Salvadoran Lenca

Salvadoran Lenca or Potón is a language of the linguistic family of the Lenca languages spoken in El Salvador; and of which two dialects have been described: that of Chilanga (extinct), and that of Guatajiagua; Other dialects may have existed in the past in the other towns where the Lencas lived in present-day El Salvador.^[2]

According to Adolfo Costenla Umaña, the Salvadoran Lenca and the Honduran Lenca would have separated 2,295 years ago; time in which the archaeological site of Quelepa would have been founded.^[3]

By 2012, there was only one native speaker left in Guatajiagua, department of Morazán, named Mario Salvador Hernández; who learned the language from his grandmother, and who together with Consuelo Roque would write a learning booklet entitled: Poton piau, nuestro idioma Potón in conjunction with the Lenca Communal Association of Guatajiagua, and published in 1999. In total, said document would compile 380 words. Currently in El Salvador there are rehabilitation projects for the Salvadoran Lenca to prevent its extinction.^{[4][5][6][7][8][a]}

Salvadoran Lenca is of the small language family of Lencan languages that consists of two languages one of which is the Salvadoran Lenca and the Honduran Lenca. There have been attempts to link the Lencan languages to other languages within their groupings, but there has been no success. ^[9]

Phonology

Consonants

• Obstruents can be voiced allophonically.

Vowels

History

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the use of Salvadoran Lenca began to decline; in the 1970s, in Chilanga, a Salvadoran Lenca speaker was found. For a time it was considered extinct, but it would not be until the end of the nineties, when Consuelo Roque, a linguist at the University of El Salvador (UES), found Mario Salvador Hernández from Guatajiagua, who is considered the last native speaker of that language, and specifically the variant of that population. He learned the language from his grandmother, and both Consuelo and Mario would write a learning book titled: Poton piau, our Potón language. Mario Salvador Hernández of Guatajiagua is the last speaker of Lenca salvadoran, which differs from the version spoken in Chilanga, where the language has disappeared. Research in 2004 by the University of El Salvador recorded 380 words, five vowels and 16 consonants, alternation between “g” and “k”, with reduplication to create plurals from singular forms. Currently in El Salvador there are rehabilitation projects for the Salvadoran Lenca to prevent its extinction.^{[4][2][5][7][9][8]}

Notes

References

Wiktionary has a word list at Appendix:Lenca word list

• Roque, Consuelo; Manuel Antonio Ramírez Suárez (2004). Cultura lenca de Guatajiagua. Universidad de El Salvador. ISBN 978-99923-27-20-3. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
• Del Río Urrutía, Ximena. 1999. El lenca de Chilanga. Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 25. 193-209.
• Campbell, Lyle. 1976. "The Last Lenca". International Journal of American Linguistics 42(1): 73–78.