Voices of Play: Miskitu Children's Speech and Song on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua

Preface: Listening to Language in a Contact Zone

xi Many ways of speaking have been heard over time along the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua,1 including indigenous languages of the Caribbean and Central America, European languages imported from abroad, and regional varieties of western Caribbean Creole English. The three languages that are most relevant for Corn Island, the site of study in this book, are Miskitu (an Amerindian language), Nicaraguan Kriol English (an Afro-Caribbean language), and Spanish. In a seminal work on language contact in the region , John Holm wrote that Miskitu and Kriol English are “like two great tape recorders that have been left running side by side for the past several centuries, picking up each other’s sounds” (1978:334). Spanish is a third prominent track that has been mixed into the communicative soundscape of the Atlantic Coast, especially as the region was gradually incorporated into a Spanish-dominant nation-state beginning in the late nineteenth century. Like all languages, Miskitu, Kriol English, and Spanish are not internally homogeneous but, rather, are fluctuating frames with variable systematicity . Miskitu belongs to the Misumalpan language family, along with Sumu/ Mayangna (still spoken on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua), Matagalpa, and Cacaopera; this language family is probably distantly related to Chibchan languages of Central and South America (Salamanca 2007; Costenla Umaña 2005). Using specific morphological and morphosyntactic structures , Miskitu has integrated a great number of loan words from other languages, including English, Spanish, and Sumu (Salamanca Castillo 1984; Salamanca 1992). English loan words, in particular, have such a long history in Miskitu that many have become naturalized as indigenous words. Preface: Listening to Language in a Contact Zone xii · Preface Distinct varieties of Miskitu are associated with geographic regions along the Atlantic/Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras and with the people who hail from those regions.2 Historically, the Miskitu language has also been a lingua franca spoken by many non-Miskitu people in the region, including other indigenous groups and some Afro-Caribbean Creole people.3 Nicaraguan Kriol (sometimes spelled Creole) English is a contact language created by Africans and their descendants along the Caribbean coast of Central America during the colonial period. It encompasses a continuum of forms that range from the acrolect (closest to “standard” English) to the basilect (furthest from “standard” English). It is closely related to other Creole English languages in the western Caribbean and has also been influenced by Spanish.4 Distinct varieties of Nicaraguan Kriol English are associated with particular communities of Creole people on the Atlantic Coast, such as Bluefields, Corn Island, and Pearl Lagoon. Kriol English is also spoken as a first, second, or subsequent language by many other coast people, including some Miskitu children and youth on Corn Island. Claiming Kriol English as a mother tongue is often a sign of Creole cultural affiliation , but when others speak Kriol English, it is not necessarily marked as “crossing” an ethnic boundary (see Rampton 1995). The Spanish spoken on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua also tends to be heterogeneous. Nicaraguan Spanish generally uses the second-person form vos instead of tú, but I found that some second-language speakers on Corn Island used tú, and irregular constructions were common among Miskitu children and some adults. Spanish is the first language of some Miskitu people on the Atlantic Coast. Miskitu families who have moved to the national capital of Managua are even more likely to raise Spanish-dominant children. Moving in the opposite direction, large numbers of Spanish-speaking Mestizos from western and central Nicaragua have settled on the Atlantic Coast, including Corn Island, and they sometimes maintain regional dialects of Spanish from their places of origin. The language practices described in this book are filtered through a process of audio recording, transcription, translation, and analysis. I transcribed portions of the recordings in collaboration with local native speakers , who received financial compensation for their time and expertise. I generally worked on a rough, partial transcript by myself and then went over it with one of my cointerpreters, both of us wearing headphones attached to my laptop computer, checking and filling in gaps in the transcript . Sometimes—especially in transcribing the discourse of younger children—I sought additional input from an older sibling or a parent who could decipher and contextualize a particular utterance. Preface · xiii The goal of transcription was to represent, as closely as possible, what people actually said, including irregular and nonstandard utterances, which are...