Talk:Guanche language

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[edit] Berber script

Kintetsubuffalo said:

This article is about a person, place, or concept whose name is originally rendered in the Berber script; however the article does not have that version of its name in the article's lead paragraph. Anyone who is knowledgeable enough with the original language is invited to assist in adding the Berber script. For more information, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Berber).

→ Are you really sure that the Guanche language (or at least its name) was originally rendered in Berber script? The fact that it was a Berber language does not mean it necessarily made use of its own writing system; it may well have been an oral language. Note that the article says "Early accounts stated the Guanches themselves did not possess a system of writing". It's probably possible to figure out how one can spell the word "Guanche" in neo-Tifinagh, but will this correspond to an actual ancient spelling in any original script? I just wanted to ask the question. (but note that I'm no specialist, so I may be wrong here). Cheers, Womtelo 22:11, 29 March 2007 (UTC).

A very good point, indeed. There are inscriptions found on the some of the Canary Islands that have been identified as the western variant of the Lybico-Berber script; however, these are not clearly associated with the Guanche peoples living on the islands at the time of conquest. Early chronicles indicated that the natives asked the Spanish if they could read the inscriptions. Perhaps the authors of the inscriptions came and left, or they were wiped out or assimilated by the more permanent inhabitants of the islands, and mastery of the script was forgotten. There have been numerous studies on the existing inscriptions and petroglyphs, but I'm not as informed as I'd like to be on the current state of research on it. Twalls 00:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)