Guanche language
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| Guanche | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Formerly, Canary Islands | |
| Region: | Limited to the islands | |
| Language extinction: | By the 16th century | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Berber Guanche |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | ber | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | gnc | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Guanche is an extinct language spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands. Its ISO 639-3 code is gnc. It has been out of use since the 16th century. Scholars' knowledge of the language is limited to a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by study of placenames and some words assimilated into the Canary Islanders' dialects of Spanish. This makes it nearly impossible to determine its relationships with any certainty; however, most linguists consider Guanche to be related to the Berber languages.
The first reliable account of Guanche language was provided by Genovese explorer Nicoloso da Recco in 1341, with a translation of the numbers from 1-16 used by the inhabitants of one island, possibly Fuerteventura. Recco's account reveals a base-10 counting system with strong similarities to Berber numbers.
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