The Obituary
Taíno was an Arawakan language spoken across the Greater Antilles and Bahamas, the first indigenous American language Europeans encountered when Columbus arrived in 1492. The Taíno population collapsed within decades under Spanish conquest, enslavement, and introduced disease, and the language ceased to be spoken as a living tongue by the 16th or 17th century. Its words survive scattered through Spanish and English — hurricane, canoe, hammock, barbecue, tobacco — and in place names across the Caribbean, a faint echo of a vanished people.
Worth remembering
- Words like hurricane, canoe, hammock, barbecue, and tobacco came into European languages through Taíno.
- It was the language Columbus's expedition first met in 1492 in the Bahamas and Greater Antilles.
Sources
- Taíno was an Arawakan language of the Caribbean, the first New World language encountered by Columbus, extinct after Spanish conquest. Wikipedia
- English borrowings from Taíno include 'hurricane', 'canoe', 'hammock', 'barbecue', and 'tobacco'. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.