Although the Taíno language is not spoken anymore, many Taíno words have survived in the Spanish language and in some areas a mixture of Taino and Spanish is still spoken.

Contrary to popular belief the Taíno people still exist. I won't go into much detail over the controversy but I will say this: just because a person is wearing blue jeans instead of a loincloth and may be mixed rather than full-blooded doesn't mean they are not Taíno. I'll leave it at that, though feel free to ask more questions and debate it in the forum. The territory of the Taíno covered all the islands from Cuba all the way to the island of Antigua.

The word "Taíno" is not a Spanish word. The word "Taíno" means "good people" in Taíno. Tai= good and "no" is a pluralizing suffix used for people. (You can see this in the word "Lokono", the word Arawaks use for themselves.) There is no need to pluralize it e.g. *tainos because it is already plural and there is no need to give it a gender such as *taina because the Taíno language doesn't form gender that way but since these words are used commonly they are acceptable.

There were numerous words recorded in the Taíno language and many Taíno words are still used in Spanish dialects in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. However only 6 sentences of Taíno have been recorded. Despite being recorded from since the 16th century, very few studies have been done on the Taíno language. There is still much to discover about the Taíno language. It would make a great project for any budding linguists!

WORDLIST

Notes: These words were taken from the book Language of the Pre-Columbian Antilles by Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius. It is a great study of the Taíno language through toponyms (place names). Just by studying toponyms, Granberry and Vescelius were able to add many new words to the corpus of known Taíno words. I like it also because it is honest about it's shortcomings and encourages further study of the Taino language. There are other Taíno dictionaries online that you can check out in the links section, they may have errors and inconsistencies but it's good to take a look at them.

• Taíno has nasalized vowels which are usually represented with a tilde (~) over the vowel, however this is hard to get for all the vowels in unicode. Only ã,õ are available so I have used ê, î, and û to represent those respective nasalized vowels.
• The letter "v." next to a word means it is a verb, not a noun.

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LINKS AND RESOURCES :

• The United Confederation of Taíno People: An excellent website about the Taíno people and other indigenous Caribbean people as well.


• Wikipedia article on Taíno: Though this article has some errors (especially when it comes to the Caribs), overall it's a very thorough look at the Taíno people.


• Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles : Written by Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius. I used this book for the wordlist. A must-read for anyone interested in the Taíno language. It has a lot of linguistic and archaeological jargon but has a great dictionary that is not totally inaccessible to the lay reader.


• Diccionario de Voces Taina: A Taíno/Spanish dictionary


• The Dictionary of the Taíno Language by Alfred Carrada: a pretty good website with a more modern dictionary in both English and Español. This dictionary was done by the Alfred Carrada using similar methods as Granberry and Vescelius did.


• Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics : A somewhat controversial book, because most of the essay writers state that the Taíno are extinct, however it is a good read, and a good way to get an understanding of the controversy.


• Taíno : Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean : A beautiful book filled with Taíno artwork, and discussions on Taíno archaeology.


• Art and Archaeology of Pre-Columbian Cuba (Pitt Latin American Series) : Another book on Taíno art.

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