Macorix (/maso'riʃ/, also rendered Maçorís and Mazorij) was the language of the northern coast of what is today the Dominican Republic. Spanish accounts only refer to three languages on the island: Taino, Macorix, and neighboring
Ciguayo. The
Macorix people appear to have been semi-sedentary and their presence seems to have predated the agricultural
Taino who came to occupy much of the island. For the early European writers, they shared similarities with the nearby
Ciguayos.
Their language appears to have been moribund at the time of the
Spanish Conquest
The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its predece ...
, and within a century it was extinct.
Divisions
Upper Macoris was spoken on the north-central coast of the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from
Puerto Plata to
Nagua, and inland to
San Francisco de Macorís and further. It was also distributed on the southeast coast of
Hispaniola
Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...
around
San Pedro de Macorís
San Pedro de Macorís is a city and municipality (''municipio'') in the Dominican Republic and the capital of the San Pedro de Macorís province in the east region of the country; it is among the 10 largest cities of the Dominican Republic. Th ...
.
Lower Macoris was spoken in the northwestern part of the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from
Monte Cristi to
Puerto Plata, and from the coast inland to the area of
Santiago de los Caballeros
Santiago de los Caballeros (; '' en, Saint James of the Knights''), often shortened to Santiago, is the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic and the fourth-largest city in the Caribbean by population. It is the capital of Santiago Prov ...
.
Lexicon
Little is known of Macorix apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Ciguayo. A negative form, ''baeza'' , is the only element of the language that is directly attested. ''Baeza'' could be Arawakan (though not Taino or
Iñeri), analyzable as ''ba-ésa'' 'no-thing' = 'nothing'. (Cf.
Manao ''ma-esa'' 'no, not',
Paresis
In medicine, paresis () is a condition typified by a weakness of voluntary movement, or by partial loss of voluntary movement or by impaired movement. When used without qualifiers, it usually refers to the limbs, but it can also be used to desc ...
''ma-isa'' 'not'. The negative prefix is ''ba-'' in
Amarakaeri which, even if it is related to the Arawakan languages, is not close enough to be relevant here.)
Toponyms
There are also some non-Taino toponyms from the area that Granberry & Vescelius (2004) suggest may be
Waroid:
(Cf. a similar list at
Guanahatabey language
Guanahatabey (Guanajatabey) was the language of the Guanahatabey people, a hunter-gatherer society that lived in western Cuba until the 16th century. Very little is known of it, as the Guanahatabey died off early in the period of Spanish coloniza ...
.)
See also
*
Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles
References
*Granberry, Julian, & Gary Vescelius (2004) ''Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles'', University Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa,
{{North American languages
Languages of the Dominican Republic
Languages of Haiti
Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles
Extinct languages of North America
Languages extinct in the 16th century