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

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However, in this case Bernal Diaz’s spelling, the way it is worded seems to imitate
the Taino pluralization of the word. This is said because, in the two quotes below from
Columbus and de Las Casas we come across with a bilingual formation of the adverbialplural
using the í or íx to refer to the same word.
Amainaron todas las velas y quedaron con el treo, que es la vela grande, sin bonetas, y
pusiéronse a la corda, temporizando hasta el día viernes, que llegaron a una isleta de los
Lucayos que se llamaba en lengua de indios Guanahaní 87
This mention by Columbus of the Guanahaní is the first mention of this word
in all the Chronicles of the conquest. However, he also introduced another very
important word repeated by de Las Casas in the following quote, lucayos:
Esta tierra era y es una isla de 15 leguas de luengo, poco más ó ménos, toda baja sin
montaña alguna, como una huerta llena de arboleda verde y fresquísima, como son todas
las de los lucayos que hay por allí, cerca desta Española, y se extienden por luengo de
Cuba muchas, la cual se llamaba en lengua desta isla Española, y dellas, porque cuasi
toda es una lengua y manera de hablar, Guanahaní, la última sílaba luenga y aguda 88 .
As previously stated, what is of extreme importance in the quotes above is that
when we find the Guanaha people naming themselves to Columbus and de Las Casas
in 1492 the plural of choice is the adverbial í or íx e.g. Guanahaní as if they were
employing the ethnonym instead of the qualifier. Whereas, when named by writers 20
and 60 years later in the conquest (as it is the case of Velazquez de Cuellar in 1514 and
87
(Colombus, 1493)
88
(Las Casas, 1875)