Tabancale language

Tabancale
Aconipa, Tabancal, Tabancara
Native toPeru, Ecuador
RegionAconipa, Cajamarca Department
EthnicityTabancale people
Era16th century
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
Glottologtaba1269
A map of the Tabancale language, indicated in yellow, with borders and labels for Ecuador and Peru and labeled rivers and oceans
Map of the Tabancale language at the time of contact

Tabancale (Tabancal, Aconipa, Tabacanake, Tabancara: 459 ) is an extinct language formerly spoken in the village of Aconipa, located along the Chinchipe River in the Department of Cajamarca, Peru, as well as in neighboring Ecuador, by the Tabancale people. Only five words were collected in the 16th century and they are not demonstrably related to those in other languages. As a result, it has been categorized as a language isolate by some and left unclassified by others; a connection has been proposed with the Chicham languages, spoken in Peru and Ecuador. The Tabancale people are thought to have switched to Quechua after they were conquered in 1549.

History

The surviving information about the Tabancale people and their language comes from an anonymous document titled Relación de la tierra de Jaén ('Account of the Land of Jaén'). This document was written around 1570 and published by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada as part of the Relaciones geográficas de Indias ('Geographical Accounts of the Indies') of Peru in 1887.: 448–449, 459  The Relaciones were based on a series of responses by parish priests to questionnaires sent out by the Spanish royal government to survey the characteristics of the different regions of its South American territories.: 426  According to the account, the language spoken in Aconipa was different from all others.: 32  The region had been conquered for the Viceroyalty of Peru by Diego Palomino, who founded the city of Jaén de Bracamoros in 1549 at the mouth of the Chinchipe River. The anthropologists Julian Steward and Alfred Métraux believed that Tabancale speakers eventually assimilated into the rural, Quechua-speaking population after being brought into the encomienda system.: 616 

Geographical distribution

Tabancale was reported to be spoken in a single village, Aconipa,: 32  "near the upper reaches of the Chinchipe River": 406  in Cajamarca Department: 261  near the modern-day Ecuador–Peru border, to the north of San Ignacio in Peru and south of Valladolid in Ecuador.: 425  The linguist Čestmír Loukotka put its distribution in both Peru and Ecuador.

Classification

The Tabancale spoke a "different language" from other peoples living in the region, according to the Relación.: 32 : 615  According to the linguist John Alden Mason, Loukotka was apparently the only one of the compilers of South American Indigenous languages to mention Tabancale at the time; in Loukotka's 1935 classification, he had grouped it as an independent family. The scholar Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, in his survey of Ecuadorian Indigenous languages, only mentioned the existence of Tabancale, though he left it as "independent" in his 1943 classification. Mason himself found the data on Tabancale "insufficient to warrant its classification, at any rate as a distinct family".: 193  Loukotka and the ethnologist Paul Rivet, in their 1952 classification, grouped "Akonipa" as one of their 109 independent language families.: 1100  Loukotka, in his later 1968 classification, also classified it as a language isolate,: 261  as did the linguist Antonio Tovar.: 179  According to the linguists Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken, the few known Tabancale vocabulary items do not show similarity with other languages; they opt to leave Tabancale unclassified for the same reason.: 406  The linguist Matthias Urban identifies a connection with the Chicham languages of Peru and Ecuador, particularly in the word yema 'water' with Chicham yumi 'water',: 426  though the linguist Alfredo Torero had previously ascribed this similarity to language contact.: 459  Urban also claims that "the remaining vocabulary does not suggest a Chicham affiliation".: 426  The linguist Lyle Campbell also considers it unclassified.

Vocabulary

Five words of Tabancale were recorded in the Relaciones geográficas.: 426 

Tabancale vocabulary: 32 
gloss Tabancale
water yema
maize moa
firewood oyme
fire lalaque
house tie

References

  1. 1 2 Loukotka, Čestmír (June 1967). "Annals Map Supplement Number Eight: Ethno-Linguistic Distribution of South American Indians". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 57 (2): 437–438. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1967.tb00614.x. ISSN 0004-5608. Archived from the original on 2025-05-04.
  2. 1 2 Campbell, Lyle (2024), "Unclassified and Spurious Languages", The Indigenous Languages of the Americas (1st ed.), Oxford University Press, pp. 280–338, doi:10.1093/oso/9780197673461.003.0005, ISBN 978-0-19-767346-1, retrieved 2026-09-12{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  3. 1 2 3 Torero, Alfredo (1993). "Lenguas del nororiente Peruano: La hoya de Jaén en el siglo XVI". Revista Andina. 11 (2): 447–472.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Urban, Matthias (2024), "Small and extinct languages of Northern Peru", in Urban, Matthias (ed.), The Oxford Guide to the Languages of the Central Andes (1 ed.), Oxford University Press, pp. 419–437, doi:10.1093/oso/9780198849926.003.0014, ISBN 978-0-19-884992-6, retrieved 2026-07-01
  5. 1 2 3 4 Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos, ed. (1897) [1887]. Relaciones geográficas de Indias: Perú. Vol. 4. Madrid: Manuel de G. Hernández.
  6. 1 2 Steward, Julian H.; Métraux, Alfred (1948). "Tribes of the Upper Maranon River". In Steward, Julian H. (ed.). Handbook of South American Indians: Volume 3 The Tropical Forest Tribes. Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office. Archived from the original on 2026-07-02.
  7. 1 2 Adelaar, Willem F. H; Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511486852. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
  8. 1 2 Loukotka, Čestmír (1968). Wilbert, Johannes (ed.). Classification of South American Indian Languages (PDF). Reference Series 7 (4th ed.). Latin American Center, University of California Los Angeles. ISBN 9780879031077. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2026-09-09.
  9. ↑ Mason, J. Alden (1950). "The languages of South American Indians" (PDF). Physical anthropology, linguistics and cultural geography of South American Indians. Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 6. Smithsonian Institution, Washington: Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology. pp. 157–317. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2026-09-09. Retrieved 2026-08-03.
  10. ↑ Rivet, P.; Loukotka, Č. (1952). "Langues de l'Amérique du Sud et des Antilles". In Meillet, A.; Cohen, M. (eds.). Les Langues du Monde: par un groupe de linguistes. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. pp. 1099–1160.
  11. ↑ Tovar, Antonio (1961). Catálogo de las lenguas de América del Sur (PDF) (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2025-08-02.

Further reading