Several languages of the

Greater Antilles The Greater Antilles ( es, Grandes Antillas or Antillas Mayores; french: Grandes Antilles; ht, Gwo Zantiy; jam, Grieta hAntiliiz) is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, a ...

, specifically in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...

and

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...

, appear to have preceded the

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

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 ...

. Almost nothing is known of them, though a couple recorded words, along with a few toponyms, suggest they were not Arawakan or

Cariban The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocket ...

, the families of the attested languages of the Antilles. Three languages are recorded: Guanahatabey, Macoris (or Macorix, apparently in two dialects), and Ciguayo.

Languages

There were three pre-Arawakan populations 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 ...

, and they were extinct within a century. These were * the Guanahatabey of western Cuba (sometimes confused with the Arawakan

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 Macorix (Mazorij) in two populations: the Pedernales Peninsula and northeastern Hispaniola (modern Dominican Republic), and * the Ciguayo (Siwayo) of northeastern Hispaniola (

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 ...

). They were evidently completely mutually unintelligible with Taíno. Ciguayo and Macorix were apparently

moribund Moribund refers to a literal or figurative state near death. Moribund may refer to: * ''Moribund'' (album), a 2006 album by the Norwegian black metal band Koldbrann * " Le Moribond", a song by Jacques Brel known in English as "Seasons in the Sun ...

when chronicler De las Casas arrived on the island in 1502. He wrote in his ''Historia'' (1527–1559),

Bartolomé de las Casas, ''Historia de las Indias'', 1986 edition, vol. 1, chap. LXVI

Transcribed in the 1875 editio

as ""
("It is worth noting here that a large section of this coast, at least 25 or 30 league (unit), leagues, and a good 15 or maybe 20 wide, up to the hills which together with the Great Plain make up this part of the coast, was populated by peoples known as Mazorij, and others nown asCiguayos, and they had different languages than the one common to the entire island. I do not remember if they differed rom each otherin language, as it has been many years, and there is not a single person today to ask, as I have spoken often enough with both generations, and more than 50 years have passed.")

However, elsewhere he notes that the neighboring languages were not intelligible with each other.

("Three languages on this island f Hispaniolawere distinct, in that they could not understand one another; the first was that of the people f the regionwe called the Lower Macorix, and the other that of their neighbors of the Upper Macorix
he Ciguayos He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
which we described above as the 4th and 6th provinces; the other language aínowas the universal one of all the land".)

Classification

Little else is known of the languages apart from the word for ‘gold’ in Ciguayo, ''tuob'', mentioned in the sentence immediately preceding the first passage above:

("Here they don't call gold ''caona'', as in the first part of this island, nor ''nozay'' as in the islet of
Guanahani Guanahaní is an island in the Bahamas that was the first land in the New World sighted and visited by Christopher Columbus' first voyage, on 12 October 1492. It is a bean-shaped island that Columbus changed from its native Taíno name to San ...
or
San Salvador San Salvador (; ) is the capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its eponymous department. It is the country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador, which comprises the capital it ...
, but ''tuob''.")

''Tuob'' (whether two syllables as or one as ) is not a possible Taíno word. Both the Arawak and Carib languages had a simple -syllable structure, suggesting that Ciguayo was not just unintelligible, but actually of a different language family than the two known languages of the Caribbean. Granberry (1991) has speculated that they may have been related, not to the languages of South America as Taíno was, but to languages of Central America which had more similar syllable structures. Western Cuba is close enough to the

Yucatán Peninsula The Yucatán Peninsula (, also , ; es, Península de Yucatán ) is a large peninsula in southeastern Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala. The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north ...

for crossings by canoe at the time of the Conquest, and indeed a genetic study in 2020 suggested a Central American origin of the pre-Arawakan population. In Ciguayo, there is also the proper name ''Quisqueya'' (''Kiskeya''), and in Macorix a negative form, ''baeza.'' The Guanahani Taino (Ciboney in the proper sense) word for ‘gold’, ''nozay'', elsewhere spelled ''nuçay'' (''nosai'', ''nusai''), may be of Warao origin, as the Warao word for ‘gold’ is ''naséi simo'' ('yellow pebble'). However, trade words like 'gold' are readily borrowed.Douglas Taylor, "Languages and Ghost-Languages of the West Indies", in the ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', 22:2 (April 1956).

References

{{Caribbean topics, state=collapsed Extinct languages of North America Unclassified languages of North America Indigenous languages of the Caribbean History of the Caribbean Pre-Columbian cultural areas Caribbean studies

Languages

Classification

See also

References