More on the greeting takahi… The individual known as Taino Ray recently posted: UCTP members prefer Takahi... In the Nacion they use Tau Ti or Tau... other community members use Taino Ti In my view, this statement merits some attention and I would like to say hahom (jajom) Taino Ray for affirming that the choice not to use “takahi” as a greeting is not simply one of preference. It is a political decision for some who need to maintain the isolationist positions of their particular group. Isolationists positions are relevant to note here on the Taino Language Revitalization Forum... As an official of the United Confederation of Taino People, I will clarify why the UCTP promotes the term takahi instead of the other terms mentioned by Taino Ray: 1) Takahi is a verifiable term in the lexicon of Caribbean Indigenous languages and historically other terms from this same lexicon have been incorporated into what we call now call the language of the Taino such as naniche, hahom, semign, inaru, huisan, etc. 2) While Taino ti is used as a greeting by some, it is a term coined by a non-indigenous scholar that did not sufficiently demonstrate how it was developed. For example, we know Taino basically means good people and not just good. So how does adding the sound ti as in “Taino ti” change it to mean highest good as claimed by the scholar? No one has been able to offer a reasonable explanation of this interpretation. 3) On the term tau ti or tau or “tao”, we have requested from members of the group called Taino Nation of the Antilles many times an explanation of how Tau or Tao was determined to be a greeting. No Spaniards mention this word as a greeting in any of the available literature. No such information came forward except that the developer of their language program, Kasike Boriwex has 30 years of experience in the language. Further, in our own research we have found that Taino/Greater Antillian references to the term tao or “tau” relate to a plant or to a particular symbol that looks like a cross. In addition, while in the related Lokono Arawak language the term tao or “tau” does exist, it is also not a greeting. From our research, takahi remains one of the few historically verifiable indigenous greetings available from the Caribbean island region. This is why the UCTP choose to incorporate it into our developing language program. Contrary to what Taino Ray has alleged, this was not a preference decision, but a sound research based one. Everyone is free to choose what words they wish to incorporate in their lives, however it is clear that some choices are clearly political. This has wider ramifications as the people call for unity or wonder why more work has not been undertaken collectively on language restoration. You cannot cry about lack of unity and promote isolationist positions.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 20:16:14 +0000
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