Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
Examples of transcultural processes in two
colonial linguistic documents on Jebero (Peru)
Abstract: In this paper we bring to light the “transcultural processes” and “the
impacts of colonial thinking” as contained in The British Library manuscripts
Add. 25,323 and 25,324. The manuscripts deal with Jebero, an indigenous language of North-Peru, as it was spoken in the 18th century. (The language, also
known as Shiwilu, is still spoken by some elderly people in the district of
Jeberos, but Pilar Valenzuela, Chapman University, California, USA, is supporting a project of revitalization of the language.) The author of the manuscripts is
presumably Samuel Fritz, a Jesuit missionary. The transcultural processes, noticeable in the codices mentioned above, include the transmission of the cultural background of the author in the domain of religion and education, as well as
the transmission of the culture of the Jebero people. In the instances demonstrating transcultural processes and colonial thinking, we also pay some attention to Samuel Fritz’ description of Jebero, since little is known of this language.
Keywords: Samuel Fritz, transmission of religion and culture, colonial thinking,
18th century Jebero
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Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus: Van Ouwenlaan 32, 2597 CW Den Haag, THE NETHERLANDS,
alexanas@xs4all.nl
1 Transmission of religious thinking: tools
When at the end of the fifteenth century Europe ‘discovered’ the ‘New World’, it
was eager to take possession of this fresh, ‘untrodden’ and ‘uncontested’ land.
The European colonizers were accompanied by priests or missionaries. These
servants of the Catholic Church did not come for the conquest of a new, physical
world, but rather for that of a ‘bare’, spiritual world. Their purpose was to
preach the Gospel and to convert as many natives as possible. In order to do so,
they had to learn the language of the indigenous people they contacted. So they
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I am very grateful to Klaus Zimmermann and Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein for their useful
suggestions and good comments.
232 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
threw themselves into the writing of vocabularies and grammars of the languages at issue, which then became “un instrumento de la evangelización” ‘an
instrument of evangelization’ (see Zimmermann 1997: 15).
This is certainly the case regarding the manuscripts Additional 25,323 and
25,324 from the British Library. They date from the 18th century. Both manuscripts have not been published yet, but a diplomatic edition is in preparation.
The former, Vocabulario dela lengua Castillana, la del Ynga, y Xebera, is a trilingual Spanish-Quechua-Jebero dictionary. The latter contains parts of a Doctrina
Christiana ‘Christian doctrine’ in Quechua and Jebero, and a Jebero grammar:
Gramatica dela Lengua Xebera (henceforth GLX). The presumable author of the
writings is Samuel Fritz (1654–1728), a Jesuit missionary, born in Bohemia, were
German was widely spoken among the ruling classes and became increasingly
dominant. This explains why the author refers to German words when explaining Jebero sounds, which do not occur in Spanish and which he could not represent by means of a letter of the Spanish alphabet, but which do occur in German. The author wrote the manuscripts for his fellow “Missioneros”
‘missionaries’ in order to propagate “la palabra de Dios” ‘the word of God’ (Ms.
Add. 25,323, fol. 2v).
1.1 A Christian doctrine
The conveyance of the Catholic faith, which Samuel Fritz made his aim when he
composed his writings, comes clearly to the fore in the Ms. Add. 25,234. The
codex opens with a Christian doctrine, which fills the greatest part of the manuscript and runs up to 35 pages: fol. 1r-18r. (The GLX tails the codex with 22 pages: fol. 19r-29v.) The first folio of the Christian doctrine is a loose part of the
original doctrine. It begins with the following warning:
Dios pileŋtul-a-ka-su
lalá Santa Yglesia lala-neŋ-unda
God command-SN-1s-SN word Holy Church word-3sPOS-COR
nu-ilala-su sökdep’ð-a-meŋ
tiyeg-e-tiyun-ti
be-FREQ-SN comply.with-SN-2s be.saved-EU-2sFUT-ASS
‘You will be saved, if you always comply with the commandments of God
and the Holy Church’.
This warning finger is followed by the Act of Contrition, fol. 2r, in which the
prayer, a sinner, is remorseful for having offended God and he fears that he will
go to hell.
The Christian doctrine itself begins at page 4, fol. 2v. It contains, amongst
other things,
Examples of transcultural processes | 233
(i)
(ii)
a short catechism for every day (fol. 2v-4v);
questions concerning the sacraments of baptism and penitence, including
the articles of faith, fidelity, hope, and charity (fol. 5r-6v);
(iii) a short confession (fol. 6v);
(iv) an interrogation about sins which everybody, men, women, married people, can commit (7r-10r);
(v) the last rites (fol. 10r-11v);
(vi) the sacrament of matrimony (fol. 12r-v).
The contents of this part of the doctrine, fol. 1r-12v, can be considered as instructions for fellow missionaries and successors.
Remarkably is the fact that the first part of the doctrine concerns a bilingual
doctrine in which Quechua is the source language. Remarkably, because in the
Spanish colonies the missionaries usually used Spanish doctrines, translated
into the indigenous language at issue. In such bilingual doctrines Spanish thus
functions as the source language and the indigenous language as the object
language. It is likely that the author used Quechua as the source language,
since Quechua was the lingua franca and most of the population had at least a
passive knowledge of the language. Many priests also already knew Quechua
when they were sent to the inland to preach the Gospel. The author himself
states that he worked together with ladinos, Spanish-Indian half-breeds, and
with bilingual Quechua-Jebero speakers. He also takes for granted that a future
user of his manuscripts knows Quechua, or, as he says: “sepa el sentido delas
palabras dela lengua general”1, i.e. Quechua.
More surprisingly, in the last part of the doctrine, it is Jebero that functions
as the source language and Quechua as the object language. In this part, the
missionary probably changed his tactics by using Jebero as the source language
to make sure that his message was understood by everybody, also by those who
only spoke Jebero. He obviously also chose a Jebero speaker with knowledge of
Quechua (and, possibly, of Spanish) to assist him to secure that the teachings of
the church came through clearly. The Jebero-Quechua part of the Christian doctrine contains the following prayers (fol. 13r-14r):
(i) Pater Noster ‘Our Father’;
(ii) Ave Maria, ‘Hail Mary’;
(iii) Credo ‘Creed’;
(iv) Salve [Regina] ‘Hail Holy Queen’.
||
1 [knows the meaning of the words of the general language]
234 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
The prayers are preceded by the Trinitarian formula, the sign of the cross, and
they are followed by the commandments of God and the Church, a list of the
sacraments, and a full confession (fol. 15r-18r).
Fol. 14v contains an advice of the author. On this page, Samuel Fritz addresses himself directly to his successors, insisting that they should explain repeatedly,
i.e. cada domingo ‘every Sunday’, to the autochthonous lo que rezan, lo que
niegan, lo que creen, loque han de hazer ò de dexar2, so that they do not pray como
papageyo.3 This pastoral advice partly shows the way the Catholic faith was
transmitted, sc. by urging the people to attend Mass every Sunday and by repeating the Catholic duties and prayers over and over again, so that the priestly message was implanted and the Jeberos could become ‘good’ Catholics.4
1.2 A grammar
Most of the colonial grammars or artes were written by priests. They needed a
grammar in order to understand the language of the people they wanted to
Christianize, so that they could communicate their message and translate their
religious texts into the language in question. It comes to no surprise that, in
those grammars, the priest often referred to parts of Bible verses, prayers, liturgical texts and the confession, to clarify certain linguistic structures and phenomena. In the GLX we can find many of such examples. For instance, to show
that in Jebero prepositional concepts, such as ‘for/instead of’, ‘from/in’, ‘from/
of’, ‘in(side)/‘within’, ‘to’, and ‘with’, are expressed by case marking suffixes or
suffix combinations, the author gives the following examples:
‘for’, expressed by the benefactive marker -maleg:
(1)
saserdote Dios-maleg xuča
demuweto-li
priest
God-BEN
sin
forgive-3s
‘The priest forgives [our] sins for God’.
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2 [what they are praying, what they are negating, what they are believing, what they have to
do or to refrain from]
3 [like a perrot]
4 A more sophisticated strategy to transfer the Catholic faith is demonstrated by Zimmermann
(2014) in his analysis of the Sahagun’s Colloquius y Doctrina christiana. Zimmermann says that,
in the Nahuatl version, references to ‘Aztec religious phenomena’ are in Nahuatl, whereas
references to ‘peculiarities of the Christian-Catholic faith’ are in Spanish, and that “the inclusion of Spanish terms in the Náhuatl discourse [...] had the purpose of avoiding undesired and
heretic interpretations”.
Examples of transcultural processes | 235
‘from/in’, expressed by the locative-delative combination -keg-la:
(2)
Santa Maria du-neŋ-keg-la
Jesu Christo oklinando-li
Saint Mary womb-3sPOS-LOC-DEL
Jesus Christ be.born-3s
‘Jesus Christ was born of the womb of Saint Mary’.
(3)
Dios ayu-lek
ledenot-a-keg-la
God offend-1s think-SN-LOC-DEL
‘I have offended God in thoughts’
(4)
kwap’r-losa-keg-la
mointin-la
woman-PL-LOC-DEL
exceed-2s
‘You exceed amongst the women’.
‘from/ of’, expressed by the genitive marker -ki(n):
(5)
supay-ki
ma-losa-neŋ
luwir-la-nda
devil-GEN thing-PL-3sPOS turn.away-2s-QM
‘Do you turn away from devilish things?’
‘in(side)’, ‘within’, expressed by the inessive marker -lala:
(6)
iglesia-lala-kek
church-IN-LOC
‘from inside the church’
‘to’, ‘with’, expressed by the comitative marker -lek(n):
(7)
muča-apa-lek not-inilad virgin Santa Maria-lekn
pray-DUR-1s
be-FREQ
virgin Saint Mary-COM
‘I am praying to the everlasting virgin Saint Mary’.
(8)
sad-a-ø-su-lekn-ata
xuča
noto-si-k’n
marry-SN-3s-SN-COM-QM
sin
do-SN-2s
‘Have you committed adultery?’
(lit. ‘Have you committed sins with a married woman?’)
Examples with a religious tenor in which other affixes occur, such as the discourse markers -ti ‘assertion’, -unda ‘coordination’, ata/-nda, a question marker; the adjectival/adverbial suffixes -imbo ‘negation’, -nunda ‘repetition’,
-čaka/-saka ‘restriction’; and the plural markers -(dap’ð)-losa, indicating a
nominal plurality, and misan, a collective marker, meaning ‘all do’, are the
following:
-ata/ -nda ‘question marker’:
(9)
má-ata
Dios
(x)
thing-QM God
‘What is God?’
deŋ-ata
Dios
2sPRON-QM
God
‘Are you God?’
236 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
(-nda occurs after the second person singular marker -la, see (vi) above, -ata
elsewhere);
-čaka/-saka ‘restrictive marker’ (-čaka is used after [s] in final position, -saka
elsewhere):
(10) Dios-čaka
God-RSTR
‘God only’
-(dap’ð)losa ‘plural’:
(11)
kalowe-að-ka-su-dap’ðlosa
hell-PL-1s-ST-PL
‘hells’
-imbo ‘negation’:
(13) missa lao-keð
Mass
attend-2sIMP
‘Attend the Mass!’
(15)
(12)
xuča-wan-losa
sin-POSS-PL
‘sinners’
(14)
xuča-wan-imbo-su
sin-POSS-NEG-ST
‘someone without sins’
missa lao-imbo-pa-tiŋ
Dios ayu-la
Mass
hear-NEG-DUR-2s God ennoy-2s
You offend God by not attending the Mass’
-misan ‘collective marker’:
(16) malea-misan-ku
pray-COL-2pIMP
‘Pray, all of you!’
-nunda ‘repetition’:
(17) nambi-nunda-li
mosninanlo-kek pa-li
be.born-RE-3s
heaven-LOC
go-3s
‘He resuscitated [and] ascended into heaven’
-ti ‘assertative marker’ (cf. the assertative marker -mi in Quechua):
(18) malea-tik-ti
(19) missa laok-tik-ti
pray-1sFUT-ASS
Mass
hear-1sFUT-ASS
‘I shall pray, yes’
‘I shall attend Mass, yes’
(20)
Dios ni-lin-ti
God be-3s-ASS
‘God is, yes’
-unda ‘coordinator’:
(21) domingo-losa-kek fiesta-losa-kek-unda
Sunday-PL-LOC
feast-PL-LOC-COR
‘on Sundays and feasts’
Examples of transcultural processes | 237
Note that the coordinator unda meaning ‘and’, ‘also’, ‘although’, is the only
conjunction in Jebero, and that in complex sentences the conjunction may be
omitted:
(22)
saserdote-losa-saka nana Dios iñanto-li enka-li
priest-PL-RSTR
this God can-3s
give-3s
nana lala-ke
xuča demuwet-a-ø-su
this word-COM sin
cover-SN-3s-SN
‘God gave the power of absolution to priests only’
1.3 A vocabulary
Colonial vocabularies could also be used for the transmission of religious thinking. This thinking manifests itself in the sorts of entries and semantic fields
occurring in the vocabulary, sc. entries and semantic fields concerning catholic
concepts. In the Vocabulario dela lengua Castillana, la del Ynga, y Xebera instances of catholic concepts are encountered in different semantic fields, such
as, in:
(a) the semantic field of priestly duties:
absolve
anula- ‘leave’
demote- ‘cover’
atiyeg- ‘liberate’
ask for alms
Dios-maleg
lakGod-BEN
ask
‘to ask in the name of God’
baptise; bless
a-linlin-wan
CAUS-name-VB
‘to give a name’
(deliver) a sermon
Dios
lala-neŋ
God
word-3sPOS
‘God’s word’
give the extreme unction
iyade-kek
bika-ti-k’n
grease-INS
rub-1sFUT-2sO
‘I shall rub you with grease’
preach
Dios lala-neŋ
wentuGod word-3sPOS advise
‘to advise God’s word’
ring the bell
repika- < Sp. Repicar
238 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
(b) prescriptions for the convert:
(give) alms
limosna < Sp. limosna
confess
konfesa- < Sp. confesar
(have) a good conscience
linlin-wan-a-ø-su
kanga
name-VB-SN-3s-SN
heart
‘a Christian heart’ (lit. ‘a baptised heart’)
fast
lathe day of fasting
la ugli
marry
nana-lekn in-ventu-li, in-ma-a
him/her-COM REFL-offer-3s REFL-take-2pD
t-a-meŋ
say-SN-3sPOS
lit. ‘He/She offers himself/herself to him/her,
saying: “We both take each other”.
(do) penitence
penitensiya < Sp. penitencia
(c) a field of ecclesiastical affairs:
candle
kandela < Sp. candela
cross
kolosek’ð
disciple
ninitit-a-ø-su
understand-SN-3s-SN
‘he is being understanding’
eternal glory
nu-ilala-su
sakeg-losa
be-FREQ-SN
feast-PL
‘feasts that are always being’
faith
latog-a-ka-su
believ-SN-1s-SN
‘my belief’, ‘my faith’
Father (priest)
patili < Sp. Padre
the grace of God
Dios
katopa-li
God
help-3S
‘God helps’
miracle
milagro < Sp. milagro
the procession starts
prosesiyon iyunsu-tiyu
procession get.out-3sFUT
‘the procession will get out’
tomb
timi-pi
lála
die-PST.PRT
hole
‘hole of a deceased’
Examples of transcultural processes | 239
The translations of the words mentioned above show that the autochthons were
unfamiliar with these concepts, so that that they did not have a right equivalent
for them in their own language, as a result of which these concepts could not be
translated directly into Jebero. Thus, the concepts were either translated by a
borrowing from Spanish (cf. milagro ‘miracle’ from Sp. milagro), by a periphrasis (cf. timipi lala, meaning ‘a hole in which a corps can be/is buried’ for
‘tomb’), or by a word which in a certain context can have the same meaning (cf.
the verbs anula- ‘leave’, demote- ‘cover’, and atiyeg- ‘liberate’ for ‘absolve’).
The fact that both ‘baptize’ and ‘bless’, expressing two different practices, are
referred to by the same word in Jebero, also gives evidence that the Jeberos were
unknown with these practices and that they did not know what ‘baptise’ and
‘bless’ actually imply. From their point of view both acts were executed by a
priest with holy water, so that they termed both alilinwan- ‘to give a name’. It
shows that,
1) the Jebero people did not make a distinction between a sacrament and a
ritual;
2) they did not realize that by baptism the person to be baptized may call himself a Christian and becomes a member of the Catholic church;
3) they did not understand that objects can be blessed, but not be baptised.
It furthermore shows that the attempts of the Catholic missionary to transmit his
ideology and practices by means of a translation into the indigenous language
had not always the desired effects.
The enumeration of the Jebero translations mentioned in (a), (b) and (c)
above is just a selection of the corpus. Translations occurring supra in section
2.1, such as malea- ‘pray’ (xvii), (xix), mosninanlo ‘heaven’ (xviii) and virgen
‘virgin’ (vii), for instance, have not been listed.
2 Transmission of a Western culture
Since Samuel Fritz, the presumable author of the manuscripts, had been educated in Europe, where Latin was the language of the church and of the humanities, it is inevitable that this cultural background is reflected in the grammar
which he conjecturally wrote. His linguistic cultural luggage comes to light in
the way the author described the indigenous language, viz. “in terms of a Latin
model” (Smith-Stark 2007: 4). In the GLX, the author distinguishes, for instance,
five Latin cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative), and he
chooses the word tana ‘mountain’ as an example. However, all the ‘declined’
240 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
tana-forms are the same, with the exception of the accusative form tana-kek,
which he translates as ‘to the mountain’. The suffix ­ke(k/g) or -ki(k) is actually
a multi-functional morpheme. It can function as a locative ‘at’ or an inessive
‘in’, a genitive or separative ‘from’, a directive ‘to’ (see the example tana-kek ‘to
the mountain’ above), and as an instrumental ‘with’:
(23)
nanaŋ-kek
there-LOC
‘at/in the mountain’
(24)
deŋ-kek
who-GEN/SEP
‘whose’, ‘from whom’
(25)
Quito-keg-la
Quito-SEP-DEL
‘from Quito’
(26)
yomotu-kek
axe-INS
‘with an axe’
The verb is treated likewise. The author conjugates a Jebero verb as is customary
in Latin. He ascribes tenses, moods, and nominalized forms to the Jebero verb,
which the verb does not have, and his verbal paradigm is an image of a Latin
paradigm. For instance, the conjugation of the verb wentu- ‘advise’ contains the
following Latin tenses, moods, and nominalized forms: present, imperfect, future, imperative, prohibitive, subjunctive/optative, infinitive, 2 gerunds (dative
and ablative), and participles. In reality, there is no distinction between the
present tense and the imperfect; prohibitive has only a few forms, constructed
with the negations aneð and uya; subjunctive and optative are nominalized
forms, overlapping the other nominalized forms, such as the gerunds and the
participles.5
A transmission of the cultural baggage of the author is especially noticeable
in the vocabulary. The words referring to his culture are countless. They are
translated by means of a borrowing, a periphrasis, or a word meaning metaphorically or in certain contexts more or less the same, cf. those with a religious
purpose in section 1.2. The words reflecting a Western culture concern, amongst
other things, the names of animals and plants, iron tools and other objects,
furniture, numbers, periods of time, products, and relatives. All these unknown
items and concepts came along with the colonizers and were subsequently introduced into the indigenous community. The following word list is a choice
from the multitude of items found in the vocabulary referring to the European
background of the author:
||
5 According to Klaus Zimmermann (p. c.) the language description in terms of a Latin model is
‘a colonial device’: “It is a strategy to communicate to other missionaries who knew the Latin
grammar. It was not a descriptive error, but a communicational strategy in a colonial context.
He did not write the grammar for the Jebero people, but for the missionaries.”
Examples of transcultural processes | 241
bastard
bed
color
cow
report
flour
godfather
granddaughter
hammer
key
permission
law
lemon
margarine
marry
needle
be obliged
oil
rope
servant
soap
spoon
stepmother
teach
ten
wall
week
window
nað wawa
biti-ka-gek
sleep-1s-LOC
kolor
waka
wentharina
compa
nieto
martiyo
lyawi
licencia
pileŋdu-la-ka-su
lala
command-2sA-1sO-SN word
limon
wira
ya-in-ma-li
DES-REC-take-3s
lawa
obligasion pani-li
obligation have-3s
aceite
sodotek
wila
muda-neŋ
jabon
kučara
auba
pot-a-ø-su
mother be.as-SN-3s-SN
a-nintuCAUS-understand
kat-ótekgla-du
two-hand-QNT
lupa
semana
wentana
‘that/other child’
‘my sleeping place’
< Sp. color
< Sp. vaca
‘advise’
< Sp. harina
< Sp. compadre
< Sp. nieto
< Sp. martillo
< Sp. llave
< Sp. licencia
lit. ‘the word of
your commanding me’
< Sp. limón
‘grease’
‘they want to take each other’
‘thorn’
< Sp. obligación ‘obligation’
‘he has obligations’
< Sp. aceite
< Sp. soga
‘Indian’
‘his/her Indian’
< Sp. jabón
< Sp. cuchara
‘she is like a mother’
‘cause to understand’
‘two hands’
‘clay’
< Sp. semana
< Sp. ventana
The periphrastic translations ‘that/other child’ and ‘they want to take each other’ for the concepts ‘bastard’ and ‘marry’, respectively, give evidence that in
Jebero men and women just lived together and had children, and that practices
242 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
like marriage and the legitimization of a child were needless, since the passing
down of land, titles or goods, which in the Western Christian society is regulated by marriage and legitimization, were obviously not applicable in a Jebero
community. Those practices were introduced under colonial administration.
A number of nouns and verbs referring to a Western culture were adopted
through Quechua, the lingua franca in Peru, such as:
bread
read
ribbon
write
tanda
kilyka
drawing
čúmbeð
kilyka
drawing
nintituunderstand
notomake
< Q t’anta
< Q qelyqa- ‘to draw’ > ‘to write’
‘understand drawings’
< Q čumbi
‘make drawings’
The colonizers/missionaries also introduced numbers from Quechua into Jebero:
hundred
ten
thousand
pasak
čunga
waranga
< Q pačak
< Q čunka
< Q waranqa
The original Jebero counting system had four numbers:
ala
katu
kala
enkatu
one
two
three
four
For the designation of numbers higher than four, the Jebero used hands and
fingers:
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ala
ötegla-du
one
hand-QNT
‘one hand’
intimutu ‘thumb’
tanituna ‘index’
tanituna kabi-a-ø-su
index
be.next-SN-3s-SN
‘the one which is next to the index’ (lit. ‘him being next to the
index’)
biti-n
ötegla
kabi-a-ø-su
sleep-3sPOS hand
be.next-SN-3s-SN
‘the one which sleeps next to the hand’
(lit. ‘his sleeping being next to the hand)
Examples of transcultural processes | 243
ten
kat-ötegla-du
four-hand-QNT
‘two hands’
3 Transmission of ‘colonial thinking’
Besides examples of cultural transmission, we can also find reflections of superseded colonial thinking in the dictionaries and artes of the missionaries. This
colonial thinking manifests itself in the paternal attitude of the lexicographer or
the grammarian towards the Amerindians and the language which he has to
translate or describe, especially when he runs up against difficulties concerning
the translation of a word and the description of a sound or a structure.
For Samuel Fritz, being a child of his time, who was brought up in Europe,
colonial thoughts were his own. Manifestations of Eurocentric thinking are
encountered in the comments added to the lexicographic, grammatical and
religious texts. At the beginning of the vocabulary, for instance, the author
warns that the Indians badly pronounce their own language (!) and that they are
not intelligible, since,
(i) “muchas letras confunden”6, i.e. sounds;
(ii) “pronuncian las vocales como diftongos”;7
(iii) “la mayor dificultad tiene la pronunciacion dela d, pues la pronuncian [...]
como media r, media l, y algunas vezes como media h”;8
(iv) “la n muchas vezes apenas pronuncian”;9
(v) “tambien à su querer añaden al fin de la sylaba ti sin que se muda la significacion, ni enlos verbos, ni enlos nombres […]. Otras vezes tambien usan en
lugar de particulas preguntativas”.10
The author states that his unintelligibility and that what he categorizes from his
Eurocentric and scriptural-centric point of view as his confusion of sounds is
due to the fact that the Indians do not have books and that they cannot write
||
6 [they confuse many “letters”]
7 [they pronounce vowels as diphthongs]
8 [they do not know how to articulate the sound [d], because it is partly articulated as [r], as
[l], and sometimes as [h]]
9 [the nasal [n] is hardly pronounced]
10 [and all the time they add the syllable ti to nouns and verbs without changing their meaning. They also use it [the syllable ti] as a substitute for question markers]
244 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
“por falta delibros y ortografia”. He also complains that the Jeberos do not speak
Quechua, and that “especialmente porlas mugere[s], de las quales parece que no
aya esperanza de que aprend[en] la lengua del Ynga [...] y asi quedaran
p[ri]vadas del pasto espiritual necessario”.11
At the end of the Christian doctrine, the author addresses himself to his successors and he urges them to explain every Sunday to the Indians “lo que rezan,
lo que niegan, lo que creen, lo que han de hazer ò dexar”12, so that they do not
speak “como papageyo”13 [...]” (see also section 1.1). From this Eurocentric observation we may conclude that the missionary sees his flock as a featherbrained group of men and women, who cannot think by themselves and who
are just echoing what somebody else tells them to say. The author thus ignores
that the Indians can very well understand the message and the intentions of the
missionaries, and that they are familiar with religious thinking. Like any other
culture, the Jeberos had its shamans or priests and its spirits or gods to whom
they prayed. The indigenous culture also had its do’s and don’ts which the people had to observe, such as the three basic, time-honored Quechua commandments: ama llullakuy-chu ‘do not lie’, ama suway-chu ‘do not steal’, ama
wañuchiy-chu ‘do not kill’.
Manifestations of a colonial range of ideas are also encountered in the word
list itself. For instance, the words muda, meaning ‘man’, ‘heart’ in Jebero, and
wila ‘child’, are used to translate the Spanish word criado ‘servant’. The word
muda is also employed for the translation of the word indio ‘Indian’, so that
‘Indian’ becomes synonymous with ‘servant’, and ‘Indian’ equals ‘servant’ (cf.
muda-neŋ ‘his Indian’). At the same time, the Spanish words señor and
señora, meaning ‘gentleman/master’ and ‘madam/mistress’, respectively, are
introduced into the lexicon of the Jebero people. The terms muda ‘Indian’,
‘servant’, indicating a Jebero man, and señor ‘master’, ‘sir’ and señora ‘mistress’, ‘madam’, indicating a Spanish man and woman, respectively, clearly
reflect the introduction of a new, colonial system of social relationships between the Spaniards and the Jebero people, and the distinction in status between both groups.
||
11 [especially for the women, there seems to be no hope that they will ever learn the Quechua
language [...], so that they are devoid of the indispensable pastoral guidance]
12 [what they are praying, what they are negating, what they are believing, what they have to
do or to give up]
13 [as perrots]
Examples of transcultural processes | 245
4 Transmission of the indigenous culture
The cultural transmission is not unilateral. It also occurs the other way round,
not compellingly, but under the skin. When the missionaries tried to translate
European and catholic concepts into an indigenous language, they had to
search for an equivalent in the object language; and when they tried to describe
the complex structure of an Amerindian language by means of the Latin model
they were faced with difficulties. Through this searching of equivalents and
facing with difficulties they came in contact with a completely different world,
and thus became aware of a totally different range of thoughts, which they had
to bear in mind in order to be able to deliver an adequate translation and a right
description of the language in question for their fellow missionaries.
4.1 Linguistic phenomena
Notwithstanding the fact that the author of the GLX describes the Jebero language on the Latin model, he is aware of the fact that the language is structured
differently. He perceives, for instance, that personal reference markers occur as
suffixes attached to nominal and verbal stems in Jebero (see the translation of
the number ‘nine’ in section 2), and that the category of prefixes is missing, but
that the language has ‘postpositions’ instead, i.e. all sorts of suffixes that have a
prepositional meaning when attached to noun, and that function as case markers, see the examples with the suffixes -maleg ‘for/instead of’, -keg-la ‘from/in’,
-ki(n) ‘from/of’, -lala ‘in(side)/‘within’, -lekn ‘to’, ‘with’, in section 1.2, and -kek
‘at’, ‘from’, ‘in’, ‘to’, ‘with’, in section 2.
The grammarian also perceives that modalities and aspects which in a language like German and English are indicated by a modal or by an adverb are
marked by a prefix in Jebero:
ya-pa-lek
DES-go-1s
‘I want to go’
ap’ð-li-na
steal-3s-IT
‘he always steals’
With respect to the verb, the author furthermore notes that the verb has two
tenses: a present tense and a future tense. He subsequently exemplifies his
present tense by means of the following forms:
wentu-lek
wentu-li
‘I advise’, ‘I advised’
‘he advises’, ‘he advised’, ‘it is advised’
246 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
The forms show that what the author calls a ‘present tense’ includes an imperfective aspect, rather than a present tense, a perfective aspect, and a passive
voice. Since the author considers this tense to be a counterpart of the future
tense, the term ‘non-future’ tense would be a better appellation to refer to the
so-called present tense.
As regards the future tense, the grammarian remarks that it has irregular
forms and that it has a first person dual:
regular:
kalo-tik
‘I shall cook’
< kalo- ‘(to) cook’
irregular:
noteð-tik
first person dual:
kalo-a
‘the two of us will cook’
noto-a
‘the two of us will do/make
‘I shall do/make’
< noto- ‘(to) do/make’
Note that the first person dual is regularly formed, and that a first person inclusive is constructed with the plural marker -wa: kalo-a-wa ‘we all will cook’,
noto-a-wa ‘we all will do/ make’.
4.2 Lexical items
The different world and the exotic cultures the colonizers became acquainted with
when they entered the Americas, are clearly represented in their dictionaries.
There we can find Spanish periphrases describing Amerindian animals, plants,
clothes, etc. A number of these items, for which the Spaniards did not have an
equivalent, were adopted as loan words, cf. ‘jaguar’ < Guaraní yawar-ete (dog-real
‘the real dog’), ‘tomato’ < Nahuatl (Aztec) toma-tl, ‘poncho’ < Q punču.
In the trilingual Spanish-Quechua-Jebero vocabulary, a great number of entries refer to the living conditions of the Jebero people. Many of these concepts
concern the flora and fauna of the Jebero habitat and its surroundings. Since
these items do not have a Spanish equivalent, they are often translated by
means of a periphrasis, a borrowing from Quechua, or a surrogate concept.
Items referring to the indigenous flora are often followed by the words fruta
‘fruit’ to emphasise that the item at issue is a fruit:
Q sapalla, fruta
ku
‘avocado’
batata, Q kumar, fruta
aču
‘sweet potato’
cascabel, fruta
sangamupi
‘small bell’
(cascabel means ‘small bell’ and ‘rattlesnake’ in Spanish. The fruit indicated as
such possibly resembles a bell.)
Examples of transcultural processes | 247
fruta como granos,
miedo
por esso las chagiras dizen ‘miedó’
Q ungurawi, fruta
señala
‘fruit like grain’
therefore the farmers call it ‘miedó’
‘a kind of tuber’
The name of a tree is also often followed by the designation arbol ‘tree’ to indicate that it concerns a tree:
balsamo, arbol
Q wito, arbol
estoraque, el arbol
čunalatek
öksá
söt-teala
balsa, el arbol
sapote, arbol
subuna
táku
Q sitika, arbol
mankóna
‘balm’
‘kind of fig’
‘storax’
(used for its balsam and resin)
‘balsa tree’
‘sapota’ (produces edible fruits
and Shea butter)
‘mustard tree’
Names of animals also occur numerously in the vocabulary. They are occasionally followed by the designation animal ‘animal’. The names of fishes, on the
other hand, are often indicated as such and followed by the specification pexe
(pez or pescado in modern Spanish) ‘fish’:
Q maxas, animal
Q mota, pexe
palmeta, pexe
Q woki chico, pexe
Q sungaro, pexe
dökana
kačameð
ðog
wang’ðtik
‘paca’ (kind of rodent)
‘kind of catfish’
‘kind of fish’
‘kind of small fish’
(chico means ‘small’)
dawansamerð ‘kind of big fish’
Interestingly, the lexicographer also distinguishes different sorts of animals of
the same kind. It gives evidence of how annoying insects can be and of his lively
interest in the indigenous fauna, especially in monkeys:
flies:
snakes:
turtles:
mosca
que entra en los ojos
rodador
culebra
mediana
chiquita
verde
charapa grande
mediana
pequeña
yiyu
dawerla
isekpila
dawa
tandeŋmowa
siwa
asinluntowalek
puka, ítu
mapápa
dameðöta
‘fly’
‘fly that enters the eyes’
‘fly that keeps flying around’
‘snake’
‘medium-sized snake’
‘small snake’
‘green snake’
‘big kind of edible turtle’
‘medium-sized turtle’
‘small turtle’
248 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
monkeys:
mono
ardilla ‘clever’
blanc[o]
negro
felines:
guapo ‘beautiful’
leon, puma, tigre
tigrillo, zorro
tigrillo de noche
duda
solo
lolo
béa
avena, marti
óltiu
châuben
tíqueglóna
mudáni
anas, nini
wasála
‘white-bellied monkey’
‘wooly monkey’
‘kind of howling monkey’
‘clever kind of monkey’
‘white monkey’
‘black monkey’
‘capuchin monkey’
‘beautiful kind of monkey’
‘puma’
‘fox’
‘nocturnal kind of fox’
A few other interesting types of naming animals are:
buytre nocturno
pútek
‘nocturnal vulture’
Q hatun tuta piscu
‘big nocturnal bird’
(the Quechua description of the animal gives evidence that it concerns another
kind of bird rather than a vulture. A kind of owl maybe?)
langosta verde
ingueðla
‘green lobster’
venado, taruga
boró
‘deer’
The following entries are related to the living conditions of the Jebero people,
such as how they fish, hunt, make music, embellish and cloth themselves, what
they drink and which illnesses they may catch:
fishing
and hunting:
feasting:
clothing :
canoa
lanza
flecha
harpon
veneno
barbasco
achiote
bebida
de yucca
de maiz
de platanos
de chonta
flauta
Q anaco
nau
pán-ni
námu
ukwana, yulo
kapálek
punanli, porapalek
lowa
wasu
uglólo
tötöyek
dangúdök
oðapidök
pileðña
kalakasu
manta de
yndios
kapi
‘canoe’
‘spear’
‘arrow’
‘harpoon’
‘poison’
‘kind of poison’
‘red painting’
‘drink’
‘yucca drink’
‘corn liquor’
‘banana drink’
‘kind of palm drink’
‘flute’
‘Indian wraparound
skirt’
‘Indian blanket’
Examples of transcultural processes | 249
deseases:
Q kusma
ahuala kapi
pampanilla
calentura
kalanándek
čukču < Q čukču
de frios
lepra
sarna
l’kulkoto-lek
asi
sala
‘kind of shirt’,
‘small blanket’
‘small head cloth’
‘malaria’,
‘quartan fever’
‘I have a quartan fever’
‘leprosy’
‘scabies’
5 Conclusion: colonial-ideological strategies of
transculturation14 and their impact
When the Europeans, following the tracks of their explorers, colonized South
America, they brought their culture with them, which they subsequently imposed on the Amerindian population. For the transmission of their standards
and values, including their religion, the colonizing countries could also rely
upon the powerful Roman Catholic Church, which soon sent its representatives
and its missionaries to the newly ‘discovered’ territories. Through their works
the missionaries transmitted not only the Catholic faith, but also their European
background, as we have seen, so that their writings became not only the
mouthpiece of the church and a tool of evangelization and, but also a tool of
transculturalization and a mouthpiece of the colonizing country at issue.
The Christian doctrine, for example, the tool of evangelization par excellence, imposes not only what to believe, but also how to believe, and it enforces
a number of rules of life, such as the obligation to attend Mass every Sunday, to
confess, to fast, to marry, to serve the church, and the ban on killing, committing adultery, stealing, lying, being jealous, etc. The impact of these do’s and
don’ts was considerable. They completely changed the social structure and the
way of life of the indigenous people who were leading a free, somewhat nomadic existence in the woods. (For their living they gathered wild fruits, honey and
cotton, they fished, hunted and traded at will or out of necessity, and cultivated
some crops.) The church, whether or not with the aid of the army, gathered
||
14 For appealing examples of transculturation and a typology of transcultural processes see
Zimmermann (2006). He defines the act of transculturalization as “el intento de entender algo
ajeno en terminus de algo propio” ‘the intention to comprehend something exotic or peculiar
in terms of something proper’, and in (Zimmermann 2009: 168) as: “la integración de elementos de una cultura en otra” ‘the integration of elements of a culture in another one’.
250 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
groups of different tribes into reducciones or conversiones: villages with a
church, build and maintained by the indigenous population, where the inhabitants led a Christian lifestyle under the command of a priest, who was also maintained by the natives. The authority of the priest was undeniable. The example
saserdote Dios-maleg xuča demuweto-li ‘The priest forgives our sins for God’
in section 2.1, gives evidence that the clergyman construes himself as a person
with the power of forgiving, and that, by this, he establishes himself as an authoritarian person in the native community. He could also administer justice
and inflict a punishment.15 The housing of indigenous groups in reducciones,
where their life was regulated according to Christian standards, was useful, not
only to the church, but also, from a political viewpoint, to the government:
natives roaming in the jungle could not be controlled, whereas native groups
living in a village supervised by a priest could be governed easily.
Another colonial strategy to impose the Western culture and the Catholic
faith and herewith to control the indigenous people was the strategy of
‘translingualization’, i.e. the use of Spanish words in Amerindian texts, or “the
general term for any influence of one language onto another” (Zimmermann
2014). In his article about Sahagún’s the translation of Aztec texts, Zimmermann
also argues that “the objective of translating the [...] religious sermons from the
Aztec religion, was not to mexicanize the Spanish, i.e. bringing them closer to
the Aztec religion [...] (Zimmermann 2014: 97). It was rather a step in the endeavor to evangelize the Mexicans and control their spirits”, because ‘through
language imposition’, ‘through the transfer of terms from one language to another’, the religious thinking of the user could be controlled. Examples of the
use of Spanish loan words in the Jebero discourse can be found not only in the
Christian doctrine, but also in grammar, where they are integrated in the morphological and morphosyntactical structure of Jebero, as if they are an integrant
part of the language. If we assume that language is a reflection of the way we
think and see the world around us, the Spanish loan words, integrated in the
Jebero discourse and Jebero-like structured, thus seem to be part of the thinking
and the vision of the world of the Jebero.
The vocabularies were also strategies of transmission of colonial-cultural
values, besides being a tool of religious transmission. The dictionaries were not
normative or regulative, they rather gave a “representación mental del mundo”
||
15 Cf. for instance the following phrase in Cholón, another North Peruvian language (Alexander-Bakkerus 2005: 276):
mitah-la-č
či-po-šayč-aŋ
3sO.miss-3pA-FAC
3pA-3pO-whip-IA
‘They whip them because they missed it [the Mass]’
Examples of transcultural processes | 251
‘mental representation of the world’ (Zimmermann 2006: 320). In the SpanishQuechua-Jebero vocabulary, for instance, we can clearly distinguish lemmas
transmitting a Western culture and colonial viewpoints, see the word list ‘bastard – window’ in section 2, from those referring to the Jebero way of life, see
the items in section 4.2. A number of those items are translated by means of an
explicative periphrasis, reflecting a colonial perspective, such as:
bebida
buytre
calenture
cascabel
charapa
culebra
fruta
langosta
manta
mono
mosca
tigrillo
de chonta
oðapidök
de yucca
uglólo
de maiz
tötöyek
de platanos
dangúdök
nocturno
pútek
Q hatun tuta piscu
de frios
čukču < Q čukču
fruta
sangamupi
grande
puka, ítu
mediana
mapápa
pequeña
dameðöta
chiquita
siwa
mediana
tandeŋmowa
verde
asinluntowalek
como granos, por miedo
esso las chagiras dizen ‘miedó’
verde
ingueðla
de yndios
kapi
ardilla ‘clever’
béa
guapo ‘beautiful’ tíqueglóna
blanc[o]
avena, marti
negro
óltiu
que entra en los ojos dawerla
de noche
wasála
‘kind of palm drink’
‘yucca drink’
‘corn liquor’
‘banana drink’
‘nocturnal vulture’
‘big nocturnal bird’
‘malaria’, ‘quartan fever’
‘small bell’
‘big kind of edible turtle’
‘medium-sized turtle’
‘small turtle’
‘small snake’
‘medium-sized snake’
‘green snake’
‘fruit like grain’
therefore the farmers
call it ‘miedó’
‘green lobster’
‘Indian blanket’
‘clever kind of monkey’
‘beautiful kind of monkey’
‘white monkey’
‘black monkey’
‘fly that enters the eyes’
‘nocturnal kind of fox’
In conclusion we can say that by means of religious writings, such as Christian
doctrines, grammars or artes, and dictionaries, the colonizing countries tried to
impose their religion and their standards on the Amerindian society. An attempt
which was not always fruitful. On the other hand, the examples in section 4.1
and 4.2 show that the author of both manuscripts, notwithstanding the fact that
he had a religious end in mind when he wrote them, certainly had an eye for the
particular construction of the Jebero language and its special phenomena, for
252 | Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
the way the Jebero speak and see the world, and, last but not least, for the world
in which they live.
Abbreviations and symbols
A
Add.
ASS
BEN
CAUS
COL
COM
COR
DEL
DES
DU
DUR
EU
FAC
fol.
FREQ
FUT
GEN
GLX
IA
IMP
IN
INS
IT
LOC
Ms.
NEG
agent
additional
assertative marker
benefactive
causative
collective
comitative
coordinator
delative
desiderative
dual
durative
euphonic element
factitive
folio
frequentative
future
genitive
Gramatic dela Lengua Xebera
imperfective aspect
imperative
inessive
instrumental
iterative
locative
manuscript
negation
O
p
PL
POS
POSS
PRON
PST.PRT
Q
QM
QNT
r
RE
REC
REFL
RSTR
s
SEP
SN
Sp.
ST
v
VB
1
2
3
<
>
object
plural
plural marker
possessive
possession marker
pronoun
past participle
Quechua
question marker
quantifier
recto
repetition
reciprocal
reflexive
restrictive
singular
separative
stative nominalizer
Spanish
state marker
verso
verbalizer
first person (subject)
second person (subject)
third person (subject)
derived from
resulting in
Examples of transcultural processes | 253
References
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Anonymous (18th century). Vocabulario enla Lengua Castellana, la del Ynga, y Xebera. Ms.
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Anonymous (18th century). Doctrina Christiana and Gramatica dela Lengua Xebera, Ms. Add.
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Ramón Arzápalo Marín & Thomas C. Smith-Clark (eds.), Missionary linguistics IV, lexicography, 3–82. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Zimmermann, Klaus. 1997. Introducción. Apuntes para la historia de la lingüística de las
lenguas amerindias. In Klaus Zimmermann (ed.), La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial, 9–17. Frankfurt am Main & Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana.
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