The Lencan languages are a small language family native to Central America, whose speakers lived throughout El Salvador and Honduras during the Pre-Columbian era. By the beginning of the 20th century, only two languages of the family survived, Salvadoran Lenca or Potón and Honduran Lenca, which were described and studied academically. Of the two, only Salvadoran Lenca still has speakers, despite the fact that there are between 37,000 and 100,000 people belonging to the Lenca ethnic group.
Languages There are two attested Lencan languages: Salvadoran Lencan was spoken in Chilanga and Guatajigua. Lencans had arrived in El Salvador about 2,295 years B.P. and founded the site of Quelepa. One speaker remains. Honduran Lencan was spoken with minor dialect differences in Intibucá, Opatoro, Guajiquiro, Similatón (modern Cabañas), and Santa Elena. Some phrases survive; it is not known if the entire language still exists.
The languages are not closely related; Swadesh (1967) estimated 3,000 years since separation. Arguedas Cortés (1987) reconstructs Proto-Lencan with 12 consonants (including ejective) and 5 vowels.
External relationships The external relationships of the Lencan languages are disputed. Inclusion within Macro-Chibchan has often been proposed; Campbell (1987) reported that he found no solid evidence for such a connection, but Constenla-Umaña (2005) proposed regular correspondence between Lencan, Misumalpan, and Chibchan.
Campbell (2012) acknowledges that these claims of connection between Lencan, Misumalpan, and Chibchan have not yet been proved systematically, but he notes that Constenla-Umaña (2005) "presented evidence to support a relationship with two neighboring families [of languages]: Misumalpan and Lencan, which constitute the Lenmichí Micro-Phylum. According to Constenla-Umaña's study (2005), the Lenmichi Micro-Phylum first split into Proto-Chibchan and Proto-Misulencan, the common intermediate ancestor of the Lencan and the Misumalpan languages. This would have happened around 9,726 years before the present or 7,720 B.C. (the average of the time depths between the Chibchan languages and the Misulencan languages)...The respective subancestors of the Lencan and the Misumalpan languages would have separated around 7,705 before the present (5,069 B.C.), and Paya and the other intermediate ancestors of all the other Chibchan languages would have separated around 6,682 (4,676 B.C.)."
Another proposal by Lehmann (1920:727) links Lencan with the Xincan language family, though Campbell (1997:167) rejects most of Lehmann's twelve lexical comparisons as invalid. An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013). also found lexical similarities between Lencan and Xincan. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.
History The Proto-Lencan homeland was most likely in central Honduras (Campbell 1997:167).
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the use of Honduran Lenca and Salvadoran Lenca began to decline. In the 1950s, Honduran Lenca was already in a critical state of extinction, since the only place where there were speakers was Guajiquiro. In 1982 a Honduran Lenca speaker was found in Guajiquiro. In the 1970s, died in Chilanga, Anselmo Hernández, the last competent Salvadoran Lenca speaker. In the 1990s, some semi-speakers of Honduran Lenca were found. It was assumed that the languages were extinct, no elders had any knowledge or memory of either language, and there were no fluent speakers. Honduran Lenca is currently believed to be extinct.
In the case of Salvadoran Lenca, at the end of the nineties Consuelo Roque, linguist from the University of El Salvador (UES), found Mario Salvador Hernández from Guatajiagua (a semi-speaker who is considered the last native speaker by the Salvadoran newspapers, specifically of the variant of that town, and who learned the language from his grandmother) and both would write a learning primer titled: Poton piau, nuestra lengua Potón. However, linguist Alan R. King, in his 2016 book titled Conozcamos el Lenca, una lengua de El Salvador (where he also used the Potón Piau primer as a reference), points out that (translated into English): "Today no one knows how to speak Lenca, although certain individuals have memories of—or have learned—some fragments of that now lost language. This type of partial knowledge is not even remotely close, in any case that we have been able to verify, to a real mastery of the historical language, whose disappearance dates back to the mid-twentieth century...".
While in the case of Honduran Lenca, the American linguist Alan R. King and his colleague James Morrow published the book Kotik molka niwamal (meaning Let's learn to speak Lenca) in 2017, which is a compilation of words in Lenca among the communities still existing that opens the possibility of recovering a significant part of the language. Currently in El Salvador there are rehabilitation projects for Salvadoran Lenca to prevent its extinction.
A 2002 novel by Roberto Castillo, La guerra mortal de los sentidos, chronicles the adventures of the "Searcher for the Lenca Language."
Proto-language
Proto-Lenca reconstructions by Arguedas (1988),Arguedas Cortés, Gilda Rosa. 1988. Los Fonemas Segmentales del Protolenca: Reconstrucción Comparativa. Filología y lingüística XIV. 89-109. along with forms in daughter languages from Campbell (1999):
No. Spanish gloss (original) English gloss (translated) Proto-Lenca Honduran Lenca Chilanga 1. abrir open (verb) *inkolo- 2. agua water *was was wal 3. anciana old woman 4. araña spider *katu katu katu 5. ardilla squirrel *suri suri-sur ʃurih 6. bailar dance *uli- 7. bañar bathe *twa- 8. beber drink *tali- tal- tal- 9. blanco white *soko soko ʃoko 10. boca mouth *in 11. bueno good *sam sa ʃam 12. cabello hair *asak 13. caites sandals *waktik waktik watih 14. camarón shrimp *siksik siksik sisih 15. camino path *k’in kin k’in 16. casa house *t’aw taw t’aw 17. cerrar close (verb) *inkap- 18. cinco five *ts’aj saj ts’aj 19. comal comal *k’elkin kelkin k’elkin 20. comprar buy *liwa- liwa- liwa- 21. cortar cut *tajk- 22. coyol coyol *juku juku juku 23. coyote coyote *sua 24. chupar suck 25. decir say *aj- 26. desear want *saj saj- ʃej- 27. diente tooth *nek nek neh 28. dos two *pe pe pe 29. él he *inani 30. enfermo, estar sick *ona- 31. espina thorn *ma 32. este this *na 33. estrella star *sirik siri sirih 34. flor flower *sula suna ʃila 35. fuego fire *juk’a 36. grande big *pukV puki puka 37. guacal tub *k’akma 38. hermano brother *pelek 39. hígado liver *muts’u musu muts’u 40. hormiga ant *its’its’i 41. hueso bone *ts’ek 42. ir go *o- 43. jocote jocote *muraka 44. lavar wash *ts’ajk- sak- ts’ih- 45. leña firewood *sak sak ʃah 46. lluvia rain *so so ʃo 47. macho male *kew 48. maíz corn *ajma 49. mapachín raccoon *wala wala wala 50. milpa cornfield *ta ta ta 51. montaña mountain *kotan 52. mover move *lum- 53. nariz nose *nep 54. niño boy *we 55. nosotros we *apinani 56. nube cloud 57. oír hear *eni- 58. orinar urinate *wajsa- 59. pavo turkey *lok 60. peine comb *tenmaskin 61. pelo, pluma hair, feather 62. perro dog *su 63. pico peak *ints’ek 64. piedra stone *ke ke ke 65. piña pineapple *mats’ati 66. piojo louse *tem tem tem 67. puerco de monte wild pig *map’it, *nap’it 68. pulga flea *t’ut’u tutu t’ut’u 69. quebracho quebracho tree *sili sili sili 70. quién who *k’ulan kunan k’ula 71. reír laugh *jolo- jet- jete- 72. río river *wara wara wara 73. roble oak *mal 74. ropa clothes *lam- 75. rostro face *tik 76. saber know *ti- 77. seis six *wi 78. sembrar sow *isa- 79. tapesco, cama bed frame, bed *le- 80. tigre (jaguar), león (puma) tiger (jaguar), lion (puma) *lepa lepa lepa 81. tocar touch *jete- 82. trabajar work 83. tres three *lawa lawa lawa 84. tú you (sg.) *amanani 85. uña fingernail *kumam kuma kumam 86. venir come *po- 87. yo I *unani 88. zarigüeya opossum *ts’ewe 89. zopilote vulture *kus
References
Bibliography Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, Lyle. 2012. The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide. De Gruyter Mouton: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston. Constenla Umaña, Adolfo. (1981). Comparative Chibchan Phonology. (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia). Constenla Umaña, Adolfo. (1991). Las lenguas del Área Intermedia: Introducción a su estudio areal. Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, San José. Constenla Umaña, Adolfo. (1995). Sobre el estudio diacrónico de las lenguas chibchenses y su contribución al conocimiento del pasado de sus hablantes. Boletín del Museo del Oro 38-39: 13-56. Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (2005). "Existe relacion genealogica entre las lenguas misumalpas y las chibchenses?" Estudios de Linguistica Chibcha. 23: 9–59. Fabre, Alain. 2005. Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: LENCA. Hemp, Eric. 1976. "On Earlier Lenca Vowels". International Journal of American Linguistics 42(1): 78-79. Lehman, Walter. 1920. Zentral-Amerika. see pp. 700–719 (Salvadoran Lenca) and pp. 668–692 (Honduran Lenca).
External links
OLAC resources in and about the Lenca language Audio Recording of an Elicitation and Wordlist in Lenca from the MesoAmerican Languages Collection of Lyle Campbell at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.