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 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, which used to be spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. It is only known today through a few sentences and individual words recorded by early travellers, supplemented by several placenames, as well as some words assimilated into the Canary Islanders' dialects of Spanish. Relationships with other languages have therefore been difficult to determine with certainty; however, most linguists consider Guanche to be related to the Berber languages.

The name Guanche originally meant "man from Tenerife"^{[citation needed]}, and only later did it come to refer to all native inhabitants of the Canary Islands. Although different dialects were spoken across the archipelago, they are all thought to be varieties of the same language.

Archaeological finds on the Canaries include both Libyco-Berber and Punic inscriptions in rock carvings, although early accounts stated the Guanches themselves did not possess a system of writing.

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.

Silbo, originally a whistled form of Guanche speech used for communicating over long distances, was used on La Gomera, El Hierro, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria. As the Guanche language became extinct, a Spanish version of Silbo was adopted by some inhabitants of the Canary Islands.