Miskito language

The alphabet for Miskito consists of 19 letters, and includes vowels and consonants.

A (a), B (be), D (de), G (ge), H (ha), I (i), J (je), K (ka), L (el), M (em), N (en), P (pe), Q (ku), R (ar), S (es), T (te), U (u), W (dubilu), Y (yei).

Many of the Miskitos are native American and also mixed with British, Chinese, Dutch, German and African. The Miskito people had a strong relationship with the British and they signed the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. Eventually, the British began to lose interest in the region, and Britain allowed Nicaragua to have uncontested claim over the Mosquito Coast. A treaty was signed in which a Miskito reserve, a self-governing entity that enjoyed semi-sovereign rights, was given to the Miskito people, but Honduras eventually took over the area.

In the 20th century the Miskito language started to dwindle. Honduras, being a former Spanish colony, officially used the Spanish language, and this stifled the proliferation of the Miskito language in the 20th century. In schools, children were forbidden from speaking Miskito for most of the 20th century and could only speak Spanish; young generations had less of an opportunity to practice the language.

In the 1990s, many groups lobbied against the rule and promoted bilingual schools to preserve the Miskito language. Twenty such bilingual schools exist.

{{main|Miskito grammar}}

G. R. Heath wrote on Miskito grammar in American Anthropologist in 1913 and describes its orthography and phonology as follows:

{{blockquote |The vowels a, e, i, o, u correspond almost exactly to the same sound of those letters in German.

The consonants g, j, s, w, y represent the sounds heard in the English words get, jet, set, wet, and yet; and the combination ch stands for the sound heard in the word chest. C by itself will not be used. The other letters have the same power as in English, except that the aspirate h is always to be pronounced, even at the end of a syllable.

The stress accent in Miskito is almost invariably on the first syllable.

When the grave and acute accents occur on the same vowel, will be imaginary accentuated just like English.

Nasalized vowels are sometimes met with: they resemble the ordinary vowels followed by a sound corresponding to the French n in mon. But as this nasal sound seems to be pronounced not after, but simultaneously with, the vowels, it seems better to mark the vowels with the tilde (˜), to indicate that the vowels themselves are nasalized. Such nasalized vowels are always long, thus: ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ.

The combination ng is a single sound: the double sound in the English word "longer" will be represented by ngg.{{cite journal|last1=Heath|first1=G. R.|title=Notes on Miskuto Grammar and on Other Indian Languages of Eastern Nicaragua|journal=American Anthropologist|date=3 January 1913|volume=15|issue=1 |pages=48–62|doi=10.1525/aa.1913.15.1.02a00060|doi-access=free}}}}

There is still much controversy about Miskito orthography and it cannot be considered settled, even with printed Miskito grammars, Bible translations, and other texts.

By Felix Ramsin.{{citation needed|reason=Please cite source, otherwise this appears to be original research|date=October 2021}}

By Felix Ramsin.{{citation needed|reason=Please cite source, otherwise this appears to be original research|date=October 2021}}

{{Portal|Nicaragua|Languages}}

• Miskito language (typological overview)
• Miskito grammar
• Miskito Coast Creole

{{Reflist}}

• {{Cite book|last=Adam|first=Lucien|year=1891|title=Langue mosquito|url=https://archive.org/details/languemosquitog00adamgoog|location=Paris|publisher=J. Maisonneuve}} (Reprinted 1964, Nendeln/ Liechtenstein: Kraus).
• {{cite journal |last=Richter |first=Elke |title=Observaciones acerca del desarrollo lexical miskito en Nicaragua |journal=Revista de Filología Románica |volume=1986 |issue=4 |pages=341–346 |year=1986 |url=http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=100696 }}

{{incubator|miq}}

{{Wikibooks|Miskito}}

• [https://ailla.utexas.org/islandora/object/ailla:124479 Miskitu Language Collection of Natalia Bermúdez and Wanda Luz Waldan Peter] – archive of audio and video recordings and text transcriptions of historical narratives from native speakers from AILLA.
• [https://ailla.utexas.org/islandora/object/ailla:132259 Recording of a song in Miskito with an interview in English] – from the [https://ailla.utexas.org/islandora/object/ailla:124382 Collection of Miskito, Quechua and Tseltal of June Nash] at AILLA.
• [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7sfTn95Q7L3WUNQMS1wcHhNNGs/view?pref=2&pli=1 Miskito – English – Spanish Dictionary]
• [https://drive.google.com/a/scarletmail.rutgers.edu/file/d/0B7sfTn95Q7L3eUFBMU5YV1lmSVk/view Notes in Miskito Grammar]
• [https://miskito.org Miskito-Spanish Dictionary]

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{{Languages of Honduras}}

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Language

Category:Misumalpan languages

Category:Indigenous languages of Central America

Category:Languages of Nicaragua

Category:North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region

Category:Languages of Honduras