The problem of reconstructing the indigenous languages
The indigenous languages of the Canary Islands ceased to work as everyday systems of communication. Maximiano Trapero estimates that the loss may have come within two or three generations after the conquest of each island. That is his estimate, not a demonstrated chronology for every island. What remained of that use, even in the written record, was a set of isolated lexical items, and only rarely a sequence longer than a word (p. 20).[1]
Dominik Josef Wölfel describes the other side of the same problem. The linguistic material arrived by very different routes and with very unequal value, and almost nothing can be accepted at once and without criticism (p. 11).[2] The question of this article is how to study that heritage when the written testimonies are incomplete and the forms passed on by word of mouth have changed over centuries.
Wölfel published Monumenta linguae canariae in Graz in 1965. In 2007 Trapero gathered Estudios sobre el guanche and treated that book as the landmark separating earlier studies from later ones. For him it marks the before and after in research on a language he regards as already lost (p. 29).[1] The two scholars held no dialogue. Trapero writes after Wölfel’s death and comments on his book. The comparison that follows is a historiographical reading by Canarias Historia. It keeps what each author states apart from the conclusions that appear when the two books are read together.
Wölfel and the criticism of written sources
In the first chapter of Monumenta, Wölfel explains that there was still no systematic collection of all the accessible material and no criticism of the sources. He notes that his own citations of the vocabulary transmitted by Torriani had been read as mere variants, when they were a first attempt at documentary criticism (p. 11).[2]
Documents from exploration and conquest already transmit that material sparsely and in altered form. They usually preserve place names and personal names, not a description of the language. Often the original does not survive, only register copies made in haste by poorly paid scribes. Indigenous words, he writes, frequently passed through three pens before they reached us. He marks one exception: land-grant deeds, which he considers the most valuable source for studying sounds (p. 11).[2]
Witness accounts raise another difficulty. Wölfel calls reports the news of people who saw the events or, more important for the language, heard them. The original of those texts rarely survives. The usual case is a copy made a hundred years or more later, or a version heavily rewritten by a later historian. Copyists often knew more than one model and inserted passages from another source (p. 11).[2]
Nor, as far as he could establish, was there a grammar or a dictionary of the indigenous Canarian languages. He contrasts that silence with the grammars and vocabularies written by Spanish missionaries in the Americas, and he links it to the rapid linguistic and cultural assimilation of the indigenous population (pp. 12-13).[2]
The chain grows longer with the compilers, the authors who assembled word lists. In the nineteenth century, Wölfel writes, many wanted to surpass a predecessor by a few hundred further entries, even when the increase came from copying errors. The early compilers did not name their sources. Berthelot was the first to cite them, but with numerous wrong attributions. Chil y Naranjo reproduced those attributions, with the old misprints and new ones. Research based on an uncritical compilation, he concludes, stands on unstable ground. He still recognises that John Abercromby reached valuable results under those conditions (p. 13).[2]
Wölfel does not stop at paper. He distinguishes place names in the historical sources from names still in use, taken from living pronunciation. When a name appears in both records, the two forms can be criticised against each other. He also warns that most of the place names cited by the compilers did not come from a survey in the islands, but from two geographical handbooks that were not written to transmit an indigenous language. The islands, he adds, are full of names of that origin, passed on by word of mouth, and attention to local pronunciation would offer a basis for studying the sounds. Without that work, the handbooks’ misprints keep being repeated. Maps are not enough either: one must allow for errors of hearing and of reading, and for the tendency to hear familiar words inside unfamiliar names (pp. 13-14).[2]
Trapero, oral tradition and place names
Trapero limits his research to the lexicon that has survived. He states two principles: orality as the primary source of documentation, and place names as a field that needs revision (p. 20).[1] Against studies based almost only on chronicles and documents of the conquest and colonisation, he argues that oral tradition is a fuller source. At the same time he denies that this orality is authentically Guanche: the elements have been adapted to Spanish and must be studied from that adaptation. Writing, he adds, did not escape the same adaptation, and it also turns a sequence of sounds into a spelling (p. 21).[1]
On those pages he reproduces a complaint he attributes to the chronicler Gómez Escudero: the Spaniards disputed the names of things and despised the indigenous words; when customs were later sought out, nobody could give an account of them (p. 21).[1] Trapero uses the passage to explain how thin the written collection was. On its own it is not a description of every chronicle’s method.
Trapero also defends a preference. He considers oral transmission more faithful to linguistic identity than what was fixed in writing. That preference does not make a present oral form into the pre-Hispanic pronunciation. Trapero himself asks that oral forms be treated as elements already adapted to Spanish (p. 21).[1] The fuller development of this proposal, the work of Juan Bethencourt Alfonso and the Guarazoca example, discussed by Eladio Santana Martel in the foreword, are in the article on orality as a source for the study of Guanche.
Two complementary perspectives
Read together, the two books are neither a polemic nor a dialogue that never took place. Trapero takes Monumenta as a point of reference and, in the same introduction, points to Wölfel’s criticism of copies made by careless scribes (pp. 21 and 29).[1] What changes from one book to the other is the documentary priority.
Wölfel shows that the age of a writing does not guarantee its fidelity: copying, late rewriting and compilation introduce errors (pp. 11-13).[2] Trapero shows that oral continuity does not by itself preserve the older form: adaptation to Spanish transforms what people go on saying (p. 21).[1] Canarias Historia’s reading is that the two reservations belong together. A living place name can be used to review a doubtful spelling, and a document can stop a recent pronunciation from being taken as the original one.
That reading rests on a direction Wölfel had already given. In 1965 he asked for the local pronunciation of place names to be collected and set against the historical forms: when the name survives, the two routes allow mutual criticism (pp. 13-14).[2] Decades later, Trapero organises his research around orality and the revision of place names (p. 20).[1] This is not a brief from Wölfel to Trapero. It is the relation that appears when the two works are compared.
A linguistic tradition on each island
Neither book allows the indigenous languages of the Canary Islands to be treated as one homogeneous language. Wölfel takes it as certain that each island had its own dialect, because the islands remained isolated from one another for a long time. He denies, though, that those dialects were wholly unlike one another: the material shares words, place names and ways of forming words across the archipelago. The differences still seem large enough to him to explain why an interpreter was needed when moving from one island to another (pp. 134-135).[2]
Trapero uses “Guanche” for the language of the ancient Canarians and notes that, with that name, he is not deciding whether it was one language or several (p. 29).[1] He then gathers the disagreement of the chronicles. Some texts assign a different speech to each island. Others are silent on the question or recount the use of interpreters between islands. He also records Viera y Clavijo’s intermediate position, which spoke of dialects of a parent language (pp. 41-42).[1] The survey leaves the question open. It blocks both total unity and absolute diversity as a starting point.
The limits of reconstruction
Crossing these sources improves hypotheses and does not restore the languages. Wölfel warns that many reports pass from one author to another until they are distorted, so that repetition does not confirm them. He presents the reconstruction of this material as an attempt, reserved for the final part of his book, and he recalls that matching place names without knowing their meaning remains doubtful (pp. 14 and 131).[2] Trapero starts from a stricter limit: the language, he writes, is irremediably lost, and only elements of the lexicon survive (pp. 20 and 29).[1]
The methodological conclusion belongs to Canarias Historia, not to a thesis signed by both authors. Combining Wölfel’s documentary criticism with Trapero’s oral and toponymic comparison makes it possible to test each form more carefully. It does not authorise a grammar, a complete phonology or a dictionary of the indigenous languages as they were spoken.
Preserve, compare and interpret
The indigenous linguistic heritage of the Canary Islands is studied through what was written and through what island speech still keeps. Both routes require provenance, comparison and an explicit limit. Monumenta linguae canariae teaches us not to trust a list merely because it is old. Estudios sobre el guanche teaches us to listen to oral tradition without confusing it with the language that disappeared. Read together, they mark out a possible task: to preserve the testimonies, to compare them, and to say clearly which part of the reconstruction remains out of reach.