Alagüilac is an
undocumented indigenous American language
Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
that is thought to have been spoken by the
Alaguilac people of Guatemala at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Views on the language
Brinton (1892) considered Alaguilac to be a dialect of
Pipil Pipil may refer to:
*Nahua people of western El Salvador
*Pipil language
Nawat (academically Pipil, also known as Nicarao) is a Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost extant member of the Uto-Aztecan family. It was spo ...
. However, Campbell (1972) believes this is wrong. Brinton may have been misled by his sources: In 1576 Palacio reported the language of ''Acavastlan'', Guatemala, which he called ''Tlacacebatleca''.
[S. W. Miles "The sixteenth-century Pokom-Maya: a documentary analysis of social structure and archaeological setting", ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society'', 47:734-781 (1957), p. 739.] Juarros mentioned that "Alagüilac" was spoken in
San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán
San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán () is a town in the El Progreso department of Guatemala. San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán is located on the northern bank of the Motagua River at an altitude of 250 m. It had a population of 6,129 people at the 200 ...
and "
Mejicano" was spoken in
. This started a debate on whether Alagüilac was a relative of Pipil. Since Briton found four pages, written between 1610 and 1637 in a
Nahua dialect, in the archives of San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán, and further since in 1878 Bromowicz compiled a list of Nahua words in San Agustín Acasaguastlán, Brinton concluded that Agüilac was nothing more than a form of Nahua. Nonetheless, the archeological evidence does not support the language of the area being Nahua. Others have suggested that Acaguastlán could have been bilingual in Pipil and a Maya language such as
Poqomchiʼ or
Poqomam.
[
However, Campbell argues that the presence of the Pipil or Nahua in the ]Motagua River
The Motagua River () is a river in Guatemala. It rises in the western highlands of Guatemala where it is also called Río Grande, and runs in an easterly direction to the Gulf of Honduras. The final few kilometres of the river form part of the ...
valley could have been the result of forced population movements after the Spanish Conquest. For example, the neighboring town of Salamá was a Pipil community populated by slaves brought in by the Spanish governor, Pedro de Alvarado
Pedro de Alvarado (; c. 1485 – 4 July 1541) was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala.Lovell, Lutz and Swezey 1984, p. 461. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of the Yucatá ...
. He also argues that the Cakchiquels and Poqom expanded from the north into central Guatemala, where they encountered a Xinca population, as evidenced by the large number of Xinca words in these languages. He suggests therefore that Alagüilac may have been a Xinca language; many local place names appear to be of Xinca origin, such as ''Sanarate, Sansare, Sansur,'' and ''Ayampuc''.[In Xinca, ''ṣan-'' is a ]locative
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
; for example, Santa María Ixhuatán
Santa María Ixhuatán is a municipality in the Santa Rosa department of Guatemala
Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north ...
is in Xinca called ''ṣan-piya'' 'place of jars', and Pasaco
Pasaco () is a municipality in the Jutiapa department of Guatemala, located near the Pacific Ocean on the Border with El Salvador.
History
It was originally formed when a group of Aztecs broke off at the arrival of Hernán Cortés, and went fur ...
is ''ṣan-paṣaʔ''. San Pedro Ayampuc derives from Xinca ''yampuki'' 'snake'.
References
* Lyle Campbell (1972): "A Note on the So-Called Alagüilac Language", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', Vol. 38, No. 3 (Jul., 1972), pp. 203–207.
Indigenous languages of Central America
Unclassified languages of North America
Spurious languages
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