Dita and Kalinago?

Another word we think may come from the Kalinago language or the related Taino is dita. Used in Puerto Rican Spanish to designate a "vasija hecha de media higüera, que se destina a varios usos como platos, orinales, etc., entre la gente pobre." According to the Diccionario de voces indígenas de Puerto Rico, dita is probably of indigenous origin and connotation. Luis Hernández Aquino is probably correct. A quick search of the Garifuna and Kalinago languages indicate a very similar word used to designate a drinking cup. In Garifuna, the word is rida, translated in English as calabash drinking cup. In 17th century French sources on the Kalinago or "Caribs" of the Lesser Antilles, a similar word for drinking cup is listed as ritta or rita. Clearly, the Garifuna word for cup is derived from the Kalinago. The question, however, that remains, is determining if the Puerto Rican dita is derived from Kalinago or from a similar Taino word. To our knowledge, no Spanish sources clearly indicate the Taino word for drinking cup or vessel. However, the Spanish word for similar dishes or vessels in part of Latin America is guacal, which sounds more "Taino" than dita or rita or rida.

But other scholars, like Bernardo Vega, believed guacal was the word for basket in Taino. Others also point to Nahuatl for the origin of guacal in Spanish, defining it as basket or crate. Since it is unclear if guacal is actually derived from Nahuatl, it will perhaps be better to avoid any definitive conclusions about the Taino word for drinking cups or vessels. Moreover, since Kalinago was an Arawakan language, it is possible that the Taino word for drinking cup was indeed similar to ritta. If so, it would be interesting to look for other examples of similar words in Kalinago and Taino in which one can see the switching or d and r sounds. This could have been the case due to long-standing precolonial relations between indigenous peoples of Puerto Rico and those living in the Lesser Antilles. Moreover, frequent conflicts between the "Caribs" and the Spanish colonial regime in the 1500s might have introduced Kalinago-speaking captives who left behind their word drinking cup.