Finally, an unexpectedly delightful story featuring indigenous people of Canary Island as been produced for the big screen. “AMAN” aims at raising awareness about the necessity to protect, preserve and promote cultural heritage of the ancient inhabitants of the island through film-making. The movie is expected to be released sometime in 2016.
The film is using Guanche which is an extinct language thought to belong to the Amazigh language family which was spoken in the Canary Islands until the 16th or 17th century. The language is also known as Insular Tamazight, Ancient Canarian Language or Ínsuloamaziq.
The genetic affiliation of this language is unclear due to the diverse admixture of different dialectal influences found in the archipelago, and the important dialectalization of each island’s local speech. But there is a common substate, possibly the oldest Amazigh influx, related to Tamajeq dialects, mostly identifiable in the vocabulary.
Although the origins of Amazigh settlement in the Canaries are obscure and still unknown, the first material evidence could be traced back to 1000 BC, Many Tifinagh inscriptions have been found in the Canary Islands, which makes it easier to identify a genetic relationship with the continental linguistic varieties, with a clear predominance of Proto-Tuareg substrate.
