Guanahatabey (Guanajatabey) was the language of the
Guanahatabey people, a hunter-gatherer society that lived in western Cuba until the 16th century. Very little is known of it, as the Guanahatabey died off early in the period of
Spanish colonization before substantial information about them was recorded. Evidence suggests it was distinct from the
Taíno language
Taíno is an extinct Arawakan language that was spoken by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. At the time of Spanish contact, it was the most common language throughout the Caribbean. Classic Taíno (Taíno proper) was the native language of th ...
spoken in the rest of the island.
[Rouse, pp. 20–21.]
Background
The Guanahatabey were hunter-gatherers that appear to have predated the agricultural
Ciboney
The Ciboney, or Siboney, were a Taíno people of western Cuba, Jamaica, and the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti. A Western Taíno group living in central Cuba during the 15th and 16th centuries, they had a dialect and culture distinct from the Classi ...
, the
Taíno
The Taíno were a historic Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, indigenous people of the Caribbean whose culture has been continued today by Taíno descendant communities and Taíno revivalist communities. At the time of European contact in the ...
group that inhabited most of Cuba. By the contact period, the Guanahatabey lived primarily in far western
Pinar del Río Province
Pinar del Río is one of the provinces of Cuba. It is at the western end of the island of Cuba.
Geography
The Pinar del Río province is Cuba's westernmost province and contains one of Cuba's three main mountain ranges, the Cordillera de Guanig ...
, which the Ciboney did not settle and was colonized by the Spanish relatively late. Spanish accounts indicate that Guanahatabey was distinct from and mutually unintelligible with the Taíno language spoken in the rest of Cuba and throughout the Caribbean.
[ Not a single word of the Guanahatabey language has been documented.
]
Toponyms
However, Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius have identified five placenames that they consider non-Taíno, and which may thus derive from Guanahatabey. Granberry and Vescelius argue that the names have parallels in the Warao language
Warao (also known as Guarauno, Guarao, Warrau) is the native language of the Warao people. A language isolate, it is spoken by about 33,000 people primarily in northern Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. It is notable for its unusual object–subje ...
, and further suggest a possible connection with the Macoris language
Macorix (/maso'riʃ/, also rendered Maçorís and Mazorij) was the language of the northern coast of what is today the Dominican Republic. Spanish accounts only refer to three languages on the island: Taino, Macorix, and neighboring Ciguayo. The ...
of Hispaniola (''see'' Waroid languages).[Granberry and Vescelius, pp. 75–77.]
See also
* Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles
Notes
References
*
*
{{North American languages
Extinct languages of North America
Indigenous peoples in Cuba
Languages of Cuba
Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles
Languages extinct in the 16th century