Xinca languages

Xinca is a group of four languages spoken by the Xinca people. These four languages are so closely related that they have sometimes been considered a single language, which is why they are sometimes collectively called Xinca language. All known varieties of Xinca are spoken in Guatemala, and currently one is extinct and the other three almost extinct. In the past, these languages were spoken in a much larger area than historically attested, which is known by toponymy, and their domain even reached Honduras and El Salvador.

Historical, social and cultural aspects

Ancient era

Although the area modernly documented as a Xinca area from the XVIII century is very restricted and is basically reduced to the departments Guatemalans from Jutiapa and Santa Rosa near the SE coast of Guatemala, toponymic evidence shows that the territory that the Xinca occupied in the past was much larger. For example, in the departments of Guatemala, you will find place names such as:

Ayampuc ” ay- 'lugar de' + ampuk 'serpent' (Ayampuc is on a snake-shaped earth crest).

Ipala. ipal'a 'baño' (Ipala Volcano has a lake in the crater).

Sanarate, Sansare, Sansur; all of them with the crazy prefix zeran- He's a freak.

Also in the original name of some localities repopulated by Nahuat speakers the same prefix is observed, Santa María Ixhuatan is called in Xinca ṣan-piya 'place of jars (piya)& #39; and Pasaco is called ṣan-paṣaʔ.

Much further south there are other place names that suggest that the Xinca extended to the entire coast of El Salvador and southeastern Honduras. The Mayan archaeologist and ethnographer Eric S. Thompson identified a series of toponyms in -agua, -ahua, -gua and -hua that he identified with an unknown pre-Mayan town, that he called & # 34; the waters & # 34; and who were later displaced by Mayan peoples who spoke mainly Chortí. A review of these names reveals that they appear to contain the Xinca ending -ṣawi 'town, inhabit'. Some of these place names are: #39;). In El Salvador there are the place names Conchagua and Comasagua; and in Honduras, Manzaragua.

Colonial era

In the 16th century the Xinca territory extended from the coast of the Pacific Ocean to the mountains of Jalapa. In 1524 the region was subdued by the Spanish. Many Xincas were made slaves or were forced to participate in the conquest of the territory of El Salvador, which at that time was home to people of Nahua origin. The name 'Los Esclavos' dates back to that time, which names a city and a river in the Cuilapa region (Santa Rosa, Guatemala).

After 1575, the process of assimilation and cultural genocide of the Xincas accelerated, mainly due to the deportation regime to other regions and the emigration to the region of groups from other regions. This contributed strongly to the reduction in the number of speakers of the different variants of Xinca. For example, there is evidence in the San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán region (El Progreso) that in 1576 Alagüilac (Tlacacebatleca) was spoken, which according to Campbell would be a language related to Xinca, but towards the end of the century XVII the Nahuat language was spoken. One of the first explicit mentions of Xinca proper is that of Archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz, who mentions the Xinca language in reference to a visit to the diocese of Taxisco in 1769.

Current situation

Currently the xinca is in danger of disappearing. Some sources identify a couple of hundred speakers, while others consider it extinct, which is not entirely true. The numbers of speakers are very confusing; some recent studies have found speakers in seven municipalities, in Santa Rosa and Jutiapa. In 1991 it was reported that only 25 speakers remained, but in 1997 the figure was given as 297 speakers.^{[citation required]} The official census of 2002 speaks of 16,214 Xincas within of the ethnic group, of which only 1,283 would be Xinca speakers according to the same source.

Classification

The Xinca languages are some of the few languages in Guatemala that do not belong to the Mayan family. L. Campbell and others assure that the reconstruction of Xinca "can be seen as possible through methods of historical linguistics and linguistic archaeology, which can be applied by teams of linguists dedicated to this field."

Family languages

Kaufman distinguishes differentiated xinca varieties geographically related to the department of origin:

• Department of Santa Rosa
  • 1. Chiquimulilla (10)
  • 2. Guazacapán (100-200 speakers as a mother tongue, all of them old)
  • 3. Jumaytepeque (less than 10 speakers in 2000, all of them over 65 years of age)
• Department of Jutiapa
  • 4. Yupiltepeque (extinct or possibly assimilated by the Nahuat language and later disappearance together with this language).

There are at least three different languages known in this family and each of them has its own grammar: that of Guazacapán, that of Chiquimulilla and that of Jumaytepeque.

Relationship with other languages

Since Lehman (1920) proposed that Xinca and Lenca were related, it has been common to find this proposal in the literature, even though Lehman's original proposal related Xinca, Lenca, Mixe-Zoque, Tequistlateco and Chumash-Salinero (currently the other relationships in this proposal have been discarded, and it is considered that Tequistlatico could be very remotely related to the Chumash and other Hokan languages).

However, Campbell analyzes the evidence for the almost universally accepted relationship of Xinca and Lenca, no additional data has been provided to Lehman's proposal, which is extremely weak and is based on a handful of words with superficial relationships, among which do not seem to be able to establish regular phonetic correspondences. In fact, a recent work by Adolfo Constenla Umaña has revealed a relationship between the Lenca and the Misumalpa family and the Chibcha family.

The only probable relationship of modern Xinca is with the ancient alagüilac or tlacacebatleca spoken in El Progreso at least until the end of the century XVI , which appears to be essentially a variety of xinca.

Common characteristics

Phonology

The phonological inventory of the Xinca languages is different from one variant to another and there is no agreement between the various authors who have done field work on the different variants, but with minor differences the consonant inventory is:

The phonemes in parentheses do not appear in all authors and there are doubts about whether they are allophones or should be considered distinctive phonemic units.

As for the vowels, there would be six vowel timbres with opposition of quantity, so the inventory is:

Lexical comparison

The following numerals show some phonetic changes between the Chinantec languages and the divergence between them:

Brief vocabulary

Social relationships

Economy

Family

Personal pronouns