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 disappeared 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 Arawakan language formerly spoken widely by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. In its revived form, there exist several modern-day Taíno language variants including Hiwatahia-Taino and Tainonaiki. At the time of Spanish contact ...
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 Cuba, Jamaica, and the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti. A Western Taíno group living in Cuba during the 15th and 16th centuries, they had a dialect and culture distinct from the Classic Taíno in th ...
, the
Taíno
The Taíno are the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The ...
group that inhabited most of Cuba. By the contact period, the Guanahatabey lived primarily in far western
Pinar del Río Province, 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–subject ...
, and further suggest a possible connection with the Macoris language 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