Tabancale language
| Tabancale | |
|---|---|
| Aconipa, Tabancal, Tabancara | |
| Native to | Peru |
| Region | Aconipa, Cajamarca Department |
| Ethnicity | Tabancale people |
| Extinct | (date missing) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | taba1269 |
 Map of languages spoken in the Andes in the 16th century; Tabancale is indicated with the number 3[1]: 166 | |
Tabancale (Tabancal, Aconipa, Tabancara[2]: 459 ) is an extinct, unclassified language formerly spoken in the village of Aconipa by the Tabancale people, located along the Chinchipe River in the Department of Cajamarca of Peru, as well as in neighbouring Ecuador. Only five words of it were collected in the 16th century and they are not demonstrably related to those in other languages; as a result, it has been categorized as a language isolate by some and left unclassified by others, although connections with the Chicham languages, spoken in Peru and Ecuador, have also been proposed. The Tabancale are thought to have switched to Quechua after they were conquered in 1549.
History
[edit]Julian Steward and Alfred Métraux (1948) assumed the Tabancale assimilated into the "rural, Quechua-speaking population" soon after their conquest in 1549 by Diego Palomino, the founder of the city of Jaén de Bracamoros.[3]: 615
Documentation
[edit]The surviving information about the Tabancale people and their language comes from an anonymous document titled "Relación de la tierra de Jaén" [Account of the Land of Jaén] written around 1570 and published by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada as partt of the Relaciones geográficas de Indias of Peru in 1887.[2]: 447, 459 The Relaciones were based on a series of responses by priests of parishes to questionnaires sent out by the king of Spain to "survey the characteristics of the different regions of its South American territories".[4]: 426 According to the account, the village of Aconipa was in the province of the Tabancale people and the language spoken there was different from all others.[5]: 32
Geographical distribution
[edit]Tabancale was reported to be spoken in a single village, Aconipa, located along the Chinchipe River in Cajamarca Department[6]: 261 near the modern-day Ecuador–Peru border, to the north of San Ignacio in Peru and south of Valladolid in Ecuador.[4]: 425 The language is located in southern Ecuador by Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken (2004),[1]: 166 and in both Peru and Ecuador by the Czech linguist Čestmír Loukotka (1968).[6]: map
Classification
[edit]The Tabancale were said to be "linguistically different" from other peoples living in the region.[3]: 615 According to the American linguist John Alden Mason, Loukotka was apparently the only one of the "compilers" of South American Indigenous languages to mention Tabancale at the time; in his 1935 classification, he had grouped it as an independent family. Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, in his survey of Ecuadorian Indigenous languages, only mentioned the existence of Tabancale, though left it as "independent" in his 1943 classification. Mason himself found the data on Tabancale "insufficient to warrant its classification, at any rate as a distinct family",[7]: 193 Loukotka and the French ethnologist Paul Rivet, in their 1952 classification, grouped "Akonipa" as one of their 109 independent language families.[8]: 1100 Loukotka, in his later 1968 classification, also classified it as a language isolate,[6]: 261 as did the Spanish linguist Antonio Tovar (1961).[9]: 179 According to Adelaar and Muysken (2004), the few known Tabancale vocabulary items do not show similarity with other languages; they opt to leave Tabancale unclassified for the same reason.[1]: 406 More recently, however, Matthias Urban (2024) shows that there may be some connection to the Chicham languages of Peru and Ecuador, particularly in the word yema 'water',[4]: 426 though Alfredo Torero (1993) had previously ascribed this similarity to language contact.[2]: 459
Vocabulary
[edit]Five words of Tabancale were recorded in the Relaciones geográficas.[4]: 426
| gloss | Tabancale |
|---|---|
| water | yema |
| maize | moa |
| firewood | oyme |
| fire | lalaque |
| house | tie |
References
[edit]
- 1 2 3 Adelaar, Willem F. H; Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
- 1 2 3 Torero, Alfredo (1993). "Lenguas del nororiente Peruano: La hoya de Jaén en el siglo XVI". Revista Andina. 11 (2): 447–472.
- 1 2 Steward, Julian H.; Métraux, Alfred (1948). Steward, Julian H. (ed.). Handbook of South American Indians: Volume 3 The Tropical Forest Tribes.
- 1 2 3 4 Urban, Matthias (2024-12-31), "Small and extinct languages of Northern Peru", in Urban, Matthias (ed.), The Oxford Guide to the Languages of the Central Andes (1 ed.), Oxford University PressOxford, pp. 419–437, doi:10.1093/oso/9780198849926.003.0014, ISBN 978-0-19-884992-6, retrieved 2026-07-01
- 1 2 Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos, ed. (1897). Relaciones geográficas de Indias: Perú. Madrid: Manuel de G. Hernández.
- 1 2 3 Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Wilbert, Johannes (ed.). Classification of South American Indian Languages (PDF) (4th ed.). Latin American Center, UCLA: Latin American Center, University of California Los Angeles. ISBN 9780879031077.
- ↑ Mason, J. Alden (1950). "The languages of South American Indians" (PDF). Physical anthropology, linguistics and cultural geography of South American Indians. Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 6. Smithsonian Institution, Washington: Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology. pp. 157–317. Retrieved 2026-08-03.
- ↑ Rivet, P.; Loukotka, Č. (1952). "Langues de l'Amérique du Sud et des Antilles". In Meillet, A.; Cohen, M. (eds.). Les Langues du Monde: par un groupe de linguistes. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique.
- ↑ Tovar, Antonio (1961). Catálogo de las lenguas de América del Sur: Enumeración, con indicaciones tipológicas, bibliografía y mapas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.