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 Barbacoan. (See Cañari–Puruhá languages.) It was the original language of the Cañari people before its replacement by Kichwa and later Spanish.
History The Cañari were originally a collection of independent chiefdoms united by a common language, and occupied a terittory from the southern border of modern-day Chimborazo Province to the Jubones River in Loja Province. However, beginning in the late 15th century, the Inca Empire conquered and resettled the Cañari in the mitma system. By the late Inca period, it was reported that between 50,000 and 70,000 Cañari had been resettled in Cusco; conversely, an estimated half of the population of Cañar by Spanish contact had been relocated from Peru and Bolivia. During the Inca Civil War, the Cañari sided with Huáscar, leading to "genocidal" reprisal against them by the rival Atahualpa, who had tens of thousands of Cañari killed. The further Spanish conquest of the region also worsened the demographics of the Cañari; disease and forced labor led to two-thirds of the Cañari dying by the end of the 16th century. They were also further displaced as they aided the Spaniards in the conquest of the Inca Empire. The Cañari language was still being used into the colonial period, as in 1594, Bishop Luis López de Solís ordered Christian doctrines to be translated into Cañari.
Phonology The following tentative phonology given below is from Howard (2010). +LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarStopvoicelessptkvoicedbdgAffricatechFricativevoicelesssshxvoicedzzhNasalmnñŋVibrantrLaterallllSemivowelwy
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.
Vocabulary
Jijón y Caamaño (1940) +Plant names in CañariglossCañaritree with multicolored seeds like beansa flowera fruit
Cañari substratum in Cañar Quichua
Howard (2010) Some lexical items found in Cañar Quichua collected from various sources and fieldwork are given below. In the columns from the sources, a plus sign indicates that it is present, while a minus sign indicates non-presence. FieldworkCorderoCordero PalaciosGloss + -face up + 'light breakfast at daybreak' +have breakfast - -ambling in a dejected way + 'gain something without deserving it (e.g. of food) -enjoy oneself + +marsh + 'soot' + 'to ignite'embers + +smiling, laughing - +wrinkled + 'fine leaf dust, fibrous dirt' + 'dirt'mote of dust, dirt + + 'morally deflated'hunched, shrivelled (of a person) + +roughly ground corn + + + + 'soft, textured corn'pearl-coloured variety of corn - -poorly physically developed (of a child) + +grey + +pockmarked + -fruit that has not grown well (especially of corn) + -swollen-footed through disease + +bird's nest + + to nest + 'bush of the Malva family' + 'Ternstroemia meridionalis'plant name - -bird + +larva, worm + +stomach, large stomach of cows + +eucalyptus seed, spinning top + +jaw
Urban (2018) According to Urban (2018), 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),Cordero, Luis, 1992. Diccionario quichua-castellano y castellano-quichua, 5th edn. Quito: Proyecto Educación Bilingüe Intercultural/Corporación Editora Nacional. Cordero Palacios (1923),Cordero Palacios, Octavio, 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. 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.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.
Cañar QuichuaBarbacoan GlossCorderoCordero PalaciosParisProto-BarbacoanTotoróCha'palaaTsafiki ‘fog, very light drizzle’ ‘drizzle’ *iʃ ‘smoke' ‘fog/smoke’ []*pɨt(ɨ) (Urban's own reconstruction) ‘rotten’ ‘kind of tree of the eastern highlands’*tsik ‘tree, stick' ‘kind of tree’ [] ‘kind of small tree’ [] ‘kind of plant, Abatia verbascifolia ‘kind of tree’ [] [] ‘kind of plant, Crescentia cujete’ [] ‘vessel, junk made of coco, calabash’ ‘calabash tree’ ‘kind of shrub’ ‘a kind of insect that jumps’ ‘locust’ ‘flea' ‘flea’ ‘a kind of insect that jumps’ ‘rustic plate, made of clay and without adornment’ ‘plate’ ‘orangutan [sic!]’ ‘monkey’ ‘small lizard’ ~ ‘small lizard’[] (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘lizard’ , ‘inserted, put between’ ‘knot’ ‘rainbow’ ‘dusk’ [] ‘common lizard’ ‘lizard’ []- ‘stink excessively, emit a nauseating smell’[] ‘smelling badly'[]- ‘smelly’ ‘smell, stink’ ‘light scabies’ ‘vile, despicable, mangy’ ‘light scabies, grain mold’, ‘lepra’ (Otero 1952: 317, 310) ‘skin disease’ ‘height, lookout (?)’*tɨ ‘firewood’ ‘high, up’ (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘platform built in high place’ ‘bag' ‘sack or bag’ ‘rubbish consisting of branches and leaves which covers rocky regions’ ‘scrub, place full of scrub’ ‘mosquito, rubbish, tangle’ ‘grass’ ‘grass, bush’ ‘vegetable waste/grass’ ‘larva of some insects’ ‘larva of beetle (?!)’ ‘thick worm, found especially in potatoes’ ‘worm' ‘larva/worm’ ‘rubbish, tow, fine straw’ ‘rest' ‘fine straw, tow-like rubbish’ [] [] ‘stalk, rubbish’ ‘small leaves, fibrous rubbish’ ‘red, crimson, scarlet’ ‘red, crimson’(), () (Vasquez de Ruiz 2009) ‘red’ ‘body louse of human or animals’ ‘body louse’ ‘body louse’ ‘louse’ ‘small clay jug to store or sell chicha’ ‘small jug made of fired clay’ ‘sugar cane juice, chicha’ ‘(vessel for) chicha’ ‘laughing, one who laughs without discretion’ ‘laughing’ ‘laugh’ ‘spontaneous growth of potatoes in an already harvested field’ ‘field’ (?) ‘lamb’ ‘freshly grown hair’ ‘fresh, young’ (?) ‘naughty, playful, restless’ ‘naughty, playful, restless’
References