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Guanche |
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Guanche is an extinct language that was spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. It is
only known today through a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by several placenames,
as well as some words assimilated into the Canary Islanders' Spanish. Relationships with other languages have therefore been
difficult to determine with certainty; however, it is almost certainly Afro-Asiatic, and many linguists consider Guanche to
likely be one of, or to be related to, the Berber languages. The name Guanche originally meant man from Tenerife, and only
later did it come to refer to all native inhabitants of the Canary Islands. Although different dialects were spoken across
the archipelago, they are all thought to have been varieties of the same language. Archaeological finds on the Canaries include
both Libyco-Berber and Punic inscriptions in rock carvings, although early accounts stated the Guanches themselves did not
possess a system of writing. The first reliable account of Guanche language was provided by Genovese explorer Nicoloso da
Recco in 1341, with a list of the numbers 1–16, possibly from Fuerteventura. Recco's account reveals a base-10 counting system
with strong similarities to Berber numbers. Silbo, originally a whistled form of Guanche speech used for communicating over
long distances, was used on La Gomera, El Hierro, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria. As the Guanche language became extinct, a Spanish
version of Silbo was adopted by some inhabitants of the Canary Islands. |
Names (more)[an] Idioma guanche[br] Gwantcheg [ca] Guanxe [de] Guanche [en] Guanche language [eu] Guantxera [sh] Guanči [hr] Guanči [ja] グアンチェ語 [ko] 관체어 [nl] Guanche [oc] Guanche [pl] Język Guanczów [ru] Гуанчские языки [es] Lenguas guanches [uk] Давньоканарські мови |
Language type : Extinct
Technical notes
This page is providing structured data for the language Guanche. |
ISO 639 CodesISO 639-3 : gncLinked Data URIshttp://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/gnchttp://dbpedia.org/resource/ISO_639:gnc More URIs at sameas.org SourcesAuthority documentation for ISO 639 identifier: gncFreebase ISO 639-3 : gnc GeoNames.org Country Information Publications Office of the European Union Metadata Registry : Countries and Languages |