Ciguayo language
Ciguayo was the language of the Samaná Peninsula of the island of Hispaniola at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Ciguayos appear to have predated the agricultural Taíno who inhabited much of the island. The language appears to have been moribund at the time of Spanish contact, and within a century it was extinct.
Ciguayo was spoken on the northeastern coast of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from Nagua southward to at least the Yuna River, and throughout the Samana Peninsula.
Lexicon
Little is known of Ciguayo apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Macorix. The only attested words are "gold", tuob and a few place names. In particular, Quizquella 'very mountainous', was attributed to Ciguayo by Granberry and Vescelius, but there is no reason to connect it to it aside from the non-Taíno phonetic appearance. This makes it unlikely that the language is Arawakan or Cariban, as languages of those families have simple V and CV syllable structures even in loanwords that were originally CCV or CVC. Granberry & Vescelius speculate that the closest parallels might be in the Tolan languages of Honduras.Granberry & Vescelius analyze the morphemes of tuob 'gold' and Quizquella 'very mountainous' as:
;to-w-b 'gold'
- to-
- -w-
- -b
- kʰis-
- -kʰe-
- -''ya''