Cañari language

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Not to be confused with Kanuri language.
Cañari
Native toEcuador
RegionEcuadoran Andes
EthnicityCañari
Extinctearly Colonial era
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
Glottologcana1260

Cañar or Cañari is a poorly attested extinct language of the Marañón River basin in Ecuador which is difficult to classify, apart from being apparently related to Puruhá, though it may have been Chimuan or Barbacoan. (See Cañari–Puruhá languages.) It was the original language of the Cañari people before its replacement by Kichwa and later Spanish.

Phonology

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The following tentative phonology given below is from Howard (2010).[1]

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Stop voiceless p t k
voiced b d g
Affricate ch
Fricative voiceless s sh x
voiced z zh
Nasal m n ñ ŋ
Vibrant r
Lateral l ll
Semivowel w y

Vocabulary

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Cañari substratum in Cañar Quichua

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Urban (2018)

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According to Urban (2018),[2] modern-day Cañar Quichua (spoken in Cañar Province, Ecuador) has a Cañari substratum, which can be seen in the phonology and lexicon of the dialect. Below is a list of Cañar Quichua words with Barbacoan lexical parallels, and hence likely to be words of Cañari origin. The words were compiled by Urban (2018) from Cordero (1895),[3] Cordero Palacios (1923),[4] and Paris (1961), and are compared in the table below to words the Barbacoan languages Totoró, Cha'palaa, and Tsafiki as well as Proto-Barbacoan reconstructions.[5]

Cañar Quichua Barbacoan Gloss
Cordero Cordero Palacios Paris Proto-Barbacoan Totoró Cha'palaa Tsafiki
izhi ‘fog, very light drizzle’ izhin ‘drizzle’ izhi *iʃ ‘smoke' ‘fog/smoke’
putu[l] *pɨt(ɨ) (Urban's own reconstruction) ‘rotten’
pachi ‘kind of tree of the eastern highlands’ *tsik ‘tree, stick' ‘kind of tree’
[chuchip]chi ‘kind of small tree’ [chuchip]chi ‘kind of plant, Abatia verbascifolia ‘kind of tree’
[pil]chi [pil]chi ‘kind of plant, Crescentia cujete’ [pil]chi ‘vessel, junk made of coco, calabash’ ‘calabash tree’
nunchi ‘kind of shrub’
chipu ‘a kind of insect that jumps’ chipu ‘locust’ chijpi ‘flea' chi’pın ‘flea’ ‘a kind of insect that jumps’
mulu ‘rustic plate, made of clay and without adornment’ mulu milan ‘plate’
chiru ‘orangutan [sic!]’ churi ‘monkey’
cuylan ‘small lizard’ cuilan cuilan ~ cullan ‘small lizard’ kalun[c’i] (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘lizard’
sutu, zzutu su’tu ‘inserted, put between’ ‘knot’
zzuyu suyun ‘rainbow’ ‘dusk’
palu palu palu [lan]palo ‘common lizard’ ‘lizard’
pu[nya]- ‘stink excessively, emit a nauseating smell’ pu[dyu] ‘smelling badly pu[ba]- ‘smelly’ ‘smell, stink’
piri ‘light scabies’ piri ‘vile, despicable, mangy’ piri ‘light scabies, grain mold’ <pirr[sureg]>, <pirr[sé]> ‘lepra’ (Otero 1952: 317, 310) ‘skin disease’
palti palti ‘height, lookout (?)’ *tɨ ‘firewood’ pala ‘high, up’ (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘platform built in high place’
tulu tulu tulu tolo ‘bag' ‘sack or bag’
taba ‘rubbish consisting of branches and leaves which covers rocky regions’ taba ‘scrub, place full of scrub’ taba ‘mosquito, rubbish, tangle’ tape ‘grass’ ta’pe ‘grass, bush’ ‘vegetable waste/grass’
cuzu ‘larva of some insects’ cussu ‘larva of beetle (?!)’ kuzu ‘thick worm, found especially in potatoes’ ku’ʃi ‘worm ‘larva/worm’
punzu punzu ‘rubbish, tow, fine straw’ pu’chu ‘rest' ‘fine straw, tow-like rubbish’
pu[zha] pu[zha] ‘stalk, rubbish’ ‘small leaves, fibrous rubbish’
pichi ‘red, crimson, scarlet’ pichi ‘red, crimson’ piku(ˈtik), piki(tik) (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘red’
pilis ‘body louse of human or animals’ pilis ‘body louse’ pilis ‘body louse’ palekˈtɨ ‘louse’
malta ‘small clay jug to store or sell chicha’ malta ‘small jug made of fired clay’ mala ‘sugar cane juice, chicha’ ‘(vessel for) chicha’
jizi ‘laughing, one who laughs without discretion’ jissi jizi ‘laughing’ ‘laugh’
chas ‘spontaneous growth of potatoes in an already harvested field’ ‘field’ (?)
batiuc ‘lamb’ ba’tu fu ‘freshly grown hair’ ‘fresh, young’ (?)
munzhi ‘naughty, playful, restless’ ‘naughty, playful, restless’

References

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  1. ^ Carlin, Eithne; Kerke, Simon van de, eds. (2010). Linguistics and archaeology in the Americas: the historization of language and society. Brill eBook titles. Leiden Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-17362-0.
  2. ^ Urban, Matthias (2018). "The Lexical Legacy of Substrate Languages: A Test Case From The Southern Ecuadorian Highlands". Transactions of the Philological Society. 116 (3): 435–459. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.12129. ISSN 1467-968X.
  3. ^ Cordero, Luis, [1895] 1992. Diccionario quichua-castellano y castellano-quichua, 5th edn. Quito: Proyecto Educación Bilingüe Intercultural/Corporación Editora Nacional.
  4. ^ Cordero Palacios, Octavio, [1923] 1981. El quechua y el cañari (contribución para la historia precuencana de las provincias azuayas), 2nd edn. Cuenca: Departamento de Difusión Cultural, Universidad de Cuenca.
  5. ^ Paris, Julio, 1961. Gramática de la lengua quichua actualmente en uso entre los indígenas del Eduador, 3rd edn. Revision and Quichua dictionary by José María Lévesque and Gilberto Mejía. Quito: Santo Domingo.