Ciguayo (Siwayo) was the language of the

Samaná Peninsula The Samaná Península is a peninsula in Dominican Republic situated in the province of Samaná. The Samaná Peninsula is connected to the rest of the state by the isthmus of Samaná; to its south is Samaná Bay. The peninsula contains many beache ...

of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) at the time of the

Spanish Conquest The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its predece ...

. The

Ciguayos The Ciguayos (Spanish: Ciguayos) were a group of indigenous people who inhabited the Samaná Peninsula and its adjoining regions in the present-day Dominican Republic. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taíno who inhabited mu ...

appear to have predated the agricultural Taino who inhabited much of the island. The language appears to have been moribund at the time of Spanish contact, and within a century it was extinct. Ciguayo was spoken on the northeastern coast of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from

Nagua Nagua is the capital of María Trinidad Sánchez province, in the northeastern Dominican Republic. A medium-sized town, Nagua's economy relies on the production of agricultural products, principally rice, coconuts, and cocoa bean. Located on t ...

southward to at least the

Yuna River The Yuna River (Spanish: ''Río Yuna'') is the second longest river in the Dominican Republic at in length. It forms within the Cordillera Central mountain range southwest of the city of Bonao in Monseñor Nouel Province, and passes through the ...

, and throughout all of the

Samana Peninsula The term Samaná or Samana may mean several things: Places Dominican Republic *Samaná Province, a province in the Dominican Republic *Samaná (town), or Santa Bárbara de Samaná, the capital of Samaná Province *Samaná Peninsula *Samaná Bay, a ...

Lexicon

Little is known of Ciguayo apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Macorix. The only attested words are "gold", ''tuob'' (presumably or ) and a few place names such as ''Quizquella'' (presumably ), meaning "very mountainous." This makes it unlikely that the language is Arawakan or Cariban, as languages of those families have simple V and CV

syllable structure A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...

s even in loanwords that were originally CCV or CVC. Granberry & Vescelius (2004) speculate that the closest parallels might be in the Tolan languages of Honduras. Granberry & Vescelius (2004) analyze the morphemes of ''tuob'' 'gold' and ''Quizquella'' 'very mountainous' as: ;to-w-b(e) 'gold' *''to''- (cf. Eastern Tol ''t'' 'heavy(ness)') *-''w''- (cf. Eastern Tol -''w''- 'its') *-''b(e)'' (cf. Eastern Tol -''pe'' 'stone') ;kʰis-kʰe-ya 'very mountainous' *''kʰis''- (cf. Eastern Tol ''kʰis'' 'hard rock') *-''kʰe''- (cf. reduplication in Eastern Tol) *-''ya'' (cf. Eastern Tol ''yo'' 'tree')

References

{{North American languages Languages of the Dominican Republic Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 16th century

Lexicon

See also

References