Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present

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trees, but of high, and at times, low grass”. In the second paragraph, he states that
“they moved the Spanish army to the savanna for protection”. It is imperative to note
that the spelling within the same page of the text varies, at times, adding an extra n.
Later in the same chronicle Oviedo changes the spelling one more time exchanging the v
for b. This variance in the spelling seems to hint to a possible linguistic insecurity from
the writer about the correct phonology of the term. However, Bernal Diaz spells the term
as sabana, the way the word is spelled in Spanish today. Also, he adds the adjective
“grande”, which means ‘big’, as if making an annotation between the description and his
own linguistic memory about the savannas of the Caribbean and those newly
encountered in the mainland.
Chapter LXII, page 205
aquellas rencillas pasamos era llano, y había muchas casas y labranzas de maíz
e magueyales, que es donde hacen el vino. Y dormimos cabe un arroyo.
The next word in the sequence of our research is magüey > ‘agave’. However,
this word, like others previously described in this research, such as mamey, catarey,
makey, cupey, Camagüey, turéy, higüey, this word seems to reflect an important
element of the language of the pre-Columbian Taino that we have avoided thus far to
evade diverging from our main research point about their influences in the vernacular
post-colonial Spanish. It seems, that although for the most part Taino descended from
Arawak related languages, there was a fusion of other linguistic groups that became part
of a homogenized linguistic cluster among the Antilles adding words incorporated into
the Taino language at the moment of the European’s arrival. Voices like caimán, loro,