Tainonaiki

Taíno, also called Island Arawak, is the extinct Arawakan language that by the late 1400s was the common speech of the Greater Antilles and the northern Lesser Antilles, from the Bahamas and Cuba across Hispaniola and Puerto Rico as far as Guadeloupe.

Its Classic dialect, expanding from around 1200, served as the lingua franca of the Indies. Columbus noted in 1492 that islanders traveling by canoe could understand one another throughout the archipelago.

As Spanish conquest advanced the language gave way to Spanish, English and French, but passed many words into European languages, among them canoe, hammock, hurricane, maize, cassava, potato, tobacco and savanna. Place names such as Borinquen, the old name of Puerto Rico, come from the language, and its closest living relative is the Wayuu tongue of the Guajira coast.