Taíno language
| Taíno | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Native to | Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos | ||
| Ethnicity | Taíno, Ciboney, Lucayan | ||
| Extinct | 19th century | ||
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Arawakan
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| Dialects | |||
| Language codes | |||
| ISO 639-3 | |
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| Glottolog | tain1254 |
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Taíno dialects, among other precolombian languages of the Antilles
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Taíno is a language historically spoken by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. At the time of Spanish colonization, 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/Ciboney had displaced earlier languages except for western Cuba and pockets in Hispaniola. Taíno declined after Spanish colonization began with the language being displaced by Spanish and other European languages. The language 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 Taínos used an early form of writing Proto-writing in the form of petroglyph. 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/.
A distinction between /ɛ/ and /e/ is suggested by Spanish transcriptions of e vs ei/ey, as in ceiba "ceiba". The /e/ is written ei or final é in modern reconstructions. There was also a high back vowel [u], which is often interchangeable with /o/ and may have been an allophone.
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