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

To these apparently benign methods, the Incas had added the harsher one of repopulating some areas with colonies of Quechua-speaking immigrant families, also known as mitmaj , ‘transplants’. These were sent with the aim of diluting and pacifying the original population. There were ten to twelve thousand of them, settled with some finesse: [540]‘They were passed to other villages or provinces of the temper and manner of those from which they issued; because if they were from a cold country they were taken to a cold country, and from hot, to hot … They were given estates in the fields and lands for their labours and a place to make their houses.’ [541]

Ňamandu Ru Ete tenondegua

…

Oámyvyma ,

oyvárapy mba’ ekuaágui ,

okuaararávyma

ayvu rapytará i

oikuaa ojeupe.

mboapy mba’ ekuaágui ,

okuaararávyma ,

ayvu rapyta oguerojera ,

ogueroyvára Ňande Ru.

Yvy oiko’ eÿre ,

pytŭ yma mbytére ,

mba’e jekuaa’ eÿre ,

ayvu rapytarā i oguerojera ,

ogueroyvára

Ňamandu Ru Ete tenondegua.

True Father Ňamandú, the First One…

Standing up straight

from the wisdom in his own godhead

and in virtue of his creating wisdom

conceived the origin of human language

and made it form part of his own godhead.

Before the earth existed

amidst the primordial darkness

before there was knowledge of things

he created what was to be the foundation of human language

and True First Father Ňamandú

made it form part of his own godhead.

Ayvu Rapyta , ‘The Foundation of Human Language’,

Mbyá-Guaraní creation myth [542]

Gradually we move away from the animals more and more. In the first times, the difference was tiny. All living beings had an Aché body, a person’s body, and behaved as such. The main likeness was the possession of javu , language.

Aché Pyvé , ‘The Beginnings of the Aché’,

Aché-Guaraní creation myth [543]

Far less is known about the careers of the other languages that had become widespread before the advent of the Spaniards.

The altiplano of Cundinamarca in the northern Andes was largely monolingual in the Chibcha (or Muysca ) language when the Spanish arrived in 1536; the area was not politically unified at the time, however, and with at least three major centres at Tunja ( Hunza ) in the north, Bogotá ( Muykyta ) in the south, and Sogamoso ( Sugamuši ), a major religious centre in the northeast, there was also some difference in dialects. The conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (like Cortés, another lawyer at large) had brought interpreters with him from the coast, but, in view of the coastal languages as they are now (for example, Ika, Kogi), it is unlikely that they could have communicated in anything like their own language: more probably, they had some knowledge of Chibcha from traditional trade links between the mountains and the coast. Although there was already a clear social hierarchy among the Chibcha, and military organisation associated with formal campaigns among the different centres (as well as their non-Chibcha-speaking neighbours), there is no evidence that the language had been spread by any political, military or economic influence. More likely, the language had simply been established by the tribes who had settled there. And their ethnic group had clearly been there for some time: closely related languages had evolved a couple of hundred kilometres to the north-east, among the Duit (nowadays extinct), and the Tunebo (also known as Uwa ), who still live, and speak their language, on the eastern slopes of the Andes.

Even less is known about the background of Tupí-Guaraní, but the language was spoken far more widely across lowland South America; forms of it have been found as far north as Suriname, north of the Amazon, and to the west in pockets on the Brazilian and Peruvian borders of Colombia. It was spoken (as Tupinambá) all over the centre and south-east of Brazil, in eastern Bolivia (known as Chiriguano), and in Paraguay (as Guaraní). Its spread may have been linked to the progress of Mesoamerican-style farming across the continent, of maize, beans and squash, supplemented with potatoes, manioc, peanuts and chili peppers. [544]

And of the Mapuche past, even less is known or can be inferred. They maintained their independence until the second half of the nineteenth century; and so Spanish contact with them came too late for any use of their language, Mapudungun, as a lengua general. The use of a single language across their extensive territory suggests that they were a single group who had taken possession of a not particularly fertile region, and were thinly spread across it.

We must now turn to the policies pursued by the Spanish to organise their colonies linguistically. But before we do so, it is worth pointing out that there is a clear correlation between the degree of political organisation of a group with a widespread language, and the development of a literature after Spanish contact (which took advantage of the transmission of a Romanised writing system). There are substantial literatures in Nahuatl and Quechua which date from the period immediately after the conquest, often written by immediate descendants of the elite who had ruled Mexico and Peru before. [108]Aymara, Chibcha and Guaraní, by contrast, did not develop an indigenous written literature, even though they had each been given a written standard by missionary linguists: [545]as far as we can see, literature in the languages remained confined to the productions of the Spaniards, and largely to support the process of Christianisation.

Your Majesty has ordered that these Indians should learn the language of Castile. That can never be, unless it were something vaguely and badly learnt: we see a Portuguese, where the language of Castile and Portugal is almost all the same, spend thirty years in Castile, and never learn it. Then are these people to learn it, when their language is so foreign to ours, with exquisite manners of speaking? It seems to me that Your Majesty should order that all the Indians learn the Mexican language, for in every village today there are many Indians who know it and learn it easily, and a very great number who confess in that language. It is an extremely elegant language, as elegant as any in the world. A grammar and dictionary of it have been written, and many parts of the Holy Scriptures have been translated into it; and collections of sermons have been made, and some friars are very great linguists in it.

Fray Rodrigo de la Cruz to Emperor Charles V

Mexico, letter of 4 May [March?] 1550 [546]

We are too few to teach the language of Castile to Indians. They do not want to speak it. It would be better to make universal the Mexican language, which is widely current, and they like it, and in it there are written doctrine and sermons and a grammar and a vocabulary.

Fray Juan de Mansilla, Comisario General, to Emperor Charles V

Guatemala, letter of 8 September 1551 [547]

If the Spanish with very sharp intellects and knowledge of the sciences cannot, as they claim, learn the general language of Cuzco, how can it be achieved that the uncultivated and untaught Indians can learn Castilian?

Father Blas Valera Peru, mid-sixteenth century [548]

In the papal bull of 1493 issued by Alexander VI, Inter Caetera , which formed the legal title of Spain to its colonies, and in the instructions issued to Columbus by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the conversion of the natives was enjoined as the supreme objective in building the Spanish empire in the New World. Already in 1504, Father Boyl, who had been sent out with Columbus on his second voyage, was explaining to his royal masters that the spread of the gospel was being delayed by lack of interpreters.