Garifuna language in the context of "Black Caribs"

The South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region is one of two autonomous regions in Nicaragua. It was created along with the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region by the Autonomy Statute of 7 September 1987 through a division of the former Zelaya Department. It covers an area of 27,260 km (10,530 sq mi) and has a population of 420,935 (2021 estimate). The capital is Bluefields. Bordering the Caribbean Sea, it contains part of the region known as Moskitia.

It is divided into 12 municipalities: Bluefields, the Corn Islands, Desembocadura de Río Grande, El Ayote, El Tortuguero, Kukra Hill, La Cruz de Río Grande, Muelle de los Bueyes, Nueva Guinea, Paiwas, Pearl Lagoon, and Rama. Eight languages are spoken in the region, with English Creole and Spanish being dominant. The regional official languages are: Spanish (national official language of Nicaragua), Creole (Moskitian Creole and Rama Cay Creole), Sumo (Mayangna and Ulwa), Rama, Miskito, and Garifuna.

The Kalinago language, also known as Island Carib and Igneri (Iñeri, Inyeri, etc.), was an Arawakan language historically spoken by the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Kalinago proper became extinct by about 1920 due to population decline and colonial period deportations resulting in language death, but an offshoot survives as Garifuna, primarily in Central America.

Despite being known as Island Carib, the language was not closely related to the Carib language of the mainland Caribs. Instead, it appears to have been a development of the Arawakan language spoken by the islands' earlier Igneri inhabitants, which incoming Caribs adopted in the pre-Columbian era. During the French colonial period, Carib men also spoke a Cariban-derived pidgin amongst themselves.

Voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences:

• A voiceless alveolar sibilant [s] (the standard symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA) has a strong hissing sound, as the s in English sink. It is one of the most common sounds in the world.
• A voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant [s̄] (an ad hoc notation), also called apico-dental, has a weaker lisping sound like English th in thin. It occurs in Spanish dialects in southern Spain (eastern Andalusia).
• A voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant [s̠], and the subform apico-alveolar [s̺], or called grave, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of retroflex fricatives. It is used in the languages of northern Iberia, like Asturleonese, Basque, Peninsular Spanish (excluding parts of Andalusia), Catalan, Galician, and Northern European Portuguese. A similar retracted sibilant form is also used in Dutch, Icelandic, some southern dialects of Swedish, Finnish, and Greek. The retracted "S" is also used in Amerindian languages such as Muscogee, Garifuna, and many varieties of Quechua. It was supposedly the standard sound of s in Classical Latin. Its sound is between [s] and [ʃ].
• A voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̠] or [θ͇], using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA, is similar to the th in English thin. It occurs in Icelandic as well as an intervocalic and word-final allophone of English /t/ in dialects such as Hiberno-English and Scouse.
• A voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] sounds like a voiceless, strongly articulated version of English l (somewhat like what the English cluster **hl would sound like) and is written as ll in Welsh.

The first three types are sibilants, meaning that they are made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth and have a piercing, perceptually prominent sound.

The Garifuna people (/ˌɡɑːriːˈfuːnə/ GAR-ee-FOO-nə or Spanish pronunciation: [ɡa'ɾifuna]; pl. Garínagu in Garifuna) are an Afro-Indigenous people of mixed free African and Amerindian ancestry that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and traditionally speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language.

The Garifuna are the descendants of Indigenous Arawak, Kalinago (Island Carib), and Afro-Caribbean people. The founding population of the Central American diaspora, estimated at 2,500 to 5,000 persons, were transplanted to Roatán from Saint Vincent, which was known to the Garinagu as Yurumein, in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Small Garifuna communities still live in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The Garifuna diaspora abroad includes communities in Honduras, the United States, and Belize.