The Original Language of the Canary Islands

Was it a form of Spanish? If not, does anyone know what they originally spoke there and what language group it it related to?

It definitely was not a form of Spanish. It may have been a Berber language, but considering it's extinct at this point, and not that much is known about it at this point, well, we really cannot be quite sure, and it's unlikely that we every will be.

The ancient people of the Canaries were called "guanchos", so I suppoise their language had a similar name. It survives in some place names.

"Silbo" is believed to have come to the island from the Berber people of Morocco, The Canary Islands have very strong links with Morocco, particularly the Berbers, and there is evidence that there may be some people deep in the Atlas mountains who also use whistling to communicate.
It's practically a language in itself - just like Castilian Spanish - but it relies on tones rather than vowels and consonants.
The tones are whispered at different frequencies, using Spanish grammar. It's not just disjointed words - it flows, and you can have a proper conversation.
Silbo has only four vowels and four consonants. The key to it is understanding the meaning of the many different tones of the whistles.
It can be heard more than two miles away - which was the key to its being sustained on the La Gomera.
The language has been passed on from father to son as it was essential to be able to communicate over long distances across the inaccessible valleys.
The island is very hilly, with lots of ravines, which make communication very difficult.
As a result, a tradition developed whereby if one person heard a whistle, they passed it on.
Islanders got so skilled at it that messages have been successfully passed right from one end of the island to the other.
Historically, from the earliest settlers on the Canaries, the Silbo language was the mobile phone of the period.
Until recently those who communicated in Silbo were dying out - but the government of the island made it compulsory for all schoolchildren on the island to study it, and now it is making a comeback.

Wow! So the Guanchos used this whistle language?

I agree with Raul. Recently I saw a TV report on that. It's really interesting.

Note that the use of whistled language, which is not a language as so much as a manner of speaking, is not the same thing as the Guanche language, which was the original language of the Canary Islands, and which is now extinct.

But what was the language spoken 500 years ago -- at the time the Spanish came to the island. Was it Guanche? I thought that language was gone by then.

The language spoken on the Canary Islands at the time that the Spanish came was Guanche, yes.

Interesting info in this thread...thanks!

Canaries .... Spanish.

How about Madeira? Any difference in the Portuguese there from Continental Portugal?

How about the Azores? I'm falling down here....is it Spanish or Portuguese out there? I have a feeling it's Portuguese.

Did you know that Spain and Portugal, the two countries that make up the Iberian Peninsula in extreme SW Europe, are in different time zones? Spain is Central European Time, and Portugal is Western European Time, the same as the UK with British Summer Time (or Greenwich Mean Time in winter). We ALL changed our clocks forward an hour last weekend.

Those from the Azores and Madeira have a slightly different accent than those in mainland Portugal.

Yes, it's Portuguese that is spoken on both the Azores and Madeira.

Interesting. But what languages did the people speak in Madeira or the Azores before Portuguese?

No language, ´´cos they were uninhabited!

East of Spain is in the Greenwicht Meridian, which crosess the city center of Castellón. Therefore Spain should use GMT like the UK and Portugal. As Damian says it uses Central European Time (CET) like Germany. In Galicia you have the feeling that the sunset is really too late in Summer. Canary Islands uses Greenwicht Meridian Time. Sometimes there are dicussions about leaving CET and move to GMT.

I agree with everything that has been said about silbo. However, the question is what was the language spoken by the Guanches, the inhabitants found by the Spanish. So far the only thing found by archeologic remains is that the Guanches were a bereber people but nothing about their language. They lived isolated from Africa, which was the reason why they were not islamic, otherwise the Spanish would have treat them as moors instead of as indians. Unfortunately we do not know what they spoke, because the when the indigenist movement, defending the rights of the Amrican indians, was strongest in the XVI Century the guanches as an ethnic people had disaperead mixed with the huge population planted from Spain (mostly Andalusia). Had they lived enought as a people and language to see the arguments that took place in the XVI Century in Spain about whether indians were human beens or not, their language would have been studied and reccorded by the Catholic priests of the indigenist movement who were unsucessfully defending the rights of the indians against the planted Spaniards.

Thanks for your reply, mjd.

Both Madeira and the Azores sound idyllic. I've never been to Portugal..the usual place for tourists is the Algarve....but I'd love to learn a few words of Portuguese and use it in those beautiful and remote islands instead. Like the Hebrides and the Western Isles...only with SUN!!