| Guanche | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Spain (Canary Islands) |
| Region | Canary Islands |
| Ethnicity | Guanches |
| Extinct | 17th century[1] |
Afro-Asiatic?
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | gnc |
gnc | |
| Glottolog | guan1277 |
Guanche is anextinct language ordialect continuum that was spoken by theGuanches of theCanary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. It died out after theconquest of the Canary Islands as the Guanche ethnic group was assimilated into the dominantSpanish culture. The Guanche language is known today through sentences and individual words that were recorded by early geographers, as well as through severalplace-names and some Guanche words that were retained in theCanary Islanders' Spanish.
Guanche has not been classified with any certainty. Manylinguists propose that Guanche was likely aBerber language, or at least genealogically related to the Berber languages to some extent as anAfroasiatic language.[2][3][4][5] However, recognizable Berber words are primarily agricultural or livestock vocabulary, whereas no Berber grammatical inflections have been identified, and there is a large stock of vocabulary that does not bear any resemblance to Berber whatsoever. It may be that Guanche had a stratum of Berber vocabulary but was otherwise unrelated to Berber.[1] Other strong similarities to the Berber languages are reflected in their counting system, while some authors suggest the Canarian branch would be a sister branch to the surviving continental Berber languages, splitting off during the early development of the language family and before theterminus post quem for the origin of Proto-Berber.[5]
The nameGuanche originally referred to a "man fromTenerife",[6] and only later did it come to refer to all native inhabitants of theCanary Islands. Different dialects of thelanguage were spoken across thearchipelago. Archaeological finds on the Canaries include bothLibyco-Berber andPunic inscriptions inrock carvings, although early accounts stated the Guanches themselves did not possess a system of writing.
The first reliable account of the Guanche language was provided by the Genovese explorerNicoloso da Recco in 1341, with a list of the numbers 1–19, possibly fromFuerteventura. Recco's account reveals abase-10 counting system with strong similarities toBerbernumbers.
Silbo, originally a whistled form of Guanche speech used for communicating over long distances, was used onLa Gomera,El Hierro,Tenerife, andGran Canaria. As the Guanche language became extinct, aSpanish version of Silbo was adopted by some inhabitants of theCanary Islands.
Guanche numerals are attested from several sources, not always in good agreement (Barrios 1997). Some of the discrepancies may be due to copy errors, some togender distinctions, and others toArabic borrowings in later elicitations. Recco's early 1341 record notably uses Italian-influenced spelling.
| Number | Recco (1341) | Cairasco (song, 1582) | Cedeño (c. 1685) | Marín de Cubas (1687, 1694) | Sosa (copy of 1678) | Abreu (attrib. to 1632) | Reyes (1995 reconstruction) | Proto-Berber |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | vait* | *be | ben, ven-ir- | becen~been, ben-ir- | ben, ben-ir- | been (ben?), ben-i- | *wên | *yiwan |
| 2 | smetti, smatta- | *smi | liin, lin-ir- | liin, sin-ir-~lin-ir- | lini (sijn) | lini, lini- | *sîn | *sin |
| 3 | amelotti, amierat- | *amat | amiet | amiet~amiat, am-ir- | amiat (amiet) | amiat | *amiat | *karaḍ |
| 4 | acodetti, acodat- | *aco | arba | arba | arba | arba | *akod | *hakkuẓ |
| 5 | simusetti, simusat- | *somus | canza~canse | canza | cansa | canza | *sumus | *sammus |
| 6 | sesetti, sesatti- | ? | sumus | sumui~sumus | sumus | smmous | *sed | *saḍis |
| 7 | satti | *set | sat | sat | sat (sá) | sat | *sa | *sah |
| 8 | tamatti | *tamo | set | set | set | set | *tam | *tam |
| 9 | alda-marava, nait | ? | acet~acot | acot | acot | acot | *aldamoraw | *tiẓ(ẓ)ah~tuẓah |
| 10 | marava | *marago | marago | marago | marago | marago | *maraw~maragʷ | *maraw |
* Alsonait,' an apparent copy error. Similarly withalda-morana for expected *alda-marava.
Later attestations of 11–19 were formed by linking the digit and ten with-ir:benirmarago, linirmarago, etc. 20–90 were similar, but contracted:linago, amiago, etc.100 wasmaraguin, apparently 10 with the Berber plural-en. Recco only recorded1–16; the combining forms for 11–16, which did not have this-ir-, are included as the hyphenated forms in the table above.
Spanish does not distinguish[b] and[v], sobeen is consistent with *veen. The Berber feminine ends in-t, as inShilha1:yan (m),yat (f);2:sin (m),snat (f), and this may explain discrepancies such asbeen andvait for 'one'.
Cairasco is a misparsed counting song,besmia mat acosomuset tamobenir marago.Ses '6' may have got lost in the middle ofsomuset ( ← *somussesset).
Starting with Cedeño, new roots for '2' and '9' appear ('9' perhaps the old root for '4'), new roots for '4' and '5' (arba, kansa) appear to be Arabic borrowings, and old '5', '6', '7' offset to '6', '7', '8'.
Below are selected Guanche vocabulary items from a 16th-century list byAlonso de Espinosa, as edited and translated byClements Robert Markham (1907):[7]: xx–xxiv
| Guanche | English gloss |
|---|---|
| adara | lake |
| afaro | grain |
| aguere | lake |
| ahof, aho | milk |
| ahoren | barley meal roasted with butter |
| amen | sun |
| ana | sheep |
| ara | goat |
| aran | farm |
| xaxo | deceased; mummy |
| banot | spear |
| cancha | dog |
| cel | moon |
| chafa | lofty mountain ridge |
| chafaña | toasted grain |
| chamato | woman |
| coran | man |
| coraja | red owl |
| e-c, e-g | I (1st person) |
| era, iera | your |
| guan; ben | son (in reality "one of")[8] |
| guañac | people; state |
| guaya | spirit, life |
| guijon, guyon | ships (-n ‘plural’) |
| guirre | vulture (Neophron percnopterus) |
| hacichei | beans, vetches |
| hari | multitude, people |
| jarco | mummy |
| manse | shore |
| mayec | mother |
| n-amet | bone |
| o-che | melted butter |
| petut | father? |
| t | thou, thy |
| th | they |
| tabayba | Euphorbia |
| tabona | obsidian knife |
| tagasaste | Cytisus proliferus (var.) |
| taginaste | Echium strictum |
| tamarco | coat of skins |
| tara | barley |
| taraire, tagaire | alternative name for Mt. Teid |
| xerco | shoe |
| xerax | sky |
| zonfa | navel |
Below are some additional basic vocabulary words in various Guanche dialects, from Wölfel (1965):[9]
| Guanche | gloss | dialect (island) |
|---|---|---|
| guan, cotan | man | |
| chamato | woman | |
| hari | people, multitude | Tenerife |
| doramas | nostrils | Gran Canaria |
| adargoma | shoulder | Gran Canaria |
| atacaicate | heart | Gran Canaria |
| garuaic | fist | |
| zonfa | navel | Tenerife |
| agoñe | bone | Tenerife |
| taber | good | LaPalma |
| tigotan | sky | La Palma |
| Achamán | sky, God | Tenerife |
| magec | sun | Tenerife, Gran Canaria? |
| ahemon | water | Hierro |
| aala(mon) | water | Gomera, Hierro |
| ade | water | La Palma |
| ide | fire | Tenerife |
| tacande | volcanic field | La Palma |
| cancha | dog | Gran Canaria, Tenerife |
| garehagua | dog | La Palma |
....man of Teneriffe," corrupted, according to Nuñez de la Peña, by Spaniards into Guanchos
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain: Espinosa, Alonso de; Markham, Clements Robert (ed.). 1907.The Guanches of Tenerife, the holy image of Our Lady of Candelaria, and the Spanish conquest and settlement. (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, second series, 21.) London:Hakluyt Society. 229pp.
