Language Contact and Documentation: Contacto Linguistico y Documentacion

Tetsualü: The pluralism of languages and people in the Upper Xingu 125
However, it not easy to marry between indigenous groups from the Upper
Xingu itself either, since each people has its own elements, distinct from the
others. When the marriage takes place, the husband and wife must learn, integrate
and accustom themselves to the culture of the people where they are
living. The village elders explain that a man who marries a woman from another
indigenous group has to be egohohüngü, an unweak person: he cannot have
an inferior status in his own village. On the first day the groom is welcomed
and must fight all the wrestlers from the other village. This is what happened
to my father Kumatsi when he arrived in the Kuikuro village for the first time.
Soon after his arrival, he heard the sound of the village’s wrestlers stamping
their feet on the ground. He had to accept the invitation to fight: refusal to do
so would lead to him being ‘mistreated’ by the local people, he would not win
their respect. That is why only those with prestige can marry a girl from another
village.
When we marry, the spouse must teach us all the names of the people with
whom we must henceforth be ashamed to communicate, including the names
of siblings-in-law. Gregor says that the Mehinaku (1977: 284) “circumvent the
taboo by means of a convention of referring to a name without actually mentioning
it. For example, since species of fish and other fauna are used for personal
names, the Mehinaku have worked out a number of circumlocutions that
avoid referring to the species by their names.”
In the past, before Portuguese terms existed as potential anthroponyms,
there was another way of avoiding the names of affines. A descriptive term
or words from another indigenous group were used, as Gregor describes. The
Mehinaku used Kuikuro words designating monkey as way of avoiding the
name of an affine called pahü, ‘monkey,’ in Mehinaku. To avoid the name
umüngi, ‘annatto,’ in Kuikuro, we can use the Arawak term yuku. Indeed I believe
this has been an essential factor in the circulation of loan words among
the Upper Xingu languages.
Today there are various alternatives or options for avoiding the names of
affines. Take my case. My father-in-law is called Pelé. When I want to speak
about the football player Pelé, I call him ‘my father-in-law’ and I call my fatherin-law
‘player.’ I have another father-in-law, my father-in-law’s brother, called
Inhu (‘freshwater snail’). To avoid using this term, I use the Portuguese word
‘caramujo.’ The table elaborated by Gregor (1982: 274) inspired me to produce
the table 1.
Today the arrival of Portuguese has provided another means for us to avoid
affinal names. Even though this resource is available only to those who speak
the kagaiha language, it is increasingly used.
The Upper Xingu kinship system was formed, therefore, through the cultural
approximations of various peoples who arrived in the region. Interethnic