PhDniX's blog

Guanché and Proto-Berber *β

One thing I have run into when looking into the Guanché Berber vocabulary is the word for 'sheep' tahaten. What is remarkable about this word (which is a plural), is that we find a written <h>. If we look at other Berber languages we find several forms of this word.

Tamazight tattən

Tamasheq tihatten

Zénaga tāTən/tātən

Tamasheq /h/ and Zénaga long vowels both come from the same origin, namely a Proto-Berber phoneme often reconstructed as *h or *β. I prefer the second reconstruction as the Ghadamsi reflex is b [β], it seems easier to explain a shift of [β] > [h] than the other way around. Besides Tamasheq/Tamazheq/Tamaheq (Touareg Berber), Zénaga and Ghadamsi Berber there is no evidence of this Proto-Berber phoneme, as you can see in the example of Tamazight, although, it might be possible that the long consonant tt is due to a cluster *βt.

Those three groups, Make up quite an archaic group of Berber languages, Zénaga retains Proto-Berber *ʔ. Ghadamsi Berber does to, though only indirectly. And all three groups retain an old phoneme *β.  Zénaga is weird in other ways too, giving the impression that it probably split off before the other Berber languages.

So what does it mean that we find the word foor 'sheep' with an <h> in Guanché? Is the Berber that influence Guanché a Touareg language? That seems unlikely considering the geographical location. So maybe the consonant that gave rise to the long vowels in Zénaga was originally pronounced /h/ as well, geographically it makes more sense that a sister language of Zénaga was spoken by the Berbers that went to the Canary Islands.

Is this really the case? I have yet to run into other words that have a Proto-Berber *β in the root, which would be necessary to back up this idea. There's a good chance that, due to the limited material we have of this language, such a root will not be found. Which would mean that the pronunciation of tahaten either looks like a very Archaic Berber word by chance, or that we'll never know the answer.

Is Guanché Berber?

The Canary Islands are currently inhabited by Spanish speakers. Obviously this was not always the case. Before the Spanish landed on the Canary islands, the people who lived there spoke an indiginous language which we'll call Guanché.

All the evidence we have is fairly marginal and mostly translations of simple things and everyday concepts. We have a few texts with translation, and even with translation we have trouble making out what is what.

As the title of this post implies, it has often been suggested that Guanché is a Berber language and with good reason. If you take a look at the attested Numbers, the Berber influence is unmistakeable.

nait	yat
smetti	snat
amelotti	kraḍt
acodetti	kkuẓt
simusetti	sḍist
satti	ssat
tamatti	tamt
aldo	tẓat
morava	mraw(t)

While probably noone will try to argue that there's no Berber influence in these numbers, it is also clear that not all these numbers are of Berber origin.

So currently, I'm writing a paper exploring the idea that Guanché is not Berber, but rather an indigenous language which was influenced greatly by Berber people who crossed the sea and started settling there.

As soon as you look at the words that have a Berber origin, things will strike you immediately:

tahaten 'sheep' Tamazight tatten 'sheep (pl.)', Tamašeq tĭhăten 'sheep (pl.)',

ilfe 'pig' Tamazight ilef 'pig'.

irichen 'wheat' Tamazight  ired pl. ireden 'wheat', Tamažeq erəd pl. erdăn

tamosen 'barley' Tamazight timeẓt pl. timeẓin 'barley'

Typical words related to agriculture. Once we get to the core vocabulary of the language, any form of relation to Berber is mostly lost guan 'man', doramas 'nose', atazaicate 'heart' (which looks kinda of Berber with ta-...-t feminine circumfix, but looks nothing like the Berber word for heart ul pl. ulawen). magec 'sun', achaño 'year', sel 'month', cuna 'dog' etc.

With this distribution, we can not help but conclude that Guanché was not a Berber language, but rather an indiginous languages which cannot be clearly connected to anything. Then a wave of Berber immigrants came in, which brought with them agriculture, therefore the Guanché people took over their words.

It's not as clear cut, as it seems that also rather basic words such as 'wife' and 'water' were loaned from Berber (although, there is still another native word for water).

nait	yat
smetti	snat
amelotti	kraḍt
acodetti	kkuẓt
simusetti	sḍist
satti	ssat
tamatti	tamt
aldo	tẓat
morava	mraw(t)