Igneri

Arawakan language, Iñeri, which transitioned into the Kalinago language

Island Carib culture in the islands.^[1]

mainland Caribs or Kalina). By these accounts, the Caribs conquered and displaced the Igneri. As this tradition was widespread and internally consistent, it was accepted as historical by Europeans.^[2] An invasion would explain cultural differences between the Island Caribs and their Arawak neighbors in the Greater Antilles, the Taíno, as well as some peculiarities of Carib culture, in particular the fact that male and female Caribs were noted as speaking different languages from at least the 17th century. This was explained as an effect of the invasion: according to this interpretation, incoming Carib men took captured Arawak women as wives, and thus the women spoke an Arawakan tongue while the men presumably spoke Carib.^[3]

Cariban. As such, scholars have adopted more nuanced theories to explain the transition from Igneri to Island Carib in the Antilles. Irving Rouse proposed that a relatively small scale Carib force conquered but did not displace the Igneri, and the invaders eventually took on the Igneri language while still maintaining their identity as Caribs.^[3] Other scholars such as Sued Badillo doubt there was an invasion at all, proposing that the Igneri adopted the "Carib" identity over time due to their close economic and political relations with the rising mainland Carib polity.^[4] Both theories accept that the historical Island Carib language developed from the existing tongue of the islands, and thus it is also known as Igneri.^[5]