Guanche Native to: Formerly, Spain (Canary Islands) Region: Canary Islands Ethnicity: Guanches Extinct: 17th-19th century Language family: Unclassified (Afroasiatic?) “Guanche is an extinct language thought to belong to the Berber language family which was spoken in the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. The language is also known as Insular Tamazight, Ancient Canarian Language, or Ínsuloamaziq. Although the origins of Berber settlement in the Canaries are obscure and still unknown, the first material evidence could be traced back to 1000 BC. More modern migrations from North Africa are also known to have occurred, possibly with Punic and Roman expeditions. The genetic affiliation of this language is unclear due to the diverse admixture of different dialectal influences found in the archipelago, and the important dialectalization of each island's local speech. But there is a common substate, possibly the oldest Berber influx, related to Tuareg dialects, mostly identifiable in the vocabulary. The word Guanche is used to refer only to the native people of the island of Tenerife. The equivalent in the Guanche language is wa-n She(nesh), which means "the one of Ashinesh" (Tenerife). In later times this word became used to refer to the whole archipelago's natives. Although the conquest and subsequent Spanish (Castillian) colonization resulted in a violent suppression and acculturation, which lead to the total extinction of the language, many Guanche traits can still be found today in Canarian culture and local vocabulary (gofio, perenquén, tajinaste, jaira, tabaiba ...). Today Guanche elements can be found extensively in toponyms (Gomera, Tacoronte, Tindaya, Adeje, Orotava ...) and even in given names or surnames (Cathaysa, Ayoze, Tanausú, Bencomo...), as well as contemporaneous annotations from chroniclers, recent inscription decipherments and oral tradition. Moreover, in recent years there has been an important revival of Guanche identity, with research and reconstruction of the Insular Tamazight as one of its main fronts. Through comparative linguistics, as with Proto-Indoeuropean and other attempts to revive extinct languages, Insular Tamazight phonetics can be recovered and used to study its relationship to continental Berber languages. Many Tifinagh inscriptions have been found in the Canary Islands, which makes it easier to identify a genetic relationship with the continental linguistic varieties, with a clear predominance of Proto-Tuareg substrate.”