This is a Living Dictionary of Garifuna, an endangered language of the Arawakan (or Arawak) language family primarily spoken in Belize and Honduras but with many speakers in the United States. Our dictionary primarily reflects the speech of speakers from Dangriga, Hopkins, Punta Gorda, and Seine Bight, Belize. While we do check other sources, for the most part the dictionary includes words and meanings our contributors know well. 

The dictionary is being prepared by Virginia Martha Martinez-Ciego, Ben Flores, and Pamela Munro, with input by Anita Lambey-Martinez and Allen Munro, and additional contributions from other members of the Los Angeles Garifuna community study group, including Jo Baker, Lisa Carlos, Shantel Garcia, Marva Lewis, Luciana Lino, and Jessica Palacio. 

The dictionary uses a new orthography for Garifuna based closely on traditiional sources. Differences include the following: long vowels are written double, stress is written on every word except for particles (clitics) and auxiliaries, the stressed vowel ü is written û, and we do not write ñ (which represents vowel nasalization in the environment of y). 

The same orthography is also used in the textbook Adímureha Wamaa Garífuna (Let's Speak Garifuna) (in continual revision) by Pamela Munro, Virginia M. Martinez-Ciego, Anita Lambey-Martinez, and the late Maurice Lopez, which has been used in classes at UCLA and in the current community class. We hope this dictionary will be useful to Garifuna language learners and others interested in the language.

For more about how things appear in the dictionary, please see the Grammar section.

If you have questions, want to suggest additional words we should include, or have additional meanings or pronunciations of words in the dictionary to suggest, we'd love to hear from you — please write to Pam Munro at munro@ucla.edu.