Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

So common was interracial matrimony (soon complicated by the import of black slaves from Africa) that a taxonomy of the terms for mixed-race children was devised, and famously illustrated. [524]Modern Hispanic commentators tend to idealise this state of affairs, referring, for example, to the mixed racial background of the Spanish in Europe, but the facts that the attempt was made to keep everyone classified, and that the power and status of the nominally pure Spanish families ( criollos ) remained high until the end of the empire—exceeded indeed only by that of immigrants from Spain—suggest that the society was not so free of race-based oppression as is sometimes claimed. However, whatever the level of acceptance and encouragement of the various types of union that were solemnised (or not), there is very little documentary evidence of language usage in these families.

What evidence there is comes from the unchallengeable fact of literary distinction in many early mestizos. They were not only interpreters, but also literary translators and authors, in Spanish and in Latin too. [97]Fernando de Alva Ixtilxóchitl, from the line of the kings of Tezcoco, Cortés’ allies, was known as the ‘Livy of Anáhuac’, author of the Historia Chichimeca. And his son Bartolomé adapted into Nahuatl two contemporary Spanish plays by Lope de Vega, and another by Calderón. They were not alone; chronicles of the conquest of all parts of the empires of the New World were soon being written up, in Spanish, by the very people produced by that conquest. [525]

The most distinguished of the literary mestizos was probably the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), born in Cuzco, the Inca capital, seven years after the conquest, his father being the Spanish nobleman Captain Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas, and his mother Palla Chimpu Ocllo, second cousin of the two last Incas, Huayna Capac and Atahuallpa. He emigrated to Spain in his early twenties, and lived there until his death, so his career says little directly about the relative strength of languages in Peru. But he was a man familiar with the sense of different languages: having learnt Quechua and Spanish as a child, and Latin in his youth, he had then learnt sufficient Italian to translate a book entitled Dialogues of Love. He went on to write two lengthy historical works of his own, The Florida of the Inca , about de Soto’s campaign through Florida, and a two-part history called Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru. In this last work, he has a lot to say about the relative roles of the Quechua and Spanish languages, often quoting the views of another famous literary mestizo , Father Blas Valera (who had written a history of Peru in Latin).

It was Garcilaso and Blas Valera’s view that the advent of Spanish power to Peru, with the civil wars and social disruption that it brought in its train, had disrupted the convenient linguistic unity that the Incas had succeeded in imposing over their empire, and which should have been exploited in the propagation of the Christian faith.

Whence it has come about that many provinces, where when the Spaniards entered Cajamarca the rest of the Indians knew this common language, have now forgotten it altogether, because with the end of the world and Empire of the Incas, there was no-one to remember something so convenient and necessary for the preaching of the Holy Gospel, because of the widespread oblivion caused by the wars which arose among the Spaniards, and after that for other causes which the evil Satan has sown to prevent such an advantageous regime from being put into operation … There are some to whom it appears sensible to oblige all the Indians to learn the Spanish language, so that the priests should not waste their efforts on learning the Indian one. This opinion can leave no-one who hears it in any doubt that it arose from failure of endeavour rather than stupid thinking … [526]

It has been claimed [527]that Garcilaso’s underlying point was that the Incas understood better than their conquerors the fundamental point of Nebrija, whose ground-breaking grammar of Spanish—as we have seen—had begun with the thesis ‘that always language was the companion of empire’. Garcilaso certainly held the view, still widely held today though not among knowledgeable linguists, that a shared language makes for common understanding and good mutual relations: ‘because the likeness and conformity of words almost always tend to reconcile people and bring them to true union and friendship’. [528]

Whatever the truth on this point of ideology, the existence of Antonio Nebrija’s works, grammars both of Latin ( Introductiones Latinae ) and contemporary Spanish ( Gramatica de la lengua castellana ), demonstrated that it was possible to capture the ‘art’ of a language explicitly on the page. And the missionaries soon flocking to the New World made use of this demonstration to found the world’s first tradition of descriptive linguistics.

Entering Mexico, this new virgin territory for the Church, where bilinguals hardly existed at any level of society, the Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian friars immediately realised that they would have to work through the people’s own languages if they were to make serious progress in spreading the faith. [98]This meant the languages would have to be learnt. The population to be contacted was vast: many million to set against the 802 friars present in Mexico in 1557. [529]Clearly, this was work for many generations. And since there would necessarily be a circulation of missionaries, with old ones retiring and fresh recruits coming out from Spain—i.e. the tradition had to be carried on without the natural transmission of languages through raising children—the languages would have to be taught afresh, over and over, to each new generation of adult learners. For the first time in the world’s history, there was a clear demand for language-learning textbooks, specifically grammars (’ Artes ’) and dictionaries, as well as native-language versions of the prayer books and confessionals that were the tools of the Catholic missionary’s trade. [99]

And conveniently enough, there were now the technical means to satisfy the demand: printing presses were installed in Mexico City in 1535; their first known product, the Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Christiana , which came out in 1539, was for ecclesiastical use, and despite its title was written in Nahuatl. In 1546 it was followed by Fray Alonso de Molina’s Doctrina Christiana breve traduzida en lengua Mexicana , and in 1547 by Arte de la lengua mexicana by Father Andres de Olmos, and an accompanying volume, Vocabulario de la lengua mexicana. [100]Volumes in others of the country’s languages followed, beginning with expositions of Christian doctrines in Huastec in 1548 and Mixtec in 1550. Peru could not wait for the press, and the first Arte of the Quechua language, Grammatica, o arte de la lengua general de los Indios de los Reynos del Peru , was actually printed in Spain, in Valladolid, in 1560. But when printing started in Lima (Peru) in 1583, among its first products were Catecismo en Lengua Espaõola y Quichua, Catecismo en Lengua Espaõola y Aymara (both 1583), and Doctrina Christiana… traduzido en las dos lenguas generales de este Reyno, Quichua y Aymara (1584). [530]

This was just scratching the surface of the unknown continent’s languages. The ultimate harvest of linguistic knowledge that was gained in the Americas, primarily to serve missionary activity, was vast. In 1892 the Count of Viõaza listed 493 distinct languages identified by Spanish linguists in the Americas over three and a half centuries of research, and the titles of significant documents describing some aspect of 369 of them. In that period 667 separate authors had produced 1,188 works. [531]