Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi () is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the Indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinologist Eduardo Navarro, "it is the classical indigenous language of Brazil, and the one which had the utmost importance to the cultural and spiritual formation of the country".
Old Tupi belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. In the early colonial period, Tupi was used as a lingua franca throughout Brazil by Europeans and Amerindians, and had literary usage, but it was later suppressed almost to extinction. Today, its sole living descendant is the Nheengatu language.
As the most important native language of Brazil, it is the origin of most city names of indigenous origin (Pindamonhangaba, Ubatuba, Botucatu, Jacareí). It also names several plants and animals, and many proper names are Tupi names, such as Moacir, Iara, Iracema and Jandaia. It has a rich literature, which includes catechisms, poems and plays.
The names Old Tupi or Classical Tupi are used for the language in English and by modern scholars (it is referred to as in Portuguese). It has previously been known, in Portuguese, as "Brazilian language".
History
Old Tupi was first spoken by the Tupinambá people, who lived under cultural and social conditions very unlike those found in Europe. It is quite different from Indo-European languages in phonology, morphology, and grammar, but it was adopted by many Luso-Brazilians born in Brazil as a lingua franca.
It belonged to the Tupi–Guarani language family, which stood out among other South American languages for the vast territory it covered. Until the 16th century, these languages were found throughout nearly the entirety of the Brazilian coast, from Pará to Santa Catarina, and the Río de la Plata basin. Today, Tupi languages are still heard in Brazil (states of Maranhão, Pará, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo), as well as in French Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina.
It is a common mistake to speak of the "Tupi–Guarani language": Tupi, Guarani and a number of other minor or major languages all belong to the Tupian language family, in the same sense that English, Romanian, and Sanskrit belong to the Indo-European language family. One of the main differences between the two languages was the replacement of Tupi by the glottal fricative in Guarani.
The first accounts of the Old Tupi language date back from the early 16th century, but the first written documents containing actual information about it were produced from 1575 onwards – when Jesuits André Thévet and José de Anchieta began to translate Catholic prayers and biblical stories into the language. Another foreigner, Jean de Lery, wrote the first (and possibly only) Tupi "phrasebook", in which he transcribed entire dialogues. Lery's work is the best available record of how Tupi was actually spoken.
In the first two or three centuries of Brazilian history, nearly all colonists coming to Brazil would learn the tupinambá variant of Tupi, as a means of communication with both the Indigenous people and with other early colonists who had adopted the language.
The Jesuits, however, not only learned to speak tupinambá, but also encouraged the natives to keep it. As a part of their missionary work, they translated some literature into it and also produced some original work written directly in Tupi. José de Anchieta reportedly wrote more than 4,000 lines of poetry in tupinambá (which he called lingua Brasilica) and the first Tupi grammar. Luís Figueira was another important figure of this time, who wrote the second Tupi grammar, published circa 1628. In the second half of the 18th century, the works of Anchieta and Figueira were republished and Father João Filipe Bettendorff wrote a new and more complete catechism. By that time, the language had made its way into the clergy and was the de facto national language of Brazil – though it was probably seldom written, as the Roman Catholic Church held a near monopoly of literacy.
When the Portuguese Prime Minister Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759, the language started to wane quickly, as few Brazilians were literate in it. A new rush of Portuguese immigration had been taking place since the early 18th century, due to the discovery of gold, diamonds, and gems in the interior of Brazil, and these new colonists spoke only their mother tongue. Old Tupi survived as a spoken language (used by Europeans and Indian populations alike) only in isolated inland areas, far from the major urban centres. Its use by a few non-Indian speakers in those isolated areas would last for over a century still.
Documentation When the Portuguese first arrived on the shores of modern-day Brazil, most of the tribes they encountered spoke very closely related languages. The Portuguese (and particularly the Jesuit priests who accompanied them) set out to proselytise the natives. To do so most effectively, doing so in the natives' own languages was convenient, so the first Europeans to study Tupi were those priests.
The priests modeled their analysis of the new language after the one with which they had already experienced: Latin, which they had studied in the seminary. In fact, the first grammar of Tupi—written by the Jesuit priest José de Anchieta and published in 1595—is structured much like a contemporary Latin grammar. While this structure is not optimal, it certainly served its purpose of allowing its intended readership (Catholic priests familiar with Latin grammars) to get enough of a basic grasp of the language to be able to communicate with and evangelise the natives. Also, the grammar sometimes regularised or glossed over some regional differences in the expectation that the student, once "in the field", would learn these finer points of the particular dialect through use with his flock.
Significant works were a Jesuit catechism of 1618, with a second edition of 1686; another grammar written in 1687 by another Jesuit priest, Luís Figueira; an anonymous dictionary of 1795 (again published by the Jesuits); a dictionary published by Antônio Gonçalves Dias, a well-known 19th century Brazilian poet and scholar, in 1858; and a chrestomathy published by Dr Ernesto Ferreira França in 1859. The most recent dictionary is the Old Tupi Dictionary (2013), by the Brazilian scholar Eduardo de Almeida Navarro.
Tupinology In Brazil, tupinology is the study of Tupi language and literature. It began in 1901, with the work of Theodoro Sampaio. An individual who dedicates themselves to the field of tupinology is a tupinologist.
Phonology
Vowels + Tupi vocalic phonemes Front Central Back oral nasal oral nasal oral nasal High Mid Low
Oral is realized as and . It occurs in all positions. The phone occurs in unstressed word-final position and is in complementary distribution with , as in ("jaguar") and ("village"). It is represented in Navarro's orthography by , as in ("village"). are realized as . They occur "probably" in all positions. Examples are ("you"), ("stone bowl"), and ("he wakes up"). According to Navarro, the "timbre" of and is "probably open", as in Portuguese and . According to Barbosa, they occupy an intermediate position between their closed and open variants. He describes their sounds as those of and , "somewhat less closed", rather than those of and . They are represented in Navarro's orthography by . is realized as . It occurs "probably" in all positions except unstressed word-final position. An example is ("waterfall"). According to Navarro, may appear in syllable-medial position when one syllable ends in ⟨y⟩ and is followed by another beginning with a vowel, as in ~ (realized as , meaning "canoe"). According to Barbosa, it seems to be a vestige of the representation of when or were written, as in "Iperoig". It is represented in Navarro's orthography by , following the tradition initiated by Figueira in the 17th century, after the "indecision" of the 16th century. is realized as . It occurs in all positions except unstressed word-final position. An example is ("armadillo"). It is represented in Navarro's orthography by .
Nasal are realized as . They occur in stressed syllables. Examples are ("a disease"), ("sweet", "salty"), ("nose"), ("thus", "then"), ("field"), and ("hollow inner part"). They are represented in Navarro's orthography by . Navarro considers them allophones of the oral vowels, but Gerardi provides minimal pairs.
Consonants + Tupi consonant phonemes Bilabial Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Stop () () () Fricative () () Nasal Flap Approximant ()
Stops is realized as and , and is realized as and . They occur in initial and medial positions. is realized as and . It occurs in all positions. Rodrigues does not consider to be realized as . Examples of realized as would be (realized as , meaning "in the middle of the field"), (realized as , meaning "stew"), and (realized as , meaning "good woman"). are represented in Navarro's orthography by , as in ("shrimp"), ("village"), and ("paca"). are realized as . They occur in syllable-initial position. Rodrigues does not list them as phonemes. is realized as . It occurs in root-initial and root-medial positions. Rodrigues makes no mention of the glottal stop, "probably" because he relied on selected sources "without taking into account" genetically related languages. It is represented in Navarro's orthography by , an innovation compared to Barbosa and , as in (realized as , meaning "forest").
Fricatives is realized as , , and (or simply ). It occurs in word-initial, root-medial, and final positions. The phones and (or simply ) occur in final position in free variation, as in (realized as or simply , meaning "oh my father"). It is represented in Navarro's orthography by , and sometimes at the end of a word by , as in (realized as , meaning "face") and ("my father!"). Cruz considers to be a phone of and therefore not to have phonemic status. is realized as and . It occurs in initial and medial positions, as in ("slide, leak out") and ("wash"). The phone occurs when preceded by or , as in (realized as , meaning "his mother"). It occurs in word-initial position in onomatopoeias, loanwords, the reduced form of ("I"), and in suffixes that only occur followed by . It is represented in Navarro's orthography by and , as in ("I go"), ("his mother"), and ("I"). There is a near-minimal pair of and in ("heavy") and ("ugly"). According to Rodrigues, is a phoneme and is realized as and . The phone occurs in word–initial and medial positions, as in ("I"). The phone occurs in word-initial position, where it is in free variation with , as in (modernly represented as , meaning "let's go!"). This phone was recorded only by Anchieta, who represented it as on folio 23 of his grammar. is attested in only a few words. According to Barbosa, it appears in only "three or four" words. Gerardi lists five—specifically, all entries in Navarro's dictionary that begin with (, , , , and ). Navarro's work also includes other entries containing in non-initial position, namely , , , , , , and (an alternative form of ).
Nasals is realized as and . It occurs in initial, medial, and final positions. The phone occurs in syllable-initial position and oral environments, as in (realized as , meaning "thing") and (realized as , meaning "milk"). The phone occurs in all other contexts, as in (realized as , meaning "die"). It is represented in Navarro's orthography by and , as in ~ ("thing"). is realized as and . It occurs in initial, medial, and final positions.