Taíno (language)
| Taíno | |||
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| Native to | Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos | ||
| Ethnicity | Taíno, Ciboney, Lucayan | ||
| Extinct | 16th century | ||
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Arawakan
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| Dialects |
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| Language codes | |||
| ISO 639-3 | |
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| Glottolog | tain1254 |
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Taíno dialects, among other Pre-Columbian languages of the Antilles
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Taíno is an extinct and poorly attested Arawakan language historically spoken by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. At the time of Spanish contact, it was the principal language throughout the Caribbean. Classic Taíno (Taíno proper) was the native language of the northern Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and most of Hispaniola, and was expanding into Cuba. Ciboney is essentially unattested, but colonial sources suggest it was a dialect of Taíno. It was the language of westernmost Hispaniola, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and most of Cuba.
By the late 15th century, Taíno had displaced earlier languages except for western Cuba and pockets in Hispaniola. As the Taíno culture declined during Spanish colonization, the language was replaced with Spanish and other European languages. It was extinct within a hundred years of contact. The language possibly continued to be spoken in isolated pockets in the Caribbean until the late 19th century. As the first native language encountered by Europeans in the New World, it was a major source of new words borrowed into European languages.
Granberry & Vescelius (2004) distinguish two dialects, one on Hispaniola and further east, and the other on Hispaniola and further west.
The Lucayo (Bahamian) subdialect (or perhaps the Ciboney dialect) had /n/ where other dialects (or perhaps Classic Taíno) had /r/. There is variation in accounts between "e" ~ "i" and "o" ~ "u", perhaps reflecting transcription of the three stable vowels of Arawakan into the five vowels of Spanish.
The Taíno language was not written. (The Taínos used petroglyphs, which may be interpreted as "pre-writing" or proto-writing.) However there has been little research in this area. The following phonemes are reconstructed from Spanish records:
There was also a flap [ɾ], which appears to have been an allophone of /d/.
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