: they don't fear
The same rule applies for adjectives:
  • Xe porang
  • Na xe porang-i
  • I puku
  • ''N'i puku-î''

    ''-e'ym(a)''

Negates verbs in the infinitive or gerund form.
  • Kunhã osepyîak pitanga ker-e'yma
  • The woman sees that the child doesn't sleep

    ''na ... ruã''

Used to negate a noun, pronoun or an adverb.
  • Îagûara ixé
  • ''Na îagûara ruã ixé''

    ''na ... i xué''

Negates sentences in the future. The clitic -ne is still used.
  • N'asóî xué nde tápe korine
  • I won't go to your village today
  • Kunimĩ n'okuruki xuéne
  • The boy won't grumble

    ''umẽ'' or ''ymẽ''

Negates verbs in the imperative and permissive moods.
  • Eporapiti umẽ!
  • Don't kill people!
  • Tosepîaky bé umẽ kûarasy
  • Let they not see the sun anymore.

    Grammatical structure

Tupi was an agglutinative language with moderate degree of fusional features, although Tupi is not a polysynthetic language.
Tupi parts of speech did not follow the same conventions of Indo-European languages:
  • Verbs are "conjugated" for person but not for tense or mood. All verbs are in the present tense.
  • Nouns are "declined" for tense by means of suffixing the aspect marker but not for gender or number.
  • There is a distinction of nouns in two classes: "higher" and "lower". The usual manifestation of the distinction was the use of the prefixes t- for high-class nouns and s- for low-class ones, so that tesá meant "human eye", and sesá meant "the eye of an animal". Some authors argue that it is a type of gender inflection.
  • Adjectives cannot be used in the place of nouns, neither as the subject nor as the object nucleus.
Tupi had a split-intransitive grammatical alignment. Verbs were preceded by pronouns, which could be subject or object forms. Subject pronouns like a- "I" expressed the person was in control, while object pronouns like xe- "me" signified the person was not. The two types could be used alone or combined in transitive clauses, and they then functioned like subject and object in English:
  • A-bebé = I-fly, "I can fly", "I flew".
  • Xe pysyka = me catch, "Someone has caught me" or "I'm caught".
  • A-î-pysyk = I-him-catch, "I have caught him".
Although Tupi verbs were not inflected, a number of pronominal variations existed to form a rather complex set of aspects regarding who did what to whom. That, together with the temporal inflection of the noun and the presence of tense markers like koára "today," made up a fully functional verbal system.
Word order played a key role in the formation of meaning:
  • taba abá-im = tiny man from the village
  • taba-im abá = man from the small village
Tupi had no means to inflect words for gender, so used adjectives instead. Some of these were:
  • apyŷaba = man, male
  • kuñã = woman, female
  • kunumĩ = boy, young male
  • kuñãtãĩ = girl, young female
  • mena = male animal
  • kuñã = female animal
The notion of gender was expressed, once again, together with the notion of age and that of "humanity" or "animality".
The notion of plural was also expressed by adjectives or numerals:
  • abá = man; abá-etá = many men
Unlike Indo-European languages, nouns were not implicitly masculine except for those provided with natural gender: abá "man" and kuñã "woman/girl"; for instance.
Without proper verbal inflection, all Tupi sentences were in the present or in the past. When needed, tense is indicated by adverbs like ko ara, "this day".
Adjectives and nouns, however, had temporal inflection:
  • abáûera "he who was once a man"
  • abárama "he who shall be a man someday"
That was often used as a semantic derivation process:
  • akanga "head"
  • akangûera "skull"
  • abá "man"
  • abárama "teenager"
With respect to syntax, Tupi was mostly SOV, but word order tended to be free, as the presence of pronouns made it easy to tell the subject from the object. Nevertheless, native Tupi sentences tended to be quite short, as the Indians were not used to complex rhetorical or literary uses.
Most of the available data about Old Tupi are based on the tupinambá dialect, spoken in what is now the Brazilian state of São Paulo, but there were other dialects as well.
According to Edward Sapir's categories, Old Tupi could be characterized as follows:
  1. With respect to the concepts expressed: complex, of pure relation, that is, it expresses material and relational content by means of affixes and word order, respectively.
  2. With respect to the manner in which such concepts are expressed: a) fusional-agglutinative, b) symbolic or of internal inflection.
  3. With respect to the degree of cohesion of the semantic elements of the sentence: synthetic.

    Sample vocabulary

; Colors
  • îub = yellow, golden
  • oby = blue, green
  • pirang = red
  • ting = white
  • un = black
; Substances
  • atá = fire
  • itá = rock, stone, metal,
  • y = water, river
  • yby = earth, ground
  • ybytu = air, wind
; People
  • abá = man, Indian or Native-American, human being
  • aîuba = Frenchman
  • maíra = Frenchman
  • karaíba = foreigner, white man. Means also prophet.
  • kunhã = woman
  • kunhãtã'ĩ = girl
  • kunhãmuku = young woman
  • kunumĩ = boy
  • kunumĩgûasu = young man
  • morubixaba = chief
  • peró = Portuguese
  • sy = mother
  • tapy'yîa = slave
; The body
  • akanga = head
  • îuru = mouth
  • îyba = arm
  • nambi = ear
  • pó = hand
  • py = foot
  • py'a = heart
  • esá = eye
  • etimã = leg
  • tĩ = nose
  • obá = face
; Animals
Tupi plays a huge role in the naming of many South American animals introduced to European knowledge and/or borrowed into their languages:
  • ai = sloth
  • aîuru = parrot, lory, lorykeet
  • arara = macaw, parrot
  • îagûara = jaguar
  • heira = tayra
  • îararaka = jararaca, yarará, a bothrops snake
  • ka'apiûara = capybara
  • koati = coati
  • mboîa = snake, cobra
  • paka = paca
  • pirá = fish
  • so'ó = game
  • tapi'ira = tapir
  • tukana = toucan
  • tatu = armadillo
; Plants
  • ka'api = grass, ivy
  • ka'a = plant, wood, forest
  • kuri = pine
  • oba = leaf
  • yba = fruit
  • ybá = plant
  • ybyrá = tree, wood
  • ybotyra = flower
; Society
  • oka = house
  • taba = village
; Adjectives
  • beraba = brilliant, gleamy, shiny
  • katu = good
  • mirĩ, 'í = little
  • panema = barren, contaminated, unhealthy, unlucky
  • poranga = beautiful
  • pûera, ûera = bad, old, dead
  • etá = many, much
  • ûasu, usu = big

    Sample texts

Basic phrases

Here are some basic phrases in Old Tupi, some of which were attested by Europeans like Jean de Léry and Yves d'Évreux during the XVI century.
  • Abápe endé?
  • Mamõ suípe ereîur?
  • Mamõpe ereîkó?
  • Marãpe nde rera?
  • Tiá nde karuka!
  • Tiá nde ko'ema!
  • ''Tiá nde pytuna!''

    Lord's Prayer

This is the Lord's Prayer in Tupi, according to Anchieta in his .
Notice that two Portuguese words, Reino and tentação have been borrowed, as such concepts would be rather difficult to express with pure Tupi words.

Presence of Tupi in Brazil

As the basis for the língua geral, spoken throughout the country by white settlers and Indigenous people alike until the early 18th century, and still heard in isolated pockets until the early 20th century, Tupi left a strong mark on the Portuguese language of Brazil.
Tupi has given the Portuguese language:
  • A few thousand words for animals, plants, fruit and cultural entities.
  • Multiple names of locations, including states
Some municipalities which have Tupi names:
  • Iguaçu : great river
  • Ipanema : bad, fishless water
  • Itanhangá : devil's rock
  • Itaquaquecetuba : where bamboo knives are made
  • Itaúna : black rock
  • Jaguariúna : small black jaguar
  • Pacaembu : valley of the pacas.
  • Paraíba : bad to navigation or "bad river"
  • Paranaíba : dangerous sea
  • Paraná-mirim : salty lagoon
  • Pindorama : palm country. Today this is used to refer to the country of Brazil, but this use is not attested in Old Tupi.
  • Piracaia : fried fish
  • Piraí : "fish water"
  • Paraná (PR), Brazil|Umuarama] : where the cacti will grow
Among the many Tupi loanwords in Portuguese, the following are noteworthy for their widespread use:
  • abacaxi
  • jacaré
  • mirim as in "escoteiro-mirim"
  • perereca, literally: "hopper"
  • peteca literally: "slap"
  • piranha literally: "toothed fish"
  • pipoca literally "explosion of skin"
  • piroca
  • pororoca literally: "confusion"
  • siri
  • sucuri
  • urubu
  • urutu
  • uruçu
It is interesting, however, that two of the most distinctive Brazilian animals, the jaguar and the tapir, are best known in Portuguese by non-Tupi names, onça and anta, despite being named in English with Tupi loanwords.
A significant number of Brazilians have Tupi names as well:
  • Araci : ara sy, "mother of the day"
  • Bartira, Potira : Ybotyra, "flower"
  • Iara : 'y îara, lady of the lake
  • Jaci : îasy, the moon
  • Janaína : îandá una, a type of black bird
  • Ubirajara : ybyrá îara, "lord of the trees/lance"
  • Ubiratã : ybyrá-atã, "hard wood"
Some names of distinct Native American ancestry have obscure etymology because the tupinambá, like the Europeans, cherished traditional names which sometimes had become archaic. Some of such names are Moacir and Moema.

Literature

Old Tupi literature was composed mainly of religious and grammatical texts developed by Jesuit missionaries working among the colonial Brazilian people. The greatest poet to express in written Tupi language, and its first grammarian was José de Anchieta, who wrote over eighty poems and plays, compiled at his Lírica Portuguesa e Tupi. Later Brazilian authors, writing in Portuguese, employed Tupi in the speech of some of their characters.

Recurrence

Tupi is also remembered as distinctive trait of nationalism in Brazil. In the 1930s, Brazilian Integralism used it as the source of most of its catchphrases and terminology.