Cañari language

Not to be confused with Kanuri language.
Cañari
Native toEcuador
RegionEcuadoran Andes
EthnicityCañari
Extinctearly Colonial era
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
Glottologcana1260

Cañari or Cañar is a poorly-attested extinct language of the Marañón River basin in Ecuador which is difficult to classify, apart from being apparently related to Puruhá, though it may have been Chimuan or Barbacoan. (See Cañari–Puruhá languages.) It was the original language of the Cañari people before its replacement by Kichwa and later Spanish.

Phonology

The following tentative phonology given below is from Howard (2010).[1]

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Stop voiceless p t k
voiced b d g
Affricate ch
Fricative voiceless s sh x
voiced z zh
Nasal m n ñ ŋ
Vibrant r
Lateral l ll
Semivowel w y

Phonotactics

In contrast to other languages of the region, Cañari apparently allowed around 10 consonants in the coda position; /k/, /g/~/x/, /n/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /y/, /w/, /l/, and /ɾ/, similar to Guambiano and Awa Pit.[2]

Vocabulary

Jijón y Caamaño (1940)

Plant names in Cañari[3]
gloss Cañari
tree with multicolored seeds like beans cañaro
a flower aroc
a fruit gualla

Cañari substratum in Cañar Quichua

Howard (2010)

Some lexical items found in Cañar Quichua collected from various sources[4][5] and fieldwork are given below.[1] In the columns from the sources, a plus sign indicates that it is present, while a minus sign indicates non-presence.

Fieldwork Cordero Cordero Palacios Gloss
azhan + - face up
chinzhina + 'light breakfast at daybreak' + have breakfast
gaza - - ambling in a dejected way
guzhgurina + 'gain something without deserving it (e.g. of food) - enjoy oneself
guzu + + marsh
huizhi + 'soot' + huizhina 'to ignite' embers
jizi + + smiling, laughing
pizhu - + wrinkled
puzha + 'fine leaf dust, fibrous dirt' + 'dirt' mote of dust, dirt
tuzu + + 'morally deflated' hunched, shrivelled (of a person)
zharpi + + roughly ground corn
zharu + +
zhima + + 'soft, textured corn' pearl-coloured variety of corn
zhinki - - poorly physically developed (of a child)
zhiru + + grey
zhuru + + pockmarked
zula + - fruit that has not grown well (especially of corn)
zupu + - swollen-footed through disease
cuzha + + bird's nest
cuzhana + + cuzhani to nest
huizhu + 'bush of the Malva family' + 'Ternstroemia meridionalis' plant name
zhuta - - bird
cuzu + + larva, worm
puzun + + stomach, large stomach of cows
guzhgui + + eucalyptus seed, spinning top
jazha + + jaw

Urban (2018)

According to Urban (2018),[6] modern-day Cañar Quichua (spoken in Cañar Province, Ecuador) has a Cañari substratum, which can be seen in the phonology and lexicon of the dialect. Below is a list of Cañar Quichua words with Barbacoan lexical parallels, and hence likely to be words of Cañari origin. The words were compiled by Urban (2018) from Cordero (1895),[7] Cordero Palacios (1923),[5] and Paris (1961), and are compared in the table below to words the Barbacoan languages Totoró, Cha'palaa, and Tsafiki as well as Proto-Barbacoan reconstructions.[8]

Cañar Quichua Barbacoan Gloss
Cordero Cordero Palacios Paris Proto-Barbacoan Totoró Cha'palaa Tsafiki
izhi ‘fog, very light drizzle’ izhin ‘drizzle’ izhi *iʃ ‘smoke' ‘fog/smoke’
putu[l] *pɨt(ɨ) (Urban's own reconstruction) ‘rotten’
pachi ‘kind of tree of the eastern highlands’ *tsik ‘tree, stick' ‘kind of tree’
[chuchip]chi ‘kind of small tree’ [chuchip]chi ‘kind of plant, Abatia verbascifolia ‘kind of tree’
[pil]chi [pil]chi ‘kind of plant, Crescentia cujete’ [pil]chi ‘vessel, junk made of coco, calabash’ ‘calabash tree’
nunchi ‘kind of shrub’
chipu ‘a kind of insect that jumps’ chipu ‘locust’ chijpi ‘flea' chi’pın ‘flea’ ‘a kind of insect that jumps’
mulu ‘rustic plate, made of clay and without adornment’ mulu milan ‘plate’
chiru ‘orangutan [sic!]’ churi ‘monkey’
cuylan ‘small lizard’ cuilan cuilan ~ cullan ‘small lizard’ kalun[c’i] (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘lizard’
sutu, zzutu su’tu ‘inserted, put between’ ‘knot’
zzuyu suyun ‘rainbow’ ‘dusk’
palu palu palu [lan]palo ‘common lizard’ ‘lizard’
pu[nya]- ‘stink excessively, emit a nauseating smell’ pu[dyu] ‘smelling badly' pu[ba]- ‘smelly’ ‘smell, stink’
piri ‘light scabies’ piri ‘vile, despicable, mangy’ piri ‘light scabies, grain mold’ ⟨pirr[sureg]⟩, ⟨pirr[sé]⟩ ‘lepra’ (Otero 1952: 317, 310) ‘skin disease’
palti palti ‘height, lookout (?)’ *tɨ ‘firewood’ pala ‘high, up’ (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘platform built in high place’
tulu tulu tulu tolo ‘bag' ‘sack or bag’
taba ‘rubbish consisting of branches and leaves which covers rocky regions’ taba ‘scrub, place full of scrub’ taba ‘mosquito, rubbish, tangle’ tape ‘grass’ ta’pe ‘grass, bush’ ‘vegetable waste/grass’
cuzu ‘larva of some insects’ cussu ‘larva of beetle (?!)’ kuzu ‘thick worm, found especially in potatoes’ ku’ʃi ‘worm' ‘larva/worm’
punzu punzu ‘rubbish, tow, fine straw’ pu’chu ‘rest' ‘fine straw, tow-like rubbish’
pu[zha] pu[zha] ‘stalk, rubbish’ ‘small leaves, fibrous rubbish’
pichi ‘red, crimson, scarlet’ pichi ‘red, crimson’ piku(ˈtik), piki(tik) (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘red’
pilis ‘body louse of human or animals’ pilis ‘body louse’ pilis ‘body louse’ palekˈtɨ ‘louse’
malta ‘small clay jug to store or sell chicha’ malta ‘small jug made of fired clay’ mala ‘sugar cane juice, chicha’ ‘(vessel for) chicha’
jizi ‘laughing, one who laughs without discretion’ jissi jizi ‘laughing’ ‘laugh’
chas ‘spontaneous growth of potatoes in an already harvested field’ ‘field’ (?)
batiuc ‘lamb’ ba’tu fu ‘freshly grown hair’ ‘fresh, young’ (?)
munzhi ‘naughty, playful, restless’ ‘naughty, playful, restless’

References

  1. ^ a b Howard, Rosaleen (2010-01-01), Carlin, Eithne B.; van de Kerke, Simon (eds.), "7. 'Why do they steal our phonemes?' Inventing the Survival of the Cañari Language (Ecuador)", Linguistics and Archaeology in the Americas, BRILL, pp. 123–145, doi:10.1163/9789047427087_008, ISBN 978-90-474-2708-7, retrieved 2026-01-23{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  2. ^ Floyd, Simeon (2022-01-01). "Ecuadorian Highland Quichua and the Lost Languages of the Northern Andes". International Journal of American Linguistics. 88 (1): 1–52. doi:10.1086/717056. ISSN 0020-7071.
  3. ^ Jijón y Caamaño, Jacinto (1919). Contribución al conocimiento de las lenguas indígenas que se hablaron en el Ecuador interandino y occidental con anterioridad a la conquista española: ensayo provisional. Quito, Ecuador.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ Cordero, Luis (1967) [1892]. Diccionario quichua-castellano y castellano-quichua. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca.
  5. ^ a b Cordero Palacios, Octavio, [1923] 1981. El quechua y el cañari (contribución para la historia precuencana de las provincias azuayas), 2nd edn. Cuenca: Departamento de Difusión Cultural, Universidad de Cuenca.
  6. ^ Urban, Matthias (2018). "The Lexical Legacy of Substrate Languages: A Test Case From The Southern Ecuadorian Highlands". Transactions of the Philological Society. 116 (3): 435–459. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.12129. ISSN 1467-968X.
  7. ^ Cordero, Luis, [1895] 1992. Diccionario quichua-castellano y castellano-quichua, 5th edn. Quito: Proyecto Educación Bilingüe Intercultural/Corporación Editora Nacional.
  8. ^ Paris, Julio, 1961. Gramática de la lengua quichua actualmente en uso entre los indígenas del Eduador, 3rd edn. Revision and Quichua dictionary by José María Lévesque and Gilberto Mejía. Quito: Santo Domingo.
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