Ancient tongue, culture fading fast in Honduras

PUNTA GORDA, Honduras — When Reina Martinez speaks to her 14-year-old granddaughter, she uses Garifuna, the language of her youth in this colorful island village.

But when Cassandra Ballesteros answers, it’s not in Garifuna.

“I understand, but I don’t speak it,” she said. “I can’t.”

She responds in Honduran Spanish, the language she learns in school and the one she’s more likely to hear on the dirt roads that run through her centuries-old village tucked between dense mangroves and vast coral reefs on the island of Roatan.

Mrs. Martinez, 52, and her companion, Celso Zapata, 59, are two of the older residents of Punta Gorda. Throughout the years, the couple have watched their Garifuna traditions fade into memory as the outside world entered their community of about 1,000.

Now, they are watching their language disappear, too.

Children “don’t want to speak Garifuna anymore,” said Mr. Zapata, who runs Punta Gorda’s public-water system. “You’ve got to blame the parents. We parents, we’ve got to teach the kids.”

When he wanders through the community on the north side of the 40-mile-long island, Mr. Zapata is as likely to speak Spanish or even a dialect of English Creole to neighbors as he is to use Garifuna.

“Even the old people, you find many of them who don’t want to speak Garifuna,” he said.

Linguist Genevieve Escure laments what is happening to “a complicated and beautiful language,” with roots in the Amazonian tongues of Arawak and Carib still spoken in parts of northeastern South America. So she is recording the Garifuna, hoping to spark their interest in keeping their language alive.

Still, some of Roatan’s leaders argue that it isn’t the language that is in danger.

“It’s not disappearing,” said Arad Rochez, a Garifuna who is vice mayor of Santos Guardiola, which includes Punta Gorda. “What is disappearing is how we used to live in the past.”

When Mrs. Martinez and Mr. Zapata were young, the Garifuna lived in mud houses with thatched roofs. Men fished from dugout canoes and steamed, rather than fried, their catch. Traditional folk dances were set to the rhythm of African-style drums.

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