Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics 9783110403169, 9783110360486

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Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics

Koloniale und Postkoloniale Linguistik Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics Edited by Stefan Engelberg, Peter Mühlhäuser, Doris Stolberg, Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke

Volume 5

Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics

Edited by Klaus Zimmermann and Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein

ISBN 978-3-11-036048-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-040316-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-040320-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/München/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Preface | vii Part 1: General aspects  Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke  From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 3 Part 2: Africa  Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette  Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 29 Susanne Hackmack  Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 51 Susana Castillo-Rodríguez  The first missionary linguistics in Fernando Po | 75 Martina Anissa Strommer  Imagined communities, invented tribe? | 107 Stefan Castelli  Pre-colonial language policy of the Rhenish Mission Society perceived as the type of Gustav Warneck’s mission doctrine? | 129 Cécile Van den Avenne  Reducing languages to writing | 155 Part 3: America  Catherine Fountain  Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation in the missionary representation of Nahuatl | 177

vi | Contents Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca  Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions in the surroundings of the Viceroyalty of New Granada | 199 Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus  Examples of transcultural processes in two colonial linguistic documents on Jebero (Peru) | 231 Index of Persons (including authors) | 255 Index of Languages | 261 Index of Subjects | 263

Preface The contributions of this book derive from the Seventh Conference on Missionary Linguistics, organized by Klaus Zimmermann in cooperation with Otto Zwartjes and Martina Schrader-Kniffki at the University of Bremen from 28 of February to 2 of March 2012. This conference had two different topics: Colonial aspects of (Missionary) Linguistics and Translation in Missionary Linguistics. Relating to them two separate books have appeared, the present volume and another one, dedicated mainly to linguistic aspects of translation (Zwartjes et al. 2014). The present volume contains those contributions that focus on the relationship of missionaries, Missionary Linguistics (not only translation) and the colonial administration within the general colonial context. The colonial reality of Missionary Linguistics is an evident aspect, but often neglected in the Historiography of Missionary Linguistics up to today as most researchers focused mainly on linguistic issues. Only a few scholars had treated the relationship of missionary linguistics and colonialism (see, for example, the essay of Walter Mignolo 1992, some contributions in the volume edited by Klaus Zimmermann in 1997 and Joseph Errington 2008). We think, that colonialism is not only a general historical framework for missionary linguistic activities but has it’s incursions in language description and language politics undertaken by missionaries. Their description of languages was not appointed for scientific knowledge but was a type of Applied Linguistics with the goal of teaching languages to the succeeding missionaries in order to impose a (religious) ideology to people of other cultures which was an important part of the European colonialism. This can be seen in that even some missionaries claimed it more or less overtly, yet crystallized in the Spanish colonial era in the term “spiritual conquest”. Insofar it was always a political affair. In our opinion a more detailed analysis of the relationship between the military, political, social and the religious colonial (missionary) aspects deserves more attention, in particular if the huge amount of missionary works is considered. Not only writing systems but also grammar-writing, lexicography and the writing of religious texts (often in bilingual editions) cannot be studied independently of the context, even if we consider that the goals of the political colonial domination and the religious colonial domination were not always coinciding. Often, too, missionaries collaborated with the secular administration providing important information about the culture of the people and the natural environment where they are proselytizing. Evangelization (and other cases of expanding of religion, like the Islamization) depend deeply and form part of colonial domination. Without previous

viii | Preface military conquest, robbery of land, and the following political subjugation, Christianization in the Americas, Subsaharian Africa and the Philippines would not have existed in early periods of colonization. There are different kinds of colonialism as well as different kinds of Christian mission and therefore different relationships between them. Sometimes the same people were object of two colonizing powers, different varieties of Christianity with different missionary language politics (as for example in Equatorial Guinea). In Japan and China the intention of Christianization by Spanish and Portuguese existed (and Missionary Linguistics, too) but interestingly this goal didn’t have such a successful end like in the Americas or Philippines because these former countries were not conquered but object of missionary (and missionary linguistic) activities. The conquest of Subsaharian Africa took place very early, but was limited mainly to the coastal areas. Africans were not considered full human beings and therefore no or only little efforts were made to evangelize these people by Portuguese and Spanish missionaries. Only one missionary grammar of a Bantu language in Angola is known up today. Likewise British colonialists and Anglican Church didn’t undertake intentions of proselytism in the conquered territories (but British Jesuits did so, for example in India). Only in the second period of colonization (the 19th century) of Africa and the Austronesian Islands by British, French and Germans emerged missionary activities and missionary linguistics. Since that time members of the administrative section carried out linguistic descriptions, too. One of the main tasks of missionary and colonial linguistics consisted in creating a writing system for these languages because most of them were oral cultures. This was not the case in China and Japan, cultures which possessed a high developed logographical system, as well as India where moreover existed a tradition of language analysis concerning Sanskrit. In Mexico existed an emerging pictogrammatical technique but missionaries didn’t use it for their goals (only one attempt developed by the Franciscan Friar Jocobo de Testera is known to create a Christian pictographical system). Christianization and the description of languages by missionaries or others historically occurred always, with some exceptions like Namibia (see Strommer, in this volume), under the protection and often in collaboration with the political and military colonial power. This doesn’t mean that all activities of both sides were in accordance. In the Spanish and Portuguese colonial Empire existed different opinions in how to treat the conquered natives and what to do with their languages (to use them for evangelization or to annihilate them) but these were differences within the shared common goal of colonial domination. In Paraguay the Jesuits did even both: they established a type of state under their governmental rule.

Preface | ix

This book gives some examples of the relationship between missionary colonial linguistics and non missionary colonial linguistics and the overall colonial condition of these activities. The examples are from different colonial powers, periods and languages. We do not aspire to exhaustivity since the sample depends on what researchers had offered in the conference; but it presents some examples of how the relationship was working, how to analyze it and that it is worthwhile to look for the marks of this relationship which are not easy to detect because they are often hidden in the texts. As such the book is also a call to engage more in this thematic domain. In a theory-oriented contribution Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke discuss the relationship of colonialism, colonial language description and missionary linguistics. They focus on German colonialism by way of reviewing the linguistic descriptions of German missionaries and other scholars from the late 19th century. The part dedicated to Africa is initiated by two studies on Swahili which invite to a comparison. Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette treat French descriptions of the grammar of Swahili. They deal on the one hand with the connection between linguistic description and missionary and colonial intended effects and on the other they show the transfer of European linguistic categories onto an African language. Referring to the same language and problem Susanne Hackmack illustrates the application of the category of case to Swahili by German linguists during colonial times. This work is an example of an application of a linguistic category to a language that does not have this category. At the same time, Hackmack offers an explanation for this seemingly eurocentric perspective by considering the wider linguistic theory of the times. Susana Castillo-Rodríguez explores the missionary production on Kruman and Bube languages spoken in Fernando Po (now Bioko) at the beginning of the 19th century, where competing colonial language policies and missionary linguistic notions (Great Britain and Spain, Protestant and Catholic) were employed on the same territory. On the basis of rich material she shows the differences. The next two studies treat the same region, and even the same missionary society. Martina Anissa Strommer describes how employees of the Rhenish Mission Society in South West Africa (now Namibia) championed the expansion and development of the Herero vocabulary and the standardization of this language, in order to create a symbol of identity for the decentralized Bantuspeaking society in order to unite the people. Stefan Castelli evaluates previously unexplored handwritten archival material (accounts of deputation conferences, letters, diaries) which clarifies Rhenish Mission Societies (RMS) official instructions regarding language policy and examines missionaries trials of its implementation in South-West Africa. His treatise at hand shows that the

x | Preface language policy of the RMS in pre-colonial South-West Africa can be identified as the prefiguration of the mission doctrine holt by mission scientist Gustav Warneck. Cécile Van den Avenne investigates grammars and dictionaries of Bamana from the French colonial period. She shows that different colonial agencies, namely missionaries on the one hand and members of the military on the other hand, had different interests and therefore developed divergent ideas on language planning, namely concerning strategies to create a writing system (graphization) for this West African lingua franca. The following three contributions are dedicated to the Spanish colonial rule in Iberoamerica. Catherine Fountain deals with descriptions of Nahuatl carried out by missionaries from the colony of New Spain. They reveal an increasing identification with the language, which is considered part of transculturation and appropriation of languages. Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca address the cooperation and mutual support of colonial administrators and missionaries in order to interchange knowledge about culture and nature of New Granada, now Colombia, in the last decades of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They also show how the missionaries had to start collaborating with the crown in the new policy of colonial expansion and increasing of knowledge that characterizes the Enlightenment. Finally Astrid AlexanderBakkerus analyzes manuscripts (a catechism, a vocabulary and a grammar) of a Jesuit missionary on Jebero, a barely researched, now extinct language of Peru, which fell victim to colonialism. In addition to the description of purely linguistic aspects, she deals also with the clash of incompatible world views and the colonial perspective included in the description of language. We thank the editors of Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics to offer their series for the publication of these contributions. Bremen and Wuppertal, Juli 2014 Klaus Zimmermann & Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein

References Errington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a colonial world: A story of language, meaning, and power. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Mignolo, Walter. 1992. On the colonization of Amerindian languages and memories: Renaissance theories of writing and the discontinuity of the classical tradition. Comparative Studies in Society and History 34(2). 301–330. Zimmermann, Klaus (ed.) 1997. La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Zwartjes, Otto, Klaus Zimmermann & Martina Schrader-Kniffki (eds.) 2014. Missionary linguistics V: Translation theories and practices. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

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Part 1: General aspects

Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics Abstract: This study addresses the issue of telling Missionary Linguistics and Colonial Linguistics apart. It is argued that the two approaches complement each other (with an area of overlap). Their differences are highlighted and their similarities are identified. A case-study sheds light on the succession of linguists of Chamorro in the first half of the 20th century, which can be understood as an example of the transition from linguistics dominated by missionaries to linguistics conducted by lay persons. In the conclusion, suggestions are made as to future cooperation of Missionary Linguistics and Colonial Linguistics. Keywords: missionary linguistics, colonial linguistics, postcolonial linguistics, history of linguistics || Thomas Stolz: Universität Bremen, Fachbereich 10: Linguistik, Bremen, GERMANY, [email protected] Ingo H. Warnke: Universität Bremen, Fachbereich 10: Germanistik, Bremen, GERMANY, [email protected]

1 Introduction Simplifying, Missionary Linguistics (henceforth ML) and Colonial Linguistics (henceforth CL) are two research programs which investigate aspects connected to the relation of colonialism1 and language. One might ask whether or not the two approaches are doing the same under different names, in a manner of speaking. To disprove this suspicion, this study is meant to demonstrate that ML and CL are neither aliases nor competitors of each other. Much rather, the complex object of study of Colonial Studies in a context of global history opens up various linguistic perspectives which ML and CL bring into view.

|| 1 CL operates on the basis of a prototype concept of colonialism which reflects the patterns of the First and Second Imperialism with a European metropolis and territories on other continents which are ruled by the metropolis. The prototype also covers US-American and Japanese colonialism because of its resemblance to that of European colonial powers.

4 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke For a start a look at the Deutsche Kolonial-Lexikon is enlightening in this respect. For this encyclopedia of German colonialism, the renowned specialist of African languages Carl Meinhof (1920b: 387) provides the entry on languages (headword Sprachen). The first two sentences of his sketch run as follows: Die Zahl der Eingeborenen-S[prachen] in den deutschen Kolonien ist sehr groß. Noch immer sind sie nicht sämtlich bekannt, obwohl Missionare, Beamte und Gelehrte eifrig an ihrer Erforschung arbeiten.2

Not only does this quote tell the reader that at the end of the German colonial epoch the knowledge about the linguistic diversity of Germany’s colonial empire was incomplete but it also states explicitly that several professional groups were involved in the exploration of the languages in the so-called Schutzgebiete (i.e. protectorates – a euphemism3). According to the order in which these groups are enumerated in the above lexicon entry, missionaries seem to have the biggest share of the linguistically relevant activities in the colonies. However, the missionary-linguists do not possess the monopoly of investigating the indigenous languages of the territories under German rule in Africa, Oceania and Asia. Meinhof mentions civil servants and scholars as fellow-linguists of the missionaries. Thus, the descriptive linguistics of the autochthonous languages in the German colonies before 1920 can no longer be subsumed under the umbrellacategory of ML because a noticeable number of linguists of the times did not belong to any missionary society or religious order. We assume that the examination, perception and description of the colonial language situation – not least also marginal notes on languages in the colonies – are not bound to a specific group but run through the overall colonial discourse. From a colonial-linguistic perspective, what comes into view alongside the missionaries is a broad field of colonial actors: various scholars, participants of expeditions, colonial pioneers, family members of missionaries, members of the military, administrators, tradespeople, journalists, diplomats, lawyers, physicians etc. who published in a broad spectrum of text types, among them scholarly treatises, descriptions of landscape and peoples, biographies, traveler’s accounts, colonial-political programs, in handbooks, dictionaries, in war reports, letters, protocols, and so on. This is the point

|| 2 [The number of indigenous languages in the German colonies is immense. They are not known in their entirety yet, although missionaries, civil servants and scholars diligently contribute to their investigation]. Our translation. 3 In this article, the term colony is employed indiscriminately for all kinds of overseas dependencies independent of their official status (e.g. colony, dominion, protectorate, viceroyalty, non-integrated territory, trust territory, etc.).

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 5

of departure for the subsequent discussion of the commonalities and differences of the research programs of ML and CL. The frame of reference for ML is defined by the two groundbreaking articles by Hovdhaugen (1996a) and Zimmermann (2004), whose ideas are compared to those which are constitutive of CL as proposed in Warnke (2009a), Stolz et al. (2011a) and Dewein et al. (2012). According to Zimmermann (2004: 8–12), ML is a social construct – not a natural object. Unsurprisingly, the same holds true of CL, the scope of which has been defined consensually by a group of ten linguists from different academic institutions in Germany and Australia (Dewein et al. 2012). We assume that the shared object of Colonialism in ML and CL presents a specific scholarly perspective. Although colonialism denotes a factual historical constellation, this does not mean that phenomena inside this constellation should necessarily be described as colonial. If one chooses to do so, the social character of the colonial concept should be emphasized. It stretches far beyond economic and power interests and impacts on numerous spheres of life. As a consequence, ML as well as CL do not deal with natural-language phenomena and their linguistic analysis, but rather with a specific perspective on language in colonial contexts.4 Since both ML and CL, thus, are not self-evident, the soundness of the delimitation of their areas of interest can only be put to the test by applying the criterion of viability. In the case in hand this means that the raison d’être of a given approach is confirmed if it allows for innovative and significant insights which trigger new research questions for the future. As will become clear in between the lines of what follows, both ML and CL meet the viability criterion. Since the authors are proponents of CL the focus is on the characteristic traits which distinguish their research program from that of ML. At the same time, we emphasize once more that both linguistic programs focus on comparable objects. CL and ML hence can be seen with respect to shared research interests. For practical reasons, the differences of the two approaches to the relationship of language and colonialism are discussed mainly with reference to the German colonial empire. The German colonial empire is a case-study. Its investigation may yield results which allow generalization over other colonial empires as well. Space restrictions preclude the discussion of many interesting aspects so that the presentation cannot claim to be exhaustive. The historical background of the colonialisms under scrutiny is taken for granted. As to the chronology and facts of || 4 We emphasize that CL and ML should not be mistaken to refer to the linguistic practice of colonial times and/or of missionaries. The object of CL and ML is what Zimmermann (2004) calls the history of ML (and, accordingly, of CL). Cf. below.

6 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke the colonial period of Imperial Germany, the reader is referred to Speitkamp (2006) and Conrad (2008). This study is organized as follows. In section 2, it is shown that the work of missionary-linguists is by no mean coextensive with the pre-1945 linguistics of indigenous languages of territories under the colonial tutelage of foreign powers. Section 3 poses the question whether or not CL is ML only without missionaries by way of discussing a selection of properties which distinguish CL from ML. Conclusions are drawn in section 4.

2 Shift in focus A number of contributions dedicated to the work of missionary-linguists in British and French colonies in Zwartjes & Hovdhaugen (2004), the typical study carried out within the framework of ML focuses on the linguistic activities of missionaries who devoted their time and energy to describing the indigenous languages of the overseas possessions (predominantly) of the two Iberian colonial powers Spain and Portugal (Zimmermann 2004: 12–13). Thus, the linguistic achievements of a narrowly defined group of agents are addressed. It is certainly true that during the First European Imperialism (late 15th to early 19th century), missionaries were the driving force behind the vast majority of the descriptive linguistic projects conducted throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empire – and also beyond the boundaries of these. In the German colonies, too, missionaries were responsible for the most sizable segment of the linguistic tasks to be tackled. Speitkamp (2006: 97–102) emphasizes the role of the missions in the realm of education in the German colonies whereas Orosz (2008: 67–132) discusses the intricacies of German language policy in Cameroon during the era of the so-called Kulturkampf, when the dominance of the Church in the German school-system was systematically curtailed by the state while missionaries were largely left in charge of education in the colonies. This also had a bearing on the promotion of certain indigenous languages to the rank of school languages. This concept is not only in effect in Africa. Even though German colonialism takes different forms and representations in Africa and the Pacific territories – the former German dependency of Kiautschou, by the way, plays a special role – there is evidence for the significance of missionaries also for the Southwestern Pacific Ocean: Stolberg (2011) describes the conflicts between Protestant and Catholic missionaries on Nauru – since 1968 an independent republic – and their repercussions for the codification of the Nauru language. However, missionaries hardly ever formed the sole group of people who took an interest in the languages of the territories which had been conquered or ac-

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 7

quired in other ways by European powers. The first and with 67 items rather short wordlist of the Chamorro language of the Marianas, for instance, was compiled by the Spanish sailor Estebán Rodríguez in 1565 (Quilis 1988, Rodríguez-Ponga 2013) who definitely was not a member of the clergy. Admittedly, there is no statistics as to the share lay persons had in the early linguistic work dedicated to the indigenous languages of the European colonies.5 This is particularly so if one does not limit an interest in languages to systematic analysis but includes marginal notes and evaluations of colonial languages. Nevertheless, it is a fair guess that the vast majority of the activities prior to 1900 go to the credit of missionaries. At the turn of the 20th century, however, the erstwhile almost uncontested predominance of missionary-linguists is challenged seriously. We consider this as an interesting shift in focus for the history of linguistics as well as lay linguistics. This can be demonstrated in connection with the Mariana Islands and their changeful history.6 Table 1 surveys the succession of linguists who have written in and/or on the Chamorro language from the time of the Christianization in the mid-17th century to the end of World War II. The description of missionary and lay-linguistic descriptions of Chamorro shows the whole history of colonialism of the Mariana Islands. This clearly provides evidence for the fact that an analysis of the colonial diversity of languages should not be considered a sideline of the colonial project but an integral part of the global power structures overseas. Table 1: Chronology of early linguists working on Chamorro 17th century 19th century ML Spanish

Sanvitores

1900–1914

1915–1920

Ibáñez del Cármen

1921–1945 De Vera

Palomo German CL German American Dutch Japanese

Lopinot Chamisso

Fritz Safford

Costenoble von Preissig Hornbostel Kats Matsuoko Inouî

|| 5 For the early 19th century Gilmour (2006: 2) mentions “travellers, explorers, mariners, colonists, colonial officials, missionaries, ethnographers, anthropologists, philologists” as protagonists of linguistic activities in the European colonies. 6 The necessary background information on the history of the Marianas can be gathered from Hardach (1990) for the German period on the Northern Marianas, Farell (1991) for the Japanese trusteeship of the Northern Marianas and Rogers (1995) for the Spanish and American period (with focus on Guam).

8 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke Grey shading indicates the absence of linguists with a missionary or lay background. Names which are underlined belong to linguists who are remarkable for reasons to be explained below. The dotted line separates the earlier Spanish period from that of the new colonial powers, viz. the USA, Germany and Japan. The double line indicates the decisive break in the activities of missionarylinguists – the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent expulsion of the Capuchins from the Northern Marianas (Forbes 2007: 42–43). Discounting the comparative wordlists compiled by Adelbert von Chamisso in 1817 (Stolz 2011c: 202–205), before 1900, the (quantitatively not very impressive) linguistic activities on the Marianas were exclusively in the hand of Spanish missionaries (Albalá 2002). Apart from the early grammar-cum-catechism by Sanvitores dating back to 16687, the Spanish contribution comprises a Spanish grammar in Chamorro and a Spanish-Chamorro dictionary as well as two bilingual booklets on religious issues, all of which go to the credit of Aniceto Ibáñez del Cármen (Stolz 2011b, Zimmermann 2011).8 The Spanish-American War of 1898, with the loss of Guam to the victorious USA and the subsequent sellout of Spain’s remaining island possessions in Micronesia to Imperial Germany in 1899, not only put an end to the Spanish rule but also shook the foundations of the missionaries’ dominance in the realm of language-related matters.9 On the American side, Lt. William Edwin Safford of the US Navy acted as aide of the first US governor of Guam for the period of 12 months (August 1899 to August 1900) (Rogers 1995: 117–123) and authored the first grammar of Chamorro that ever appeared in print – first published in 1903– 1905 in the American Anthropologist and republished as a book in 1909 (Stolz 2011a: 207–210). This means that a military officer who was working for the administration of the island accomplished a major linguistic feat on the side. For the German Empire, Bezirksamtmann (i.e. district administrator) Georg Fritz achieved a similar success with his grammatical sketch of Chamorro and a Chamorro-German dictionary published in 1903 and 1904/1908, respectively (Stolz 2011a: 205–214, Schuster 2013). Fritz was a civil servant who was averse to || 7 Sanvitores’ work remained unpublished for well over 280 years until Burrus (1954) edited part of it in a journal article. A full-blown edition with linguistic annotations is currently being prepared (Winkler 2013). 8 Recently, Forbes (2009a) has edited four previously unpublished Chamorro sermons by Aniceto Ibáñez del Cármen dating back to the 1870s. 9 José Palomo – a Chamorro priest – is an important link between the era of the missionarylinguists and the period of linguistically active lay persons. His own linguistic work has remained unpublished but it can be shown that it has influenced the writings of several of the linguists working in the early 20th century (Stolz 2012: 23, 32ff., 43–44).

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 9

the presence of missionaries on the islands for which he was responsible. A conflict arose especially with the Capuchin Callistus Lopinot so that the latter had to be removed from Saipan in order to avoid serious political consequences (Forbes 2007: 14–18). Thus, Fritz was definitely not a missionary-linguist. He even fought against missionary-linguists. Put differently, there was a situation of competition of linguists who were associated with the Church and those who were not. This is an example for the fact that there is a disagreement among the colonizers with regards to their language interests, that is, language itself becomes a controversial object on manifold levels. This does not merely pertain to the differentiation between laypersons and missionaries but extends to dimensions of language politics, as shown by Calvet already in the early 1970s. World War I delivered a severe blow to the linguistic activities of the Capuchins in the Marianas as the Japanese military administration repatriated the German missionaries in 1916. Corbinian Madre was the last to leave the islands in 1919 (Forbes 2007: 42–43). In the same period the Dutch scholar Kats (1917) published his grammar of Chamorro which is entirely dependent on the writings of Safford and Fritz, meaning: this is the first purely academic treatise of Chamorro written by a linguist who never had any personal experience with native speakers of the language. Independent of the doubtful quality of Kats’s Chamorro grammar (Stolz 2011c: 219–222), his monograph marks the discovery of Chamorro as a proper research object whereas prior to Kats (1917), the occupation with the language was overwhelmingly descriptive and had a practical goal, namely that of allowing American and German agents to learn the language of their new colony.10 Von Preissig (1918) – Chief Pay Clerk of the U.S. Navy – compiled the first Chamorro-English dictionary for which Safford (1909: vi) had “not found the time to carry out this plan.” During the interwar years and the beginnings of World War II, Japanese scholars like Matsuoko (1926) and Izouî (1940) took an interest in Chamorro – one of the languages of the Micronesian Trust Territory the League of Nations had given to Japan. Hermann Costenoble, a son of the first German family to settle in the Marianas, styled himself as an amateur-philologist. He is the author of the hitherto most comprehensive grammar of Chamorro published in 1940, i.e. more than 25 years after the author had left the Marianas (Stolz et al. 2011c). A dictionary manuscript of Costenoble’s is currently prepared for an annotated edition (Dewein 2013). Costenoble’s sister Gertrude Hornbostel (née Costenoble) married an American naval officer together with whom she conducted anthro|| 10 In passing, Safford, Fritz and Lopinot address the controversial issue of the academic or practical character of their work (Stolz 2011a).

10 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke pological research in the Marianas after World War I. Her linguistically important field-notes have been made use of not only by her brother but also other students of Chamorro for their own publications (Vossmann 2011). It can be shown that there is a network of relations which interconnects most of the students of Chamorro mentioned above. Several of them were familiar with the published material from the Spanish period and had access to the manuscripts of José Palomo. Moreover, authors nonchalantly copied the work of their predecessors and contemporaries – the notable exception being Lopinot (1910) who passed tacitly over the existence of prior work by his political adversary Georg Fritz (Stolz 2011a, 2012). This situation can be understood as a period of transition during which linguists from outside the religious orders largely replaced missionary-linguists. This does not mean that there were no linguistic activities of missionaries after 1914. The Basque priest Román de Vera worked from 1915–1941 on Guam and published extensively in and on Chamorro (among other things a ChamorroSpanish dictionary in 1932 to complement the old Spanish-Chamorro dictionary by Ibáñez del Cármen published in 1865) (Forbes 2009b). However, already at this time, the contribution of missionaries covered only a segment of those works which were dedicated to the study of Chamorro. It is evident that, starting with the year 1900, the linguistic monopoly of the missionaries definitely belonged to the past. Not least because of World War I, there is a shift in perspectives on the colonial territories away from the task of culturation and Christianization to questions of the consolidation of power, the securing of spheres of influence in global trade competition. Linguistics is part of a powerful network of actors and changing influences. Owing to its self-imposed preoccupation with missionaries, the historiography of ML (henceforth HML) cannot take account of those developments in the linguistics of the indigenous languages of colonial territories which are connected to the activities of lay persons.11 The concept of ML by definition focuses on the domain of the clergy that was highly influential in the early, mostly Spanish and Portuguese expansion of power but which lost influence at a time of industrialization and globalization. If, for instance, one intends to better understand how the world view of modern linguistics has been shaped by the evaluation of data from indigenous languages of the colonies and how the evaluation process was constrained by || 11 As it seems, lay persons only played a marginal role (if at all) in the Iberian colonial empires and thus the focus of ML on missionaries reflects the absence of a competing group of linguistically active laymen.

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 11

preconceived ideas about these languages, one cannot make do with looking at what the missionary-linguists had (and still have) to say. This is a strong motive for creating a separate research program and more precisely that of CL. It may be argued that CL is a kind of ML in camouflage since the only difference manifests itself in the removal of the restrictions over the professional background of the linguists whose activities are to be scrutinized. Section 3 proves this assumption wrong.

3 On differences At this point a terminological clarification is called for. Zimmermann (2004: 12– 13 and 26–28) distinguishes two concepts, namely on the one hand ML in the strict sense and on the other HML. Proper ML comprises all linguistically relevant activities of missionaries in European overseas possessions including all socio-cultural, technical and sundry aspects which affect these activities. Were it not for the focus on missionaries, this domain would correspond exactly to that of CL as defined by Errington (2001). HML involves the critical retrospective appraisal of ML and of its influence on the development of linguistics as an academic discipline in general. The proponents of CL (Dewein et al. 2012) also assume a division into two categories which runs superficially along the lines determined by Zimmermann (2004). The approaches agree insofar as the linguistically relevant activities as such have to be kept apart from the meta-level which is their theory-oriented evaluation. The label CL is reserved for the latter whereas the linguistic handiwork carried out under the conditions of colonialism is rubricated kolonialzeitliche Sprachforschung, i.e. language studies in colonial times. The differences are not only terminological. CL is not called historiography of CL (in analogy to HML) for the simple reason that the history of linguistic thought and practice is only one among the many facets of CL albeit a very important one. In section 3.1, the domain of HML is briefly reviewed and compared to that of CL.

3.1 To-do-lists Zimmermann (2004: 26–28) provides a systematic synopsis of the tasks that HML has to face. He identifies eleven categories (with a number of subcategories which are skipped here for reasons of space):

12 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11)

Edition of linguistically relevant texts Evaluation of the findings of ML Pictographic texts Methodology and training Theory (linguistics and translation studies) Metalinguistic elements in non-linguistic texts (by lay persons!) Exchange of ideas (schools of thought) Creation of norms for indigenous languages Influence of ML on the development of linguistic thought Periodization Contrastive studies: contemporary ML

Practically all of these areas of research are also valid for CL without however exhausting its domain.12 This is easily explained because the two approaches start from different premises. According to the programmatic papers by Hovdhaugen (1996) and Zimmermann (2004), ML can be understood as a distinct research program within the wider framework of the historiography of linguistics. In this sense, ML is largely a “monodisciplinary” project which aims at determining the impact the linguistic work of missionaries has had on the development of linguistics in general. To this end, a wide variety of issues have to be addressed although the order in which the topics are featured in the above list is indicative of an implicit hierarchy. As a matter of fact, the four volumes which document the first five conferences dedicated to ML are heavily biased towards #2, i.e. the descriptivelinguistic achievements or failures of missionary-linguists on the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon (Zwartjes & Hovdhaugen 2004, Zwartjes & Altman 2005, Zwartjes et al. 2007, Zwartjes et al. 2009). CL investigates the same aspects thoroughly which can be gathered from the publications by Hennig (2009), Dewein (2011), Hackmack (2012), Stolz (2012, 2013) and Klein (2013), among others. In contrast to ML, however, CL – which is a newcomer to the academic landscape in comparison to ML – looks at the connections of language and colonialism from a much wider perspective, which owes considerably to the pioneering work by Louis-Jean Calvet (2002 [originally

|| 12 #3 is a potential exception to the assumed compatibility as proper pictographic traditions seem to be absent from the (German) colonies. However, there are indigenous writing systems as well as adaptations of Arabic script (Jungraithmayr & Möhlig 1983: 213) which could be considered cases suitable for task #3.

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 13

published in 1974])13 and Errington (2008). Two recent monographs study the linguistic aspects of British colonialism in South Africa in the 19th century (Gilmour 2006) and in India at the turn of the 19th century (Steadman-Jones 2007). Both of these investigations demonstrate clearly that the acts, thoughts and achievements of the linguists working on Bantu languages and Hindustani cannot be understood without taking into account a huge variety of factors many of which are non-linguistic.14 The colonial situation and the linguistic work are interwoven with each other. Trying to do justice to this constellation is tantamount to adopting a “multidisciplinary” view of things because language and colonialism have equal rights in CL whereas for ML, the colonial period provides the historical background of the activities of the missionary, meaning: with the exception of Zimmermann’s œuvre, colonialism as such is not in the scope of the majority of the proponents of ML. CL differs from ML in that CL counts among its tasks (ideally) the entire range of phenomena which interconnect language and colonialism, most of which are irrelevant for the goals of ML. Colonialism in CL therefore is no background phenomenon for an interest in languages but a precondition for linguistic constellations, from language contact through to language politics and finally language analysis and documentation. Zimmermann’s above synopsis also contains numerous references to publications which are representative of the ML-minded studies carried out in the eleven categories. The number of references is impressive and corroborates that ML is thriving. In analogy to this practice, the following selective survey of further topics addressed by CL contains references to publications which are representative of the activities of the Forschungsgruppe Koloniallinguistik (Dewein et al. 2012) and associates. Note that the subsequent paragraphs do not exhaust by any means the full range of subject matters to be studied by adherents to CL. If one asks the question what effects colonialism can have on languages and which functions language-based communication can have for the emergence of colonial ideologies, what comes to mind first is language contact and the full array of contact-induced processes. There is overt borrowing of lexical items either from German into the indigenous languages of the colonies (Stolberg 2012: 155–157) or of alloglott languages into German (Kellermeier-Rehbein || 13 Calvet’s seminal study investigates the linguistic side of French colonialism. His approach covers both internal and external colonialism whereas, at least for the time being, CL explores exclusively cases of external colonialism. 14 That this is necessary has been emphasized by Zimmermann in his opening speech “Lo colonial en la lingüística. ¿Hay rasgos visibles o detectables?” on occasion of the 7th Conference on Missionary Linguistics (28 February–2 March 2012, Bremen/Germany).

14 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke 2012). In Namibia – the former Deutsch-Südwestafrika – a distinct native variety of German has developed which bears the mark of its multilingual surroundings (Kellermeier-Rehbein 2012). Mühlhäusler (2012) discusses the genesis of a German-based pidgin in Deutsch-Neuguinea, the northern half of modern Papua New Guinea. An example of the existence of a contact-variety based on an indigenous language is Ndjobi-Ewondo which developed in Cameroon during the German period (Nyada 2009). In connection to the problem of collecting data which give testimony of colonial language contacts, Engelberg et al. (2012) and Engelberg (2012) make important observations which are of relevance also beyond CL. Typically language contact presupposes the coexistence of languages in a circumscribed area, be it temporarily or permanently. This coexistence may lead to language conflicts which the authorities might want to overcome via the application of language policy. Among other things, language policy can have a bearing on the use of the colonizers’ language in school – as e.g. German in Micronesia (Stolberg 2012) or on the promotion of certain indigenous languages to the status of school-language – like Ewe in Togoland (Speitkamp 2006: 100).15 The legal regulations as such and their application are also of great interest. The creation of artificial pidgins like Kolonial-Deutsch (Schwörer 1916, Mühleisen 2009) to preclude the use of the languages of competing colonial powers can be classified among the language-political measures (although the project never came to be realized). In addition, the naming practice for instance in the realm of geonyms is tightly connected to language-political issues as the German authorities had the power to impose (new official) place names (and to replace previous ones).16 Naming activities may be understood in particular as an expression of colonial claims to power. Place-making through language is an effective tool of nomination. A very valuable pilot study on the onomastics in the German colony Kamerun is provided by Weber (2012). Mühlhäusler (2001: 256–258) summarizes the situation for the German possessions in Oceania. Similarly Lauer (2009: 218–219) briefly recapitulates the genesis of the official designations of DeutschSüdwestafrika and Deutsch-Ostafrika, the modern Tanzania. Language policy is a kind of speaking about the other (language) and is thus part of the colonial discourse which manifests itself in a plethora of utterances, speech-acts and text genres – either overtly or hidden between the lines, || 15 According to Orosz’s (2008) Cameroonian case study, there never was a consistent German language policy for the Schutzgebiete. 16 The invention and application of glossonyms is a closely related topic (Haacke 2011).

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 15

as it were (Warnke 2009a: 50–-51). The latter is the case which one may call certainties, i.e. common presuppositions which are taken for granted though not necessarily tacitly. In two studies Warnke & Schmidt-Brücken (2011, 2012) scrutinize sample sentences and exercises in pedagogical grammars and primers of the indigenous languages of German colonies in Africa. They observe that, on this basis, it is possible to reconstruct a certain set of stereotypes that reflect the German idea of the colonial setting. The colonial discourse of the metropolis thus makes inroads into the domain of grammaticography just as German school grammar provided the blueprint for the description of many indigenous languages of the territories under German rule (Hennig 2009). The question of the supposed primitiveness of (especially) African languages (Cyffer 2011) and the distinction of civilized and uncivilized languages (Kutzner 2012) are directly connected to the stereotypes which determine the practice and theory of grammar writing.17 This is an issue which connects to the interconnection of linguistics and race-ideology in Germany as discussed in Römer (1986). CL also includes questions about the structure, contents and functions of the colonial discourse. We also see a crucial difference to ML here, whose general character we will discuss with reference to the cultural-historical status of language and colonialism. A linguistics that examines language in colonial contexts runs the risk of taking up and affirming a unidirectional context model whose empirical adequacy is highly questionable. Such a unidirectional model posits cultural formations – which could effectively be defined in arbitrary fashion, from missionary activities to colonialism, postcolonialism, transnationality, postnationality etc. – and in this context examines language phenomena. In this sense, historical constellations are construed as contexts of linguistic constellations. We assume that such a model is inadequate. A discourse-analytic perspective of language in colonial contexts therefore assumes a basic function in the approach of CL. Language and colonialism – and this could then also be transferred to other historical formations – are interdependent and therefore bidirectional. On the one hand, colonialism indeed provides a context for language phenomena and hence also linguistic practices, which also applies to ML. On the other hand, linguistic utterances and actions themselves are contexts for colonial phenomena and practices, which can be seen particularly well with regard to geonyms. To name a subjugated territory oversees a Schutzgebiet is a colonial practice and not merely an utterance about colonial practices. Colonial|| 17 Other topics relevant from the point of view of discourse linguistics, such as the linguistic construction of the other, the expression of anti-colonial attitudes and many others, can be found in Warnke (2009b: 145–364) and Riese (2012).

16 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke ism is produced by language – one only needs to consider German colonial agitation. Language in effect structures, discusses, questions, etc. colonialism. We thus suggest a reciprocal relationship, in which colonialism and language can be seen as interdependent phenomena. This model has clear consequences: we assume for the study of language in colonial times that the described phenomena themselves are colonial constructs, linguistic constellations that are described under colonial conditions. Our considerations concerning the pragmalinguistic-based interdependence of language and colonialism results in the following analytical perspectives: colonial discourses are a) formations of utterances, b) utterance-based knowledge formations, and c) sign-based fields of action. If one considers colonial discourse as a formation of utterances, one is interested in a very broad corpus of colonial-bound utterances. What is epistemologically problematic here is the fact that it is hardly possible to draw a distinction between the colonial and the non-colonial since one has to assume that colonial constellations of power diffuse into many spheres. Regardless of this problem of discourse extension, CL is interested in reconstructing colonial discourse, making it electronically accessible, and deriving as much data from it as possible. Apart from understanding colonial discourse as a formation of utterances, CL is interested in the analysis of proposition-based knowledge formation. We can only briefly get into detail here; central in this respect are lexis and grammar and the questions of what constitutes a colonial language (in the sense of colonial discourse). This concerns an analysis of the specific use of language that shapes the interdependence between language and colonialism. Of particular interest in this regard are grammatical phenomena. While knowledge formations are explicated through naming in lexical phenomena, grammatical features of a colonially shaped language are expressions of implicit assumptions. This can be shown, for example, with reference to occurrences of genericity, syntactic contrasts through connectors, and negations. For instance, generic utterances are realized through grammatical constructions that mark colonial attitudes (cf. Warnke et al. in print). Similarly, an analysis of syntactic contrasts through adversative and concessive connectors exposes the implicit formation of colonial knowledge (cf. Warnke & Karg 2013). The same could be argued for phenomena of negation, in particular for metalinguistic negation as an expression of negotiating agonistic bodies of knowledge. Apart from these examples of the grammatical dimensions of coloniality, to which might be added more, CL examines the nexus between language and colonialism as a sign-based field of action, addressing specifically the question of which actors act intersemiotically in certain genres. This concerns the correlation between colonial actors and their preferred genres (tradespeople and letters, for

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 17

instance) and their contexts of utterances, text, image, genre, film, art, monument, postcard, and so on. This intersemiotic field of colonialism is very broad and has heretofore not been thoroughly researched. This incomplete overview of some of the recent activities and interests of CL is indicative of a thematically rich research program which benefits from the exchange of ideas of representatives of different linguistic disciplines and convictions.18 It is assumed that CL can gain from the dialogue with ML and vice versa. Before glimpses of this dialogue are presented in the conclusions, section 3.2 ticks off a number of additional aspects on which ML and CL differ.

3.2 Additional elements of divergence For the sake of brevity, no exhaustive discussion of the following issues can be provided. It suffices to state that ML and CL differ on various dimensions. In section 2, it was argued that the two approaches study different groups of players. The linguistic personnel is not identical for ML and CL. For the purposes of CL, the missionaries form but one group whose contributions are worthwhile being studied. In the case of CL, the informants and teachers of the linguists have to be identified and studied biographically. How important native-speaker informants were for the practical fieldwork transpires from another of Meinhof’s numerous contributions of the Deutsche Kolonial-Lexikon. In the article dedicated to the grammars of indigenous languages (headword: Grammatiken der Eingeborensprachen) Meinhof (1920a: 747) states that Die sämtlichen vorliegenden G[rammatiken] d[er] E[ingeborenensprachen] sind erst von Europäern verfaßt, die die Sprachen aus dem Munde der Eingeborenen aufnahmen und daraus oder aus der schon vorhandenen Literatur die grammatischen Regeln ableiteten.19

On the basis of Zimmermann (2004: 26ff.) alone, it cannot be ascertained whether or not the indigenous staff of the missionary-linguists plays a role for ML. From his other publications, it appears that wherever native speakers can be identified, their role is acknowledged and discussed. CL aims at evaluating

|| 18 Wolff (2013: 23–29) shows that the history of the academic institutions and disciplines which developed in the wake of colonialism are also a promising subject for CL. 19 [All extant grammars of indigenous languages have been authored by Europeans who recorded the languages from the mouth of the natives and on this basis or on that of the already existing literature they deduced the grammatical rules]. Our translation.

18 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke the interaction of linguists and native-speaker informants more systematically. Another point of divergence is connected to the time frame which is decidedly pre-20th century for ML and post-18th century for CL. In terms of geography, ML has a preference for Latin America (although other regions of the globe are by no means excluded per definition) whereas, at least at the moment, CL is oriented more towards Africa, Asia and Oceania. The Latin American focus of ML correlates with a very strong emphasis on the colonial powers Spain and Portugal. In contrast, CL focuses on other countries among which there are latecomers to the colonial scene such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA. These observations are meant as generalizations over the typical traits of the two approaches. The identification of certain areas in which ML or CL prove to be especially strong does not imply that the scopes are restricted to exactly these areas.20 The foci are summarized in short in Table 2. Table 2: Different foci of ML and CL Dimension

ML

CL

TIME

First European Imperialism

Second Imperialism

(1492–1821)21

(1884–1945)

SPACE

Latin America

Africa, Asia, Oceania

COLONIZERS

Spain, Portugal

Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Sweden, UK, USA

AGENTS

missionaries

lay persons

TOPICS

historiography of linguistics22

language contact, language ideologies, language policy, colonial discourses

What distinguishes CL further, however, is the postcolonial component which is integrated into the research program. This means that all linguistically relevant processes which are triggered after the de-jure termination of the colonial status fall within the scope of CL. By way of example, Speitkamp’s (2006: 180) report on the re-naming of streets after the independence of Namibia from South Africa || 20 Note that these divergences are not to be understood as strict and categorial differences of the two approaches. However, there are clear statistical preferences. Of the 52 papers included in the volumes I–IV of ML, for instance, 42 (= 80%) deal with the work of Spanish and Portuguese missionaries. The bibliography of CL displays a similarly high percentage of contributions which address issues related to German colonialism. 21 With an extension to 1898/99 on the Philippines and in Micronesia and to 1968 in the case of the African territories of Spain. 22 That this concept may be interpreted in a much broader way is implied in Zimmermann (2005).

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 19

can be mentioned. Street names which reminded people of the German colonial rule were removed in order to symbolically put an end to colonialism. This politically motivated process forms a unit with other phenomena which can be subsumed under the heading of linguistic purism. Language endangerment, language attitudes and linguistic identity issues are further topics which the postcolonial sub-project of CL undertakes to study. A postcolonial interest in CL also encompasses references to theoretical positions and case studies of Global History (cf. Conrad et al. 2007). From a globalhistorical angle, colonialism is put into perspective as an episode in national history, even if nationalist aims were unquestionably part of colonial expansion. In this respect, the colonizers of Table 2 should not only be regarded as distinct actors. Colonialism is a global-historical constellation as much as postcolonial discourses know no national boundaries. CL thus operates in a field of transnational and epinational phenomena. The entrance point of a nationalhistorical and hence national-linguistic perspective on colonial constellations in CL can therefore only be understood as a construct and requires a consideration of various colonialisms and their reciprocal relations. Not least, colonial discourses are ultimately shaped by competitive claims to power and designate colonialism as a global-historical constellation. We can refer back here to Table 1, which shows that various colonial power claims pervade, occupy, and divide colonized spaces.

4 Conclusions The above condensed confrontation of the two approaches can do justice to neither of them. What it suggests, nevertheless, is that the one does not stand in the way of the other. ML and CL may peacefully coexist and collaborate since their ambitions are not the same and thus may complement each other. Each of the approaches boasts of a secure basis and a set of goals (which resemble each other only in a segment). The output in terms of publications is remarkable in both cases. This can be taken as evidence of the viability to which the authors have alluded in section 1. It has been shown that CL is not simply ML without missionaries. ML cannot fulfill the array of tasks which are on the agenda of CL. What about cooperation? A potential area in which CL and ML could work hand in hand is the identification of contacts of missionary-linguists and lay linguists. Adelaar (1997) discusses the survival of traditions created by missionary-linguists and adopted by modern scholars of Amerindian languages in South America. Masson (1997) compares the achievements of old and new ap-

20 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke proaches to Quichua within the framework of ML, meaning he restricts the comparison to missionary-linguists but goes far beyond the usual time-frame of ML. It is easily conceivable that CL and ML have a common interest in investigating the academic fate of the ideas which have been developed by the linguists on which they focus and in determining from where the very same linguists have taken their inspiration. These are genuine questions on the above catalogue of tasks of HML (including topics such as the political conditions under which missionaries conducted their linguistic projects, to what extent the missionaries themselves exerted political influence or were politically influenced by third parties). This means that cooperation is possible and desirable especially in those areas which already belong to the domain of HML. In addition, CL (as conceived in the Forschungsgruppe Koloniallinguistik), because of its discourse-linguistic, postcolonial, and global-historical perspective, may recontextualize the object and scholarly practices of ML. The activities of missionaries are part of transnational and epinational discourses in the context of global-historical constellations, and their impact on postcolonial bodies of knowledge has to be interrogated. What CL can expect of ML is the broadening of its empirical horizon because the most interesting part of the research program is yet to come, namely the comparison of the linguistic side of as many national varieties of colonialism as possible in order to create a waterproof basis on which generalizations about the interaction of language and colonialism can be formulated. Errington (2008) demonstrates that comparative work is feasible indeed. ML possesses the expertise in all linguistic matters which can be associated with the colonialism of the Iberian countries not only in Latin America but also in Southeast Asia. This knowledge is a treasure the access to which would be precious to CL. Acknowledgements This paper has a double ancestry, in a manner of speaking. On the one hand, it has benefitted from the grant STO 186/16-1 by the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft/German Science Foundation (DFG) and thus is directly connected to the research project Chamorrica – die kommentierte Edition und Übersetzung der nicht englischsprachigen Quellen zum Chamorro (1668-1950)/Chamorrica – the annotated edition and translation of the sources on Chamorro written in languages other than English (1668–1950) conducted by Thomas Stolz. At the same time, this is the first jointly authored publication of Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke within the framework of the Creative Unit Koloniallinguistik/Language in Colonial Contexts (CULCC) – a program hosted by the University of Bremen/ Germany as part of its prize-winning initiative of academic excellence. The authors are grateful to the members of their project-team and associates in the

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 21

Netzwerk Sprachkontakt und Sprachvergleich/Network Language Contact and Language Comparison at the University of Bremen for their support. Thomas Stolz also feels indebted to the discussants of the draft version of this paper which was presented as a talk (entitled Missionary Linguistics without missionaries? An attempt at assigning Colonial Linguistics its proper place in relation to Missionary Linguistics) on occasion of the 7th International Conference of Missionary Linguistics in Bremen, March 2012. Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein and Klaus Zimmermann deserve a special word of thanks not only for inviting the authors to contribute to their edited volume but also for commenting extensively on the first draft of this paper. Moreover Klaus Zimmermann kindly let the authors share their opinions about the proper definition of Colonial Linguistics. The many helping hands notwithstanding, the authors assume the sole and full responsibility for the contents of this scholarly article.

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22 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke Engelberg, Stefan, Ineke Scholz & Doris Stolberg. 2012. Interaktionszentren des Sprachkontakts in Deutsch-Neuguinea: ein sprachkartographisches Projekt. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 123–138. Engelberg, Stefan & Doris Stolberg (eds.) 2012. Sprachwissenschaft und kolonialzeitlicher Sprachkontakt. Sprachliche Begegnungen und Auseinandersetzungen. Berlin: Akademie. Errington, Joseph. 2001. Colonial linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology 30. 16–39. Errington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a colonial world. A story of language, meaning, and power. Oxford: Blackwell. Farell, Don A. 1991. History of the Northern Marianas. Saipan. Fischer, Steven R. (ed.) 2013. Oceanic voices – European quills. The early documents on and in Chamorro and Rapanui. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Forbes, Eric. 2007. The German Capuchins in the Marianas 1907–1919. Agaña Heights: Capuchin Friars. Forbes, Eric. 2009a. I kuatro man uttimo na kosas/The four last things. Spanish Era Chamorro sermons on death, judgment, hell and heaven. Agaña Heights: Capuchin Friars. Forbes, Eric. 2009b. Pale‘ Román. Agaña Heights: Capuchin Friars. Fritz, Georg. 1903. Chamorro-Grammatik. Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen 6. 1–27. Fritz, Georg. 1907. Kurze Geschichte der Marianen. Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen 10. 218–228. Gilmour, Rachel. 2006. Grammars of colonialism. Representing languages in Colonial South Africa. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Haacke, Wilfrid H. 2011. Nama als Sprachbenennung in der Koloniallinguistik Deutsch-Südwestafrikas: zwischen Endonym und Exonym. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), 139–160. Hackmack, Susanne. 2012. Die Subjektpräfixe des Swahili in kolonialzeitlichen Sprachbeschreibungen. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 49–67. Hardach, Gerd. 1990. König Kopra. Die Marianen unter deutscher Herrschaft 1899–1914. Stuttgart: Steiner. Hennig, Mathilde. 2009. Zum deutschen Blick auf grammatische Eigenschaften von Kolonialsprachen. In Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), 119–142. Hovdhaugen, Even. 1996. Missionary grammars: An attempt at defining a field of research. In Even Hovdhaugen (ed.), …and the word was God. Missionary linguistics and Missionary grammar, 9–22. Münster: Nodus. Izouî [Izui], Hisanosuke. 1940. Le système verbal du chamorro actuel de l'île Saïpan. Gengo Kenkyu 6. 14–27. Jungraithmayer, Herrmann & Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig (eds.) 1983. Lexikon der Afrikanistik. Afrikanische Sprachen und ihre Erforschung. Berlin: Reimer. Kats, Jacob. 1917. Het Tjamoro van Guam en Saipan vergeleken met eenige verwante talen. ‘sGravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Kellermeier-Rehbein, Birte. 2012. Koloniallinguistik aus hochschuldidaktischer Perspektive. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 293–309. Klein, Thomas. 2013. Chamorro morphonology in the grammar and dictionary by Georg Fritz. In Steven R. Fischer (ed.), 103–122. Kutzner, Sandy. 2012. “Zivilisierte” und “unzivilisierte” Sprachen. Historische Sprachbewertung und das wirklich Fremde in Sprachen. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 215–229.

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 23 Lauer, Hiltrud. 2009. Die sprachliche Vereinnahmung des afrikanischen Raums im deutschen Kolonialismus. In Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), 203–234. Lopinot, P. Callistus. 1910. Chamorro Wörterbuch enthaltend I. Deutsch-Chamorro, II. Chamorro-Deutsch nebst einer Chamorro-Grammatik und einigen Sprachübungen. Hongkong: Typis Societatis Missionum ad Exteros. Masson, Peter. 1997. Gramáticas coloniales y más recientes de variedades quichuas ecuatorianas, elaboradas por lingüistas-misioneros: una comparación. In Klaus Zimmermann (ed.), 339–368. Matsuoko, Shizuo. 1926. Chamoro-go no kenkyū. Shigaku 5. 187–264. Meinhof, Carl. 1920a. Grammatiken der Eingeborenensprachen. In Heinrich Schnee (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon. I. Band A–G, 747–748. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer. Meinhof, Carl. 1920b. Sprachen. In Heinrich Schnee (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon. III. Band P–Z, 387. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2001. Die deutsche Sprache im Pazifik. In Hermann Joseph Hiery (ed.), Die deutsche Südsee 1884–1914, 239–263. Ein Handbuch. Paderborn: Schöningh. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2012. Sprachliche Kontakte in den Missionen auf Deutsch-Neuguinea und die Entstehung eines Pidgin-Deutsch. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 71–100. Mühleisen, Susanne. 2009. Zwischen Sprachideologie und Sprachplanung. Kolonial-Deutsch als Verkehrssprache für die Kolonien. In Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), 97–118. Nyada, Germain. 2009. Deutsch-kamerunische Kommunikationssituationen: Unterhaltungen mit den “Jaunde” im Regenwald (1890–1910). Jahrbuch für Europäische Überseegeschichte 9. 225–234. Orosz, Kenneth J. 2008. Religious conflict and the evolution of language policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885–1939. Frankfurt: Lang. Quilis, Antonio. 1988. El primer vocabulario conocido de las Islas Marianas. Lengua Española Actual 10. 177–181. Reid, Lawrence A., Emilio Ridruejo & Thomas Stolz (eds.) 2011. Philippine and Chamorro linguistics before the advent of structuralism. Berlin: Akademie. Riese, Julius. 2012. The Samoanische Zeitung (1901–1914): images of the Samoan people and culture in a German colonial newspaper. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 165–190. Rodríguez-Ponga, Rafael. 2013. Esteban Rodríguez’ vocabulary of the language of Guam (1565). In Steven R. Fischer (ed.), 25–52. Rogers, Robert F. 1995. Destiny’s landfall. A history of Guam. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press. Römer, Ruth. 1986. Sprachwissenschaft und Rassenideologie in Deutschland. München: Fink. Safford, William Edwin. 1909. The Chamorro language of Guam. Washington D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution. Schuster, Susanne. 2013. The Chamorro-Wörterbuch by Georg Fritz – a contrastive description of the editions of 1904 and 1908. In Steven R. Fischer (ed.), 83–102. Schwörer, Emil. 1916. Kolonial-Deutsch. Vorschläge einer künftigen deutschen Kolonialsprache in systematischer-grammatikalischer Darstellung und Begründung. München: Hubers. Speitkamp, Winfried. 2006. Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte. Stuttgart: Reclam. Steadman-Jones, Richard. 2007. Colonialism and grammatical representation: John Gilchrist and the analysis of the ‘Hindustani’ language in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Oxford: Blackwell.

24 | Thomas Stolz and Ingo H. Warnke Stolberg, Doris. 2011. Sprachkontakt und Konfession. Lexikalische Sprachkontaktphänomene Deutsch-Nauruisch bei den Missionaren Delaporte und Kayser. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), 285–304. Stolberg, Doris. 2012. Sprachkontakt in der Schule: Deutschunterricht in Mikronesien (1884– 1914). In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 139–162. Stolz, Thomas. 2007. The Kurze Geschichte der Marianen by Georg Fritz. A commented reedition. In Martina Schrader-Kniffki & Laura Morgenthaler Garcia (eds.), La Romania en interacción: entre historia, contacto y política. Ensayos en homenaje a Klaus Zimmermann, 307–349. Frankfurt: Klaus Vervuert. Stolz, Thomas. 2011a. Koloniallinguistischer Konkurrenzkampf auf den Marianen: über Grammatik und Wörterbücher der Chamorrosprache im frühen 20. Jahrhundert. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), 203–230. Stolz, Thomas. 2011b. The Gramatica chamorra. In Lawrence A. Reid, Emilio Ridruejo & Thomas Stolz (eds.), 183–200. Stolz, Thomas. 2011c. German and Dutch contributions to Chamorro studies (1800–1920). In Lawrence A. Reid, Emilio Ridruejo & Thomas Stolz (eds.), 201–226. Stolz, Thomas. 2012. Über die Wortmacherei, oder: Die Verschiebung der Wortgrenzen in der kolonialzeitlichen Sprachforschung (am Beispiel des Chamorro). In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 17–48. Stolz, Thomas. 2013. Liquids where there shouldn’t be any. What hides behind the orthographic post-vocalic tautosyllabic and in early texts in and on Chamorro. In Steven R. Fischer (ed.), 201–233. Stolz, Thomas, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein. 2011a. Kolonialzeitliche Sprachforschung und das Forschungsprogramm Koloniallinguistik: eine kurze Einführung. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), 7–30. Stolz, Thomas, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.) 2011b. Kolonialzeitliche Sprachforschung. Die Beschreibung afrikanischer und ozeanischer Sprachen zur Zeit der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft (1884–1914/20). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Stolz, Thomas, Christina Schneemann, Barbara Dewein & Sandra Chung. 2011c. The mysterious H. Who was the author of Die Chamoro Sprache? In Lawrence A. Reid, Emilio Ridruejo & Thomas Stolz (eds.), 227–242. Topping, Donald & Bernadita C. Dungca. 1973. Chamorro reference grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. von Preissig, Edward Ritter. 1918. Dictionary and grammar of the Chamorro language of the Island of Guam. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office. Vossmann, Christina. 2011. Gertrude Hornbostels Aufzeichnungen im Lichte zweier Klassiker der Chamorroforschung. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), 230–247. Warnke, Ingo H. 2009a. Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus. Umrisse eines Forschungsfeldes. In Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), 3–62. Warnke, Ingo H. (ed.) 2009b. Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus. Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919. Berlin: de Gruyter. Warnke, Ingo H. & Wolfram Karg. 2013. Pragmatischer Standard im Diskurs – Zum konzeptionellen und methodologischen Status von Abweichungen im Sprachgebrauch am Beispiel des deutschen Kolonialdiskurses. In Jörg Hagemann, Wolf Peter Klein & Sven Staffeldt (eds.), Pragmatischer Standard, 143–162. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics | 25 Warnke, Ingo H. & Daniel Schmidt-Brücken. 2011. Koloniale Grammatiken und ihre Beispiele – Linguistischer Sprachgebrauch als Ausdruck von Gewissheiten. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), 31–54. Warnke, Ingo H. & Daniel Schmidt-Brücken. 2012. Was zählt im Kolonialdiskurs? Numeralia und Numeralität in kolonialen Grammatiken. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 191–214. Warnke, Ingo H., Janina Wildfeuer, Daniel Schmidt-Brücken & Wolfram Karg (in print). Diskursgrammatik als wissensanalytische Sprachwissenschaft. In Nora Benitt, Christopher Koch, Katharina Müller, Sven Saage, Lisa Schüler & Teresa Teske (eds.), Linguistik und Kulturwissenschaft – Untersuchungen zum Zusammenhang von Sprache, Wissen und Kultur. Trier: WVT. Weber, Brigitte. 2012. Exploration of Deutsch-Kamerun: A toponymic approach. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), 101–121. Winkler, Pierre. 2007. The birth of functional grammar in the ‘Austronesian School’ of Missionary Linguistics. In Otto Zwartjes, Gregory James & Emilio Ridruejo (eds.), 329–344. Winkler, Pierre. 2013. Translating Father Sanvitores’ Lingua Mariana. In Steven R. Fischer (ed.), 53–82. Wolff, H. Ekkehard. 2013. Die deutschsprachige Afrikanistik. In H. Ekkehard Wolff (ed.), Was ist eigentlich Afrikanistik? Eine kleine Einführung in die Welt der afrikanischen Sprachen, ihre Rolle in Kultur und Gesellschaft und ihre Literaturen, 15–44. Frankfurt: Lang. Zimmermann, Klaus (ed.) 1997. La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial. Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2004. La construcción del objeto de la historiografía de la lingüística misionera. In Otto Zwartjes & Even Hovdhaugen (eds.), 7–32. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2011. The Diccionario español-chamorro (1865) by Padre Fray Aniceto Ibáñez del Cármen: a historiographical characterization of a pedagogic-lexicographic discourse type in late colonial Austronesia. In Lawrence A. Reid, Emilio Ridruejo & Thomas Stolz (eds.), 163–182. Zwartjes, Otto & Even Hovdhaugen (eds.) 2004. Missionary linguistics/Lingüística misionera. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Zwartjes, Otto & Cristina Altman (eds.) 2005. Missionary linguistics/Lingüística misionera II: Orthography and phonology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Zwartjes, Otto, Gregory James & Emilio Ridruejo (eds.) 2007. Missionary linguistics/Lingüística III: morphology and syntax. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Zwartjes, Otto, Ramón Arzápalo Marín & Thomas C. Smith-Stark (eds.) 2009. Missionary linguistics/Lingüística misionera IV: lexicography. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

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Part 2: Africa

Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context The grammatization of Swahili through the study of four missionary grammars from 1885 to 1944 Abstract: We present the study of four Swahili grammars written by missionaries in French from 1885 to 1944. Three of them were written by White Fathers, and the fourth one, the most complete and erudite, was written by a Spiritan. After a presentation of this corpus and the particularity of each grammar we examine in more detail the articulation between linguistic descriptions, missionary and colonial purposes. Our analysis takes two main directions: the transposition of linguistic categories from occidental grammatical traditions to African languages, and the selection of a variety of Swahili. In conclusion, we examine how these grammars also give an illustration of the historical evolution of the linguistic thought, which can be linked with the emergence of a colonial thought. Keywords: Swahili grammars, French missionaries, grammatical traditions, linguistic variety || Clara Mortamet: Université de Rouen, Département des sciences du langage, Rue Lavoisier, 76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, FRANCE, [email protected] Céline Amourette: Université de Rouen, Département des sciences du langage, Rue Lavoisier, 76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, FRANCE, [email protected]

1 Origins of the project Our study is based on four grammars of Swahili. They came into our hands by a combination of circumstances that we want to explain in a few words: we followed two1 of our colleagues who aimed at working on what they called “colonial glossography” and they defined as “the study of a set of texts which convey collective representations about structures and uses of languages in contact in a

|| 1 Claude Caitucoli and François Gaudin (sociolinguists at the University of Rouen).

30 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette situation of colonization or mission”.2 They decided to start with Africa, an area they knew better than others. As a result of this initial work, we had the opportunity to visit the White Fathers3 library in Paris, where we were given permission to borrow all the available books about African languages produced before 1945. Among them we were surprised to find four Swahili grammars. Why Swahili was the most represented language in that library? The question arose when we realized that it was not a coincidence: in the White Fathers’ catalogue of publications on African languages, published in 1932, Swahili is the most represented language, and more generally, languages from East Africa are more represented than those from West Africa. Considering that French colonial interests focused on West Africa i.e. non-Swahili speaking areas, these studies reveal a conundrum: Why did the White Fathers, French4 missionaries, study Swahili? With this first question in mind we decided to study these four grammars, Céline Amourette as a specialist in syntax, Clara Mortamet as a specialist in sociolinguistics.

2 Presentation of the corpus and historical context 2.1 Our corpus Missionaries wrote these four Swahili grammars in French from 1885 to 1944. This pioneering work is representative of the first linguistic descriptions of Swahili in French. This corpus is remarkable for many reasons:  none of these authors were linguists, they all based their grammars on data collected during their journeys without any linguistic knowledge: They are “linguist amateurs” (Fabian 1986: 11), and linguistes de terrain (field linguists) (Auroux 1994: 123);5

|| 2 « L’étude d’un ensemble de textes qui, en décrivant ces langues ou des usages de ces langues, médiatisent des représentations collectives de langues en contact dans une situation de colonisation ou de mission. » (p.c.). 3 The White Fathers’ is a French Catholic missionary congregation. We will present it below. 4 With the exception in our corpus of Van den Eynde, Belgian. 5 Sacleux expressed this lack of formation in these words: “I have no scientific qualification. I don’t hold a baccalaureate nor a doctorate. I am a self-taught man. Devoting myself to Missions was all my ambition.” [Je ne possède aucun titre scientifique. Je ne suis ni bachelier ni docteur ès sciences. Je me suis formé moi-même. Me consacrer aux Missions fut de bonne heure toute

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 31

 most of them worked for other missionaries, but not for a wide readership. For this reason, the grammars were often very quickly written, in few exemplars;  they are all written with the aim of learning to speak the language of the local people – or to be precise a language understood by most of the local people –, to spread the word, but also to have authority over the populations: “in descriptions of Swahili (and of other African languages, of course) ‘communication and control’ were inseparable motives” (Fabian 1986: 14). They were therefore working in conditions comparable to those of missionaries in New Spain, as described by Colombat et al. (2010: 41): Les missionnaires qui rédigent les premières grammaires du nahuatl, du guarani ou du tupi fabriquent des instruments à l’usage de leurs successeurs, qui avant d’être édités, ont souvent été de simples carnets de notes que l’on se transmettait, et qui visaient à doter les missionnaires de compétences linguistiques minimales pour l’évangélisation et la conversion. [Missionaries who wrote the first Nahuatl, Guarani or Tupi grammars made material for their successors. Before being edited, they were often merely notebooks, passed on from hand to hand and dedicated to giving subsequent missionaries the minimal knowledge needed to evangelize and convert.] (our translation) CORPUS Père H. Delaunay

1885 (2nd ed.), Grammaire Kiswahili. Paris: Imprimerie Levé (1st ed: 1884, there will be 8 editions)

Ch. Sacleux

1909, Grammaire des dialectes Swahilis. Paris : Procure des Pères du Saint Esprit

E. Brutel

1913 (2nd ed.), Vocabulaire français-kiswahili et kswhahili-français précédé d’une grammaire élémentaire. Bruxelles: Ministère des colonies (1st ed: 1911, there will be 7 editions)

F. Van den Eynde

1944 (5th ed.), Grammaire swahili suivie d’un vocabulaire. Bruxelles: Editorial Office H. Wauthoz-Legrand, A. J. Wauthoz.

These four grammars have in common to have been written in French by Roman Catholic missionaries. But they have also some particularities. Three of the authors were White Fathers, and one was a Spiritan (Sacleux). The difference is important: the White Fathers (officially Société des Missionaires d’Afrique) were created by members of Mendicant orders. This missionary institute was created in 1868 in Alger by Charles Lavigerie, archbishop in Algiers. They organized || mon ambition.] (autobiographical notes, reported by Roger Tabard in the French Spiritans’ Internet web page, checked 11/2012).

32 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette their first expedition in 1878 from Bagamoyo, and were among the first to penetrate the continent. They became famous for dressing in an Arabic style, wearing gandurah, burnous and chechia.6 They also had explicit requirements for speaking the local languages, as we can read in some of their official recommendations written by Lavigerie (1878, reported in Page 2007: 5): Je désire que, dès que la chose sera possible et au plus tard six mois après l’arrivée dans la mission, tous les missionnaires ne parlent plus entre eux que la langue des tribus au milieu desquelles ils résident. [I wish that, as soon as possible, and at the latest six months after they arrive in the Mission, when talking between themselves all the missionaries speak only the language of the tribes among which they live.] (our translation)

The Spiritans – as Sacleux – for their part were named also Congregation des pères du Saint Esprit (Congregation of the Holy Spirit). They are not an order but a clerical congregation, founded in 1703. From 1816 they were in charge of sending missionaries to French colonies. Sacleux was more isolated than the others, as he settled in Bagamoyo and Zanzibar, in the Christian mission, and learnt Swahili against the will of his local superior.7 His work on Swahili made him afterwards one of the most recognized specialists of the language. From 1894, he worked for the Linguistic Society in Paris. His work is up to now a reliable source of information.8 It would deserve as such a complete study. We will focus in this study only on what is common and particular in his work in comparison to the White Fathers’ grammars. The last author, Van den Eynde, is Belgian. This is particularly significant as a large part of the Swahili speaking area was property of the Belgian Kingdom for some years in this period. Among the key differences between these texts, we can also note that two of them are only grammars (the two first ones). The first one (Delaunay’s) is such probably because it was the first study from and for the White Fathers, written in a very short time, and deliberately incomplete. Sacleux for his part separated the grammar study from the lexical one, as a few years later he published a complete dictionary (1939). || 6 A gandurah is a sleeveless tunic. A burnous is a long cloak of coarse woollen fabric with a hood, usually white in colour, worn by Berbers and the Arabs throughout North Africa. A chechia is a short, rounded cap. This explains by the way the name “White Fathers”: they were white robed Fathers. 7 His local superior recommended him to communicate in French with the free slaves, instead of learning the “primitives’ language”. 8 According to Ricard (2007: 105), Sacleux “remains up to now a reference for the Swahili specialists” [« demeure encore aujourd’hui la référence des swahilisants (…) »].

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 33

The two later grammars include a lexicon, and they are more written as handbooks for learning than complete linguistic studies. Here we will only study the grammar parts. These works can be connected to previous and contemporaneous studies on Swahili, in a context of exploration and colonization. We will largely step on two anthropologists to describe the historical context and the amount of linguistic descriptions of Swahili in the geographic and temporal context of ours: Johannes Fabian (1985, 1986) and Joseph Errington (2008).

2.2 Previous descriptions As Pugach (2012: 9) relates it, descriptions of African languages started from German and Danish Protestant missionaries (such as Bleek and Krapf) and were later led by German philologist, settled in Germany. The first specialists in Bantu languages are two German philologists: William Bleek (at first missionary) and one of his students, Carl Meinhof.9 The first introduced the term “Bantu” in 1851, the second described the Bantu linguistic structures in 1906. In 1850, Johann Ludwig Krapf, an Anglican, from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) had already published a vocabulary of six East African languages. One of his successors at the CMS, Edward Steere, published in 1870 the first Handbook of the Swahili language, as spoken in Zanzibar. Only one of the authors of our corpus knew all these works: Sacleux. The three others only mentioned the handbook from Steere, which was explicitly recommended to the White Fathers. This confirms what Karsten Legere wrote: “the tradition of missionary work in the area is not as old as in some other parts of the continent” (Legere 2009: 393). If German and English missionaries and philologists made the very first studies, Fabian indicates that the White Fathers were, after 1885, the most productive in Swahili descriptions – lexicons and grammars.10 Our four grammars are then representative of this second stage of descriptions of Swahili, motivat|| 9 See Kröger (2011) for a detailed study of Meinhof’s work and his influence on Swahili descriptions. 10 There is probably an implication that German missionaries were Protestants, English Anglicans and French Catholics. A comparison study of the religious affiliation impact on linguistic orientation is still to do. In the same way, the current linguistic theories and colonial policies in each country may have important consequences on the missionary’s linguistic works. Pugach (2012), Fabian (1985, 1986) or Errington (2008) reinforced our impression that national and religious ideologies influence missionary linguistics.

34 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette ed by colonial and missionary interests: communicating and controlling the African population. Among the literature produced in this context, these grammars coexist with other types of texts dealing with linguistic descriptions (Fabian 1985: 13–15; Fabian 1986: 17–24; Levi 2009: 381):  Alphabets or word lists,  Dictionaries and glossaries, bilingual or multilingual,  Manuals for other travelers,  Polyglot and expeditionary guides,  Translations of liturgical, doctrinal and biblical texts, initially dedicated to the missionaries for their oral work of evangelization. In various proportions, most of these texts were produced both by military men, especially Belgian, and by Anglicans and Protestants (English, Germans, Dutch). Fabian (1985) wrote a comparative study of the vocabulary sections of two reports of expeditions, one written by White Fathers11, and one written by a military agent sent by the International African Association.12 The particularity of each category of authors influenced the linguistic work, as Fabian (1986) and Errington (2008) indicated. They had different views of languages, and of the peoples to be civilized or converted.13 These differences can also be explained by the current linguistic policies in the different colonial empires – even if a comparison study of these policies, of their mutual influence, in words and in facts, is still to be done. When we examine this literature, our corpus appears as relatively homogeneous: all the authors are Catholic, scholars, French-speaking and three of them are French; they all write about Swahili only, they all produce mostly grammars. They are also all written in the first decades of colonization, a period we need to briefly describe.

2.3 Historical context In 1885, the Berlin Conference regulated European colonization in eastern Africa. The Swahili speaking area was divided between Great Britain, Germany and Bel|| 11 A l’assaut des pays nègres [Storming Negro Lands], Paris, 1884. 12 Jérôme Becker, La vie en Afrique [Life in Africa], 2 vol., Paris-Brussels, 1887. 13 Some of these texts have already been studied: Fabian (1985, 1986) considered the writings of a Flemish military man (Becker); Legere (2009) examined the work of Last from the CMS, a collection of words and sentences in 48 east African languages.

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 35

gium. Deutsch-Ostafrika was ruled by the German Empire until 1918, and the Congo Free State, a territory at first offered as a personal gift to King Leopold II from Belgium, and annexed as a colony by the State of Belgium in 1908. As for the linguistic policy, German colonial authorities chose Swahili to support their administration. The Belgians also used and spread Swahili, but alongside other African languages. The British used Swahili as well for their administration, but furthermore used and taught English. In 1930, the Inter Territorial Language Committee decided that Standard Swahili, based on the coastal dialect (the Kiungudya from Zanzibar) should be the main language of the area between Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. The Berlin Conference was motivated by an exploiting purpose, but also emphasized that colonization was intended to be a scientific and civilizing mission (by abolishing slavery, by educating indigenous people). These contradictory objectives14 – to evangelize, civilize, control and exploit – generated tensions and conflicts on the ground. In particular, if the conference reinforced in a first time the agreements between military men from the IAA (International African Association, created in 1876) and the White Fathers supported by Vatican, there were soon conflicts between the military men, some free thinkers or Protestants, and the White Fathers (Fabian 1985: 18; 1986: 14). It is significant here to mention that in 1878, Pope Leo XIII entrusted Western Africa’s evangelization to the Société des missionaires d’Afrique (the White Fathers). The objective of this congregation is all but evangelization (against Islam) and antislavery. But in 1891 King Leopold II asked Charles-Martial Allemand Lavigerie to put Belgian White Fathers in charge of the Congo Mission. As the Belgian White Fathers were probably more implicated in the colonial agencies than the French ones – one of our authors, for instance, Van den Eynde, was a teacher in the Colonial School in Brussels –, this decision can be interpreted as a will to associate colonial purposes to the religious’.15 In spite of these disagreements, they mostly shared the same language policy. They all considered as essential the need to stop the Arabic expansion in the area. The objectives were various: religious – to reduce Muslim influence, economic – to reduce the Arabic exchange monopole in the area, political – as a basis for their domination in Africa, but also ideological – to fight against slave trading. From this time, the choice of Swahili as the lingua franca became the || 14 “colonial agents had to think, feel, and work in situations that were essentially contradictory“ (Fabian 1985: 53–54). 15 Fabian (1986: 14) also reports that “after 1890, French nationals were replaced by Belgian priests who under the leadership of Fr (later Msgr) Roelens opted for close cooperation with the agents of the Free State, at least for a certain period”.

36 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette consensus, and the use of Latin script to write it was adopted by all missionaries, in opposition to the writing of Swahili in Arabic script. More generally, they had common views on various issues, produced by a transposition of ideologies from Europe to Africa. We will focus here on the transposition of linguistic ideologies, as they appear in the grammatical descriptions themselves, and in the choice and the decision to use a certain variety of Swahili between others, by which we can perceive the interrelation between colonialist administration and missionary linguistics in this area.

3 Grammatical traditions from occidental languages to African languages In this first instance, we examine the particularity of the linguistic thought in Europe in 19th century16, and the ways Europeans considered their role in Africa. This implies the transposition of linguistic categories, but also the transposition of linguistic patterns, particularly in the way they organize and apply their linguistic descriptions. As Errington (2008: 3) notices it, all the texts produced by missionaries “resemble each other in obvious ways”. This can be explained by the process of grammatization that led the linguists to describe the languages using the same linguistic guiding principles. Errington sums this up by “Reducing speech to writing”, as the importance of written forms was considerable. In the case of missionary works, it is more precisely exo-grammatizations, as Auroux (1994: 121) says: grammatizations of languages they did not speak as natives, and that had never been described before. They also resulted from the grammatization models of the European languages. Our four authors are not professional linguists (even if Sacleux is going to become one later with his work on Swahili), they are what Auroux (1994: 123) calls linguistes de terrain (field linguists). But neither are they complete novices. They are scholars, they have similar curricula, and they have spent most of their training studying languages. The White Fathers for instance all knew French, Latin, but also Arabic. Therefore, as Errington says: “they shared habits of thought and practice in writing” (2008: 7). Fabian (1985: 22–51) shows that the military-expeditionary || 16 It is noteworthy that missionary linguistic theories in the 19th century are changing considerably in comparison to de 16th to 18th century when the most part of Spanish and Portuguese missionary language descriptions were done in Iberoamerica and Asia.

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 37

men who also wrote about Swahili did not share all of these habits of thought and experiences. These similar curricula and conditions of linguistic descriptions explain what we find in our grammars: transfers of linguistic knowledge from European to non-European languages. This phenomenon has been underlined in many studies on missionary linguistics in earlier centuries. This, as Colombat et al. (2010: 140–142) describe it, can lead to epistemological obstacles. However, in our corpus, there are few explicit transfers, and we find no case of real epistemological obstacles. It even seems when we read the grammars that Swahili is relatively easy for a European to learn. The study of military man by Fabian implies this when he says “Swahili is a mathematical language” (Fabian 1985). It is an idea which still remains, not only amongst Swahili speakers, but also amongst specialists (such as Heine & Nurse 2004). This relative simplicity – at least so it seems – to describe and speak Swahili may explain that the transfers were few in practice. In our corpus, the transfers appear mainly in:  The construction of the grammars: the grammatical knowledge in our grammars is presented as a list of rules, operating on morphosyntax as the concordance, the verbal tenses. The grammars all focus on morphology more than syntax. This organization of linguistic material is representative of the grammars written in this time.17  Some very few Latin categories of description: the période18, optatif. If we consider here the term optatif, it is used by Sacleux to describe verbal forms within the subjunctive mode. This category is borrowed from the ancient Greek grammars, where it is, according to Colombat et al. (2010: 130), a morphological category. As it was first transferred in Latin descriptions and later in French descriptions, it became a designation for verbal forms that express wishes. The use of this word by Sacleux, concurrently with some others (aoriste, optatif, passé indéfini, etc.), illustrates his classical perspective.

|| 17 Some features of these grammars are: lack of bibliography, lack of theoretical framework, grammars divided into parts of speech and syntax, normative discourse, etc. (Lerot 1993; Neveu & Lauwers 2007). 18 A Période is a “complex sentence characterized by a harmonious combination of clauses (…) and the logical development of the thought.” [Phrase complexe caractérisée par l’agencement harmonieux de ses propositions (...) et le développement logique de la pensée] (Mounin 1974: 254). Dupriez (1984: 334) notes that période represents a model for the antique writings.

38 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette In other words, even though missionaries were aware of describing “new grammatical ideas” (Ménard19 1908: X), they did not use or invent new terminology or concepts. At best, these differences were interpreted by the different “genius of the languages” – le «génie différent des deux langues20» (Sacleux 1909: 288). The organization of our grammars have another common point: they are written in order to teach Swahili to Europeans, like most missionary and colonial grammars. This implies that they use occidental categories without explanation – the reader is supposed to know and to expect these categories of description. It also implies didactic considerations. These texts were all written for subsequent missionaries, to help them learn Swahili before they arrived in a mission and it implies no intention of using them in education for Africans. The White Fathers publications were even dedicated to a very limited readership. In their catalogue of publications already mentioned (1932, see Page 2007: 106), we can read that: The White Fathers’ printing office does not undertake work for the public. If it gives some exemplars of its publications to strangers, it is the exception.

This implies that they are “practical and pedagogical grammars”: their purpose is to teach Swahili to their peers. It reinforces the impression of lists of rules, to be used to create new sentences or to understand the local inhabitants. For instance, we can find in Brutel’s a sort of linguistic ‘recipe’: Pour avoir la conjugaison d’un temps, il suffit de répéter successivement tous les pronoms devant la particule de ce temps, que l’on fait suivre du radical du verbe. [To obtain the conjugation of a tense, you repeat successively all the pronouns before the tense particle, which we follow by the verbal root.] (our translation)

Two of the grammars – from Delaunay and Van den Eynde – also include exercises: They are all translations of sentences, in the model of the Latin thème and version (translation from French to Swahili; from Swahili to French). || 19 Ménard is also a White Father. He wrote a Kirundi grammar in 1908. We decided not to study it here, because it was not on Swahili, but his introduction can for many reasons be considered in a same set of texts as our corpus. 20 This «génie de la langue» has been studied by Siouffi (2010), and is considered as a part of the “linguistic imaginary”. Actually, Sacleux is fully aware of some semantic differences of languages. For example, he realized the aspectual nuances between present tenses in Swahili and in French: “par exemple, dans ‘l’homme qui parle’ le swahili distingue deux nuances qui manquent au français, mtu a-sèma-ye ‘l’homme qui parle’ en general, sans préciser le temps, et mtu a na-ye sèma ‘l’homme qui parle maintenant’ (…)” (Sacleux 1909: 288).

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 39 Thème: La maison tombe, tombera, est tombée. La maison n’est pas tombée, elle ne tombera pas. Ces grands murs seraient tombés, ils ne sont pas tombés. (Delaunay 1885: 44)21 [Prose: The house falls, will fall, has fallen. The house hasn’t fallen, it will not fall. These large walls would have fallen, they haven’t fallen.] (our translation)

Van den Eynde does not use the words thème and version, but his exercises are also mostly translations of sentences, in both ways. He was for his part a teacher at the Colonial School in Brussels, and his grammar is obviously designed for a larger readership than the others. As Fabian (1986: 88) notices it: It is safe to assume that missionaries were as important as consumers of this literature as they were as its producers. (…) Linguistic skills, however, were also required of military men, administrators and commercial agents, of employees of industry and even settlers. Already in the Independent State era some sort of language training (in Belgium) had been part of preparing future ‘colonials’.

For this reason, as we will see later, if the models of the exercises are the same as those in Delaunay’s, Van den Eynde’s particularity is in his choice of the sentences to translate: his grammar shows the synergy and the interaction between mission and administration. We noted here some of the common habits of thought in relation to linguistic descriptions. We now want to consider more generally how the current linguistic ideologies determinate our grammars. We will focus here on the relation to linguistic diversity through the selection, as more or less set out in our grammars, of a language – Swahili –and of a variety of this language, for communication between Europeans and Africans. These two levels of selection have had many consequences up to now, as it modified the sociolinguistic situation in the region of East Africa, and influenced the process of the normalization and standardization22 of Swahili. || 21 The Swahili translation – or the solution of the exercise – is never given in our grammars. 22 Normalization is a spontaneous process, in all languages, of reduction of the uses’ diversity, under the pressure of a social consensus, always put into question, based on similar evaluations of the most appropriate or estimated use for a situation. Standardization is an artificial process, concerning few languages, of the description of the uses of a language, establishing lists of rules, of vocabularies, descriptions of uses and meanings (Robillard 1997: 214, Baggioni 1997: 215–216). But if this distinction is useful to distinguish spontaneous process from voluntary one in theory, it is difficult to apply most of the time in practice: “In most of the situations, the two movements can’t be isolated from each other” (Baggioni 1997: 215–216). This explains mainly that we find various definitions and uses of these concepts in literature. Zimmermann (2008: 198–199), to resolve the difficulty of separating normalization form standardization distinguishes three levels: norm 1, norm 2 and standard. In both conceptions here (Robillard &

40 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette

4 The selection of a language, of a variety and a style of language We already noted that there was a consensus in the choice of Swahili for communication with the local people. In fact, missionaries and military-expeditionary men selected the language already used in the area by the Arabs for their communication with the local people: when Europeans arrived in the area, trade routes, in particular for slave trade, already existed, and Swahili was the language used along the routes. All the expeditions, colonial or missionary, left from Zanzibar or Bagamoyo, a Swahili speaking area, and then followed the Arabic trade routes to the interior of the continent. That is why we often have an image of a spread of this language from the coast inland. Sacleux explains the choice of Swahili, and especially of the variety of Zanzibar, with reference to the business activity in this little island: Ce qui a valu au kiungudya sa prépondérance sur les autres dialectes, ce fut la situation privilégiée de la ville de Zanzibar, dont la rade est restée, jusque dans les dernières années, le centre commercial de l’Afrique orientale. (Sacleux 1939: 2) [What made kiungudya superior to the other dialects, was the favorable situation of Zanzibar city; its harbor remained, up to now, the business centre for all East Africa.] (our translation)

In other words, the first reason for choosing Swahili was its vehicular function in the area. Missionaries went to the interior of Africa to evangelize, and to reduce the Muslim influence in Africa. In consequence, they had to quickly communicate with the local people. We have already noted that the White Fathers, as other missionaries – especially Anglicans, Protestants in previous centuries in the Spanish and Portuguese areas – considered the ability to evangelize in the language of the local populations as important or indispensable. This priority led some of them to write about minority languages and local uses. However, it was not natural but a result of strategic thinking that in the first instance they chose Swahili to communicate along the routes penetrating the continent. This obvious consensus explains why the grammars were produced in a short time after the first expeditions: Delaunay’s was published in 1885, only six years after the White Fathers’ first expedition.

|| Baggioni’s and Zimmermann’s), we consider that by writing grammars, our authors participate in the standardization process, but also modify the normalization process.

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 41

Among the other African languages used in the area23, Swahili had another advantage: it was already written, even if only with Arabic characters. And the writing is for our authors an essential criterion in a hierarchical organization of languages. This language is considered then as sophisticated enough to serve the purpose of evangelization and colonization. Creating a writing system in Latin script by missionaries reinforced this superiority of Swahili upon other African languages in both domains: the religious and the secular one; this superiority still remains today. Fixing the language in a written form also implied – as a linguistic ideology of these times – a selection of information and a selection of the most stable, central, neutral forms of speech. This implicated two important choices: a selection of a variety of Swahili, and a selection of style in this variety. It’s probably because of his long and detailed description of Swahili dialects that Sacleux (1909: VIII) appears as the most exhaustive and modern linguist. This description, often mentioned in further works, distinguishes:  four main geographical dialects within which he lists seven “sub-dialects”,  six other varieties of Swahili, some of them no longer actively used, others dominated by the main dialects, and a last one reserved for poetry and literature. We already quoted his explanation for the superiority given to the Zanzibar dialect among others, which shows that he did not only describe the Swahili variation, but also analyzed it. Finally, he is remarkable for never himself choosing one of the dialects: his grammar describes all the dialects, without any restriction. The only hierarchy he made, and explicitly announced, was justified by the technical constraints of the book. He described in the main text the dominant variety, and explained in notes the differences found in the other dialects. Even if he denies it, in some way then, he contributes to this supremacy of the Zanzibar dialect: La présente Grammaire, comme son titre l’annonce, traite de tous les dialectes Swahilis. L’énoncé de la règle, s’il est sans restriction, s’applique à tous les dialectes. S’il y a quelque part une modification à la règle, celle-ci, avec les exemples qui l’appuient, est d’abord donnée pour les dialectes qui sont conformes au Ki-ungudya ou dialecte officiel ; les variantes dialectales sont indiquées, soit dans le corps de la règle, soit à sa suite sous forme d’appendice. La priorité, accordée ici au dialecte de Zanzibar, ne préjuge en rien de la question d’antériorité ou de pureté d’un dialecte sur l’autre. (Sacleux 1909: XXV)

|| 23 Like Sukuna, Gogo, Haya in actual Tanzania, Kikongo, Lingala or Tshiluba in actual Democratic Republic of Congo.

42 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette [The present Grammar, as its title shows it, concerns all Swahili dialects. The rule, if it has no restriction, applies for all the dialects. If there is somewhere a change in the rule, it is first done, with the examples, for the dialects that behave as the Kiungudya or official dialect; the dialectal variants are mentioned, whether in the rule, or in appendix. The precedence given here to the Zanzibar dialect does not imply it’s anterior or purest than another.]

Other authors than Sacleux do not explain the variety they chose, and even do not indicate that they are choosing a variety. They do not speak about variation in Swahili, except as we will see later, in term of purism: the variation is then considered as mistakes. In comparison to Sacleux’s grammar, their descriptions appear as very restrictive, and dominated by an ideology of language homogeneity. As Errington (2008) states: “they imposed unity in the face of diversity”. This traduces obviously an Occidental conception of multilingualism, and more particularly the ideology of a necessary linguistic homogeneity to allow the emergence of nations. But there was another important criterion in this functional higher value of Swahili: the existence of a prestigious variety of Swahili. We have already noted that Swahili was written in Arabic script, but it is important to emphasize that the uses of written Swahili were not only for trade: Swahili was the language of literature and poetry. This is noted by Sacleux in his dictionary (1939: 1093): Le Swahili est non seulement une langue riche, mais aussi une langue savante [Swahili is not only a rich language, but also an “erudite language”]

In other words, it was already a language of power (the power of the slave merchants), culture, as it could convey literature, poetry, and religion. In many ways, the choice of Swahili follows the criteria which establish the language hierarchy in Europe: writing, literature (and to an even greater extent, poetry), and asymmetric communication in trade. In addition to this selection of a diatopic variety, reducing Swahili speech into writing implicated a selection of a style (diaphasic variety). By choosing the most vehicular variety, our grammarians, with the possible exception of Sacleux, selected the most useful information and tool for the Europeans at the time: communicating first, but also controlling. These particular, restrictive uses of Swahili lead to an over-representation of some lexical and syntactic information in Swahili, but at the same time created a variety of Swahili, we could call it the “colonial Swahili”, specialized for communication between Europeans and African populations. These uses are more or less present in our corpus. The grammars without exercises in particular avoid this tendency. But in Van den Eynde’s and Delau-

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 43

nay’s grammar it is obvious, as we find in the exercises some examples of these colonial considerations and communicative sentences in Swahili: (Van den Eynde 1944: 54) Who brought the White’s letters? [Qui a apporté les lettres du Blanc ?] Where are the children of the village? They will all go to school to learn how to read and write. [Où sont tous les enfants du village ? Ils iront tous à l’école pour apprendre à lire et à écrire] This man hit his child. He had stolen the European man's chickens. [Cet homme a frappé son enfant. Celui-ci avait volé les poules de l’Européen.]

Delaunay’s (1885: 44): Will you imprison your bad slave? [Emprisonnerez-vous votre mauvais esclave?] Europeans do nice things. They don’t make it rain. [Les Européens font de belles choses. Ils ne font pas la pluie.] Will the cook roast meat? [Le cuisinier cuira-t-il de la viande?] You didn’t tie this lazy slave yet? [Vous n’avez pas encore lié cet esclave paresseux?]

When we compare on this point our grammars with those studied by Warnke & Schmidt-Brücken (2011), our authors appear much more colonial than missionaries. In their systematic study of the examples in 14 grammars on African languages written by German missionaries, the authors note colonial considerations (“Wenn Europäer kommen, behandle sie gut!” When Europeans come, treat them well!), but always along with religious ones – in sentences such as “Nach dem Tode werden wir auferweckt werden” – [after death we will be ressurrected] or “Denn die Menschen, welche das Wort Gottes verwerfen, werden verloren gehen” – [those who reject the Word of God will be lost] (in Warnke & Schmidt-Brücken 2011: 45, 50). In our grammars, we find some moral sentences, but they are never directly religious. It is significant that God is never mentioned in our corpus. The absence of these considerations in our grammars reveals that they are more written with a view to communicate than with a view to evangelize. This is the main reason why we qualify the objective of these two texts, as more colonial than missionary. The consequences of this selection of variety and style are various, the most important may be the fact that by fixing models of speech, they created models for speech, as Errington (2008: 10) says: “they devised models of speech which could then be used as models for speech”. In other words, the process of standardization, led here by non-indigenous people, by authors who were not specialists in linguistics in a context of colonization, had huge consequences for the process of standardization and then of normativization of Swahili. We can-

44 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette not identify all the selections the authors applied among Swahili uses in these grammars, nor analyze them, but we can observe in these grammars some normative positions of the authors, that reveal the hierarchy they considered between linguistic uses and languages. There are two kinds of normative positions in the missionary description of languages. The first one concerns the fact that the European languages (and Latin above all) are the references points for the authors. Swahili is in this case presented in terms of what it lacked in comparison with European languages. For instance, except in Brutel’s grammar, we find in every grammar a section for the French morphological tenses that have no equivalent in Swahili. Sacleux (1909: 288): Remarks on grammatical uses of moods and tenses and on some ways to compensate some tenses [Remarques sur l’emploi des modes et des temps et sur la manière de suppléer certains temps] Delaunay (1885: 157): Ways to express French phrases that have no equivalent in Swahili; Ways to express tenses that have no equivalent [Manière de rendre certaines expressions françaises qui n’ont pas de correspondant en kiswahili ; Manière de rendre les temps qui n’ont pas de correspondant] Van den Eynde (1944: 74): French conjugation tenses that have no equivalent in Swahili [Temps de notre conjugaison qui n’ont pas leurs correspondants en swahili]

The reference to European languages is also revealed by Sacleux’s comment (1909: 253): Swahili uses shortened and uncomplicated sentences [Le swahili s’exprime en phrases coupées et peu compliquées]

The second kind of normativity is when a variety of Swahili is presented as the reference: the reader is warned by the existence of less prestigious or wrong forms of Swahili. We can also refer to purism in this case. Delaunay for instance announces that he decided to describe the “real” and “pure” Swahili: “nous nous sommes appliqués à donner les règles d’un Kiswahili pur et correct” [We have therefore tried in this study to formulate the rules of a pure and correct Kiswahili] (our translation) (Delaunay 1885: 1). Van den Eynde uses the formula: “pure” Swahili. Sacleux appears here again as an exception: if he was using the first kind of normativity, he explicitly considers all varieties of Swahili as equal, as we saw it in a previous quotation (Sacleux 1909: XXV). Van den Eynde takes an opposing view, with Zanzibar dialect seen as the highest form, the others are considered as pidgins: Van den Eynde (1944: 6): This “kingwana” is all but a basic gobbledygook, with no care for essential concordance rules in the true Swahili language. [Ce ‘Kingwana’ n’est qu’un vil ba-

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 45 ragouin, ne tenant nullement compte des règles essentielles d’accord de la vraie langue Swahili]

To sum up, even if Swahili was already a language of wider communication since centuries, it was neither standardized nor fixed: as it is very prescient in Sacleux’s work, Swahili language was up to the 1910’s an amount of varieties, more or less inter-understandable, in relation with other local languages, but also with Arabic. Sacleux details very precisely how the variation was linked with geographical parameters, but also with stylistics uses (a more or less formal, written or familiar one). That is the reason why the missionaries thought to have not only to chose a language, but also a variety of language. In this choice they transposed their own ideologies; according to which the most formal uses were systematically preferred from the more familiar one. We have tried to show in this second perspective, how the selection of a variety of Swahili is linked to the superiority given to some Swahili speakers, but includes also the selection of a particular style of conversation. The samples in the grammars, in some exercises for instance, reveal this in an obvious way. In some ways the Swahili described by some of our authors is a “colonial Swahili”, for asymmetric interactions, power and control of the natives.

5 Conclusion We want to conclude this presentation by accentuating the main particularities of each text. With the risk of caricature, we want to show how differences of sensibilities and presentations also reveal the changing linguistic though at this period. When we read the grammars all together, each of it appears with its own specificities. In our corpus, the first one, Delaunay’s, appears as the most classical, in its organization and the presence of translation exercises. The vocabulary is even given progressively, as he indicates before each exercise ten new words to learn. It is also classical because normative. Most of the French grammars at this time began with normative considerations, referring to the best language. Delaunay’s very first words are here significant: “Une grammaire a pour but d’enseigner à parler et à écrire correctement” [To teach how to speak and write correctly is the purpose of a grammar] (our translation). Brutel’s in comparison is the more practical one: it is the most concise, and the concise vocabulary joined to the grammar makes it a good handbook (and pocket book) to be initiated in Swahili.

46 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette Van den Eynde’s, the last one, is the more colonial one in ideological terms. The introduction is obviously destined to ‘colonials’, giving advice for communicating and controlling the local populations more than for spreading faith and education. The grammar also includes advertisements for rifles and for boat travels that indicate that it was written for a colonial readership more than a missionary one. We can read for instance in the introduction of his grammar: Le devoir de tout colonial (…) est de faire profiter des bienfaits de la civilisation, les indigènes au milieu desquels il désire passer les plus belles années de sa vie. (Van den Eynde 1944: 54) [The duty of all colonial agents is to benefit civilization, through the indigenous people among whom he intends to spend the best years of his life.] (our translation)

Or: Si nous faisons du bon travail au Congo, et si nous aimons les Noirs, ceux-ci travailleront pour nous et seront nos amis. [If we do a good job in Congo, and if we love the Blacks, they will work for us and be our friends.] (our translation)

More than any other grammar in our corpus, Van den Eynde’s reveals the interrelation between missionaries’ approaches and goals of the colonial administrative ones. Sacleux’s grammar is the most modern and descriptive one: his systematic approach of Swahili, his care for details makes him a member of a movement for modern linguistics and dialectology as it emerged in Europe. Language is not only a way of communication, but a scientific object, that requires a scientific and systematic study. His work shows the emergence of the descriptive linguistics, breaking with the normative approach of grammar. Swahili is divided into pieces; it produces what we can call an abstraction of language, cut from oral practices. If this reinforces the supremacy of the writing forms, the aim is to create a stable, invariant object of description more than over-representing one variety of speech, for a superior kind of speakers. This comment on Sacleux’s work can be compared with the one made by Smith-Stark (2005) in his study of the first grammatizations in New Spain. As documented in Zimmermann (1997) the authors of grammars took little attention to specialized linguistic works in Europe, their descriptions got better and better. The four grammars, by their differences and similarities, in comparison to other missionary grammars, reveal the evolution of linguistic thinking as reflected in descriptive practice. Although they were not specialists in linguistics, nor philologists or even intellectuals, their writings trace the evolution of linguistic thought in Europe, and reveal the emergence of modern linguistics.

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 47

Corpus Brutel, E. 1911. [2nd ed. 1913] Vocabulaire français-kiswahili et kiswahili-français précédée d’une grammaire élémentaire. Bruxelles: Ministère des Colonies. Delaunay, Père H. 1885. Grammaire kiswahili. Paris: Imprimerie Levé. Sacleux, Charles 1909. Grammaire des dialectes swahilis. Paris: Procure des Pères du Saint Esprit. Van den Eynde, Félix 51944. Grammaire swahili suivie d’un vocabulaire. Bruxelles: Editorial Office H. Wauthoz-Legrand, A. et J. Wauthoz.

References Amourette, Céline & Clara Mortamet. 2012. Comment écrire une grammaire du Swahili? Le cas des grammaires missionnaires francophones (1885–1945). In Teddy Arnavielle (ed.), Voyages grammairiens, 153–170. Paris: L’Harmattan. Auroux, Sylvain. 1994. La révolution technologique de la grammatisation. Paris: Mardaga. Baggioni, Daniel. 1997. Normalisation/standardisation. In Marie-Louise Moreau (ed.), Sociolinguistique, 215–216. Sprimont: Mardaga. Bleek, William H. I. 1851. De nominum generibus linguarum Africae australis, Copticae, Semiticarum aliarumque sexualium. Bonn: Caroli Georgii, Thèse en philologie des langues africaines. Bleek, William H. I. 1862. A comparative grammar of South African languages. Part I. Phonology, Part. II (1869) The Concord. London: Trübner. Bonvini, Emilio. 1996. Repères pour une histoire des connaissances linguistiques des langues africaines. Histoire, Epistémologie, Langage 18(2). 127–148. Calvet, Louis-Jean 2002 [1974]. Linguistique et colonialisme. Paris: Payot. Chrétien, Jean-Pierre. 2005. Les premiers voyageurs étrangers au Burundi et au Rwanda: les “compagnons obscurs” des “explorateurs”. Afrique et histoire 4. 37–72. Colombat, Bernard, Jean-Marie Fournier & Christian Puech. 2010. Histoire des idées sur le langage et les langues. Paris: Klincksieck. Dupriez, Bernard. 1984. Gradus des précédés littéraires. Paris: 10/18 editions. Errington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a colonial world: A story of language, meaning, and power. Oxford: Blackwell. Fabian, Johannes. 1985. Language on the road: Notes on Swahili in two nineteenth century travelogues. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Fabian, Johannes. 1986. Language and colonial power: The appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo 1880–1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griefenow-Mewis, Catherine. 1996. J.L. Krapf and his role in researching and describing EastAfrican languages. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 47. Swahili Forum III, 160–171. Heine, Bernd & Derek Nurse (eds.) 2004. Les langues africaines. Paris: Karthala. Trad. of African Languages (2000), Cambridge University Press. trad. under direction of Henry Tourneux and Jeanne Zerner. Krapf, Johann Ludwig. 1850. Outline of the elements of the Kiswahili language with special reference to the Kinika dialect. Tübingen.

48 | Clara Mortamet and Céline Amourette Kröger, Rüdiger. 2011. Dokumentation afrikanischer Sprachen durch Herrnhuter Missionare in Deutsch-Ostafrika. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (eds.), Kolonialzeitliche Sprachforschung. Die Beschreibung afrikanischer und ozeanischer Sprachen zur Zeit der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft, 161–186. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Legere, Karsten. 2009. Missionary contributions to Bantu languages in Tanzania: James Thomas Last (1850–1933) and the Vidunda language. In Otto Zwartjes & Konrad Koerner (eds.), Quot homines tot artes: new studies in Missionary Linguistics: special issue of Historiographia Linguistica 36(2/3), 393–406. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lerot, Jacques. 1993. Précis de linguistique générale. Paris: Minuit. Levi, Joseph Abraham. 2009. Portuguese and other European missionaries in Africa. A look at their linguistic production and attitudes (1415–1885). In Otto Zwartjes & Konrad Koerner (eds.), Quot homines tot artes: New studies in Missionary Linguistics: Special issue of Historiographia Linguistica 36(2/3), 363–392. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Malik, Nasor. 1996. Extension of Kiswahili during the German colonial administration in continental Tanzania (former Tanganyika), 1885–1917. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 47. Swahili Forum III, 155–159. Meinhof, Carl. 1906. Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen [grammaire comparée des structures bantoues]. Berlin, Hamburg (2nd ed.): Reimer. Ménard, P. F. (White Father) 1908. Grammaire Kirundi. Alger: Maison Carrée. Mounin, Georges. 1974. Dictionnaire de la linguistique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Neveu, Franck & Peter Lauwers. 2007. La notion de tradition grammaticale et son usage en linguistique française. Langages 167. 7–28. Page, Ivan. 2007. Apprendre la langue pour répandre la parole. Le travail linguistique des missionnaires d’Afrique. Rome: Société des Missionnaires d’Afrique. Penrad, Jean-Claude. 2005. Le long cours swahili. Outre-Terre 2/2005 (11). 507–514. http://www.cairn.info/revue-outre-terre-2005-2-page-507.htm (checked 02/20/13) Pugach, Sara. 2012. Africa in translation – a history of colonial lLinguistics in Germany and beyond, 1814–1945. The University of Michigan Press. Raison-Jourde, Françoise. 1977. L’échange inégal de la langue: la pénétration des techniques linguistiques dans une civilisation de l’oral (Imerina, XIXème siècle). Annales 32(4). 639– 669. Ricard, Alain. 2007. Charles Sacleux, fondateur des études swahili en France. Histoire et Missions Chrétiennes 4. 105–114. Ricard, Alain. 2009. Le kiswahili, une langue moderne. Paris: Karthala. Robillard de, Didier. 1997. Normalisation. In Marie-Louise Moreau (ed.), Sociolinguistique, 214–215. Sprimont: Mardaga. Sacleux, Charles. 1939. Dictionnaire Swahili-Français. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie. Siouffi, Gilles. 2010. Le génie de la langue française. Etudes sur les structures imaginaires de la description linguistique à l’Age classique. Paris: Champion. Smith-Stark, Thomas C. 2005. Phonological descriptions in New Spain. In Otto Zwartjes & Cristina Altman (eds.), Missionary linguistics II. Orthography and phonology, 2–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Steere, Edward. 1870. A handbook of the Swahili language as spoken at Zanzibar. London: Bell & Daldy. Warnke, Ingo H & Daniel Schmidt-Brücken. 2011. Koloniale Grammatiken und ihre Beispiele – Linguistischer Sprachgebrauch als Ausdruck von Gewissheiten. In Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossman & Barbara Dewein (eds.), Kolonialzeitliche Sprachforschung. Die Beschrei-

Missionary descriptions in a colonial context | 49 bung afrikanischer und ozeanischer Sprache zur Zeit der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft, 31–54. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Zimmermann, Klaus (ed.) 1997. La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2008. La invención de la norma y del estándar para limitar la variación lingüística y su cuestionamento actual en términos de pluricentrisme (mundo hispanico). In Jürgen Erfurt & Gabriele Budach (eds.), Standardisaton et déstandardisation, 187–207. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Susanne Hackmack

Case in selected grammars of Swahili Abstract: Comparing the use of case and case-related notions such as nominative, accusative etc. in grammatical descriptions of Swahili of colonial times with present-day analyses reveals an interesting contrast: while the majority of early descriptions apply these constructs liberally, modern approaches do not, stating instead that Swahili does not exhibit any case system at all. One way of explaining this contrast would simply be to assume that the authors of early descriptions fell into the trap of transferring time-tested terminology from traditional or Latin grammar to a language with rather different structural properties. This assumption may certainly hold for a number of grammars, but it does not suffice to present the whole picture. For this picture to emerge, the theoretical linguistic context of the times needs to be taken into consideration, i.e. the question of what case could actually stand for in the period under consideration and how this concept was used in the description of individual languages and language as a whole. This in turn will show that the above mentioned attribution of a more or less naïve transfer of terminology by the early authors on Swahili does not do justice to these authors. Keywords: case, grammatical relations, semantic relations, pragmatic relations, theoretical linguistics || Susanne Hackmack: Universität Bremen, Fachbereich 10: Linguistik, Bremen, GERMANY, [email protected]

1 Introduction In view of the developments in the field of grammar writing over the past century it is hardly surprising that the comparison of Swahili grammars from the era of German colonialism in East Africa with modern descriptions reveals quite a number of differences. These differences range from the overall organization of the grammar and its presentation of the material to the employment of specific constructs, for example terms such as NP, PP and the like originating from phrase-structure-grammar, which were not in use during colonial times. Notwithstanding these differences, modern readers will hardly seem to encounter difficulties digesting the information conveyed in grammars of colonial

52 | Susanne Hackmack times: the majority of linguistic terms originate in what is commonly called traditional grammar, referring essentially to  major and minor parts of speech such as noun, verb, pronoun etc.,  secondary parts of speech such as tense, number, case etc. plus their respective values, i.e. past, present etc. or singular, plural etc. or nominative, accusative etc.,  grammatical functions such as subject and object. As concerns terminology, then, Swahili grammars produced during colonial times have a familiar ring to them as a large number of the constructs applied are still very much in use in present-day descriptions. However, this supposed familiarity may be misleading. A detailed comparison, i.e. one that contrasts the actual application and embodiment of certain constructs in grammars of colonial times with modern grammars shows interesting differences concerning the respective interpretations of said constructs with respect to concrete language data. One example for this phenomenon is the use of case and case-related notions, which will be investigated based on the following sample set of grammars: Büttner, Carl Gotthilf: 1891 Hülfsbüchlein für den ersten Unterricht in der Suaheli-Sprache Delius, Siegfried und Karl Roehl: 1939 Wegweiser in die Suaheli-Sprache Meinhof, Carl: 1906 Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen 1940 Die Sprache der Suaheli in Deutsch-Ostafrika Planert, Wilhelm: 1907 Die syntaktischen Verhältnisse des Suaheli Seidel, August: 1890 Praktische Grammatik der Suaheli-Sprache 1900 Suahili Konversationsgrammatik Velten, Carl: 1904 Praktische Suaheli-Grammatik nebst Wörterverzeichnis The authors of this set represent a range of professions that was characteristic for writers of grammatical work undertaken during colonial times: Seidel, Velten and Planert were trained as linguists and had no specific affiliation with Christian mission. Meinhof, Büttner, Delius and Roehl were trained as protestant theologians, the latter three completing longer stays as missionaries in Africa. Meinhof, whose work was extremely influential (see below), is difficult to pigeonhole with respect to his scholarly activities since his œuvre covers

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 53

a broad spectrum of issues. He is nowadays primarily associated with work on African linguistics but he also published extensively on other matters, for example religion, theology and Christian mission on the one hand as well as questions dealing with the politics of colonization on the other. Amongst other things, for example accessibility, this set was chosen because it represents a cross-section of work on Swahili during colonial times1 and contains work addressing both learners (Büttner, Delius & Roehl, Meinhof 1940, Seidel, Velten) as well as a more linguistically informed audience (Meinhof 1906, Planert). Another point of variation is the relative quality of the grammars: while, say, Delius & Roehl present a rather consistent and organized account, Seidel 1900 appears to be somewhat confused (and confusing).

2 Case in Swahili: modern analyses In Swahili, a noun phrase such as mpishi ‘the/a cook’ or mti yule ‘that tree’ stays invariant irrespective of its relation to either the verb, or another noun, or a preposition.2 The only instance which may be considered to reflect some kind of overt differentiation owing to a different relation with respect to the verb is to be found in diverging argument markers for subject and object in verb morphology as shown in the following examples: (1)

(2)

aliSM TA CL1(3SG) PAST ‘He hit you’

kuOM 2SG

pig V hit

-a Mood IND

u- li- mpig -a SM TA OM V Mood 2SG PAST CL1(3SG) hit IND ‘You hit him’ (SM: subject marker, OM: object marker, TA: tense-aspect marker)

|| 1 Delius & Roehl (1939) as well as Meinhof (1940) were published some twenty years after the end of the German occupation of East Africa. They are written very much in the spirit of the colonial era, though, as evinced for example in the foreword to the third edition of Delius & Roehl (1939) by K. Roehl: “So möge denn nun das Büchlein hinausgehen und an seinem Teile mit dazu beitragen, die Verbindung mit unserem, uns alten Afrikanern unvergeßlichen Deutsch-Ostafrika aufrecht zu erhalten […]” (Delius & Roehl 1939: IV) [May this book circulate and help sustain the bond with our Deutsch-Ostafrika which will remain unforgettable to us old Africans. […]] 2 We will be concerned with verb-governed case exclusively.

54 | Susanne Hackmack Depending on their grammatical function the agreement markers for subject and object alternate: a- vs. m- for third person singular, ku- vs. u- for second person singular. Krifka (1995) speaks here of “the only trace in Swahili of a case system”. Considering the fact, however, that this divergence appears in a very restricted context only, namely with noun-phrases in the second person on the one hand and, on the other hand, exclusively with noun-phrases of class 1 in the third person,3 and further considering that the precise status of these affixes with respect to their function as an agreement marker, a pronominal element or both is not conclusively settled, this divergence is neglectable and the claim that Swahili does not exhibit any overt case marking on nominal constituents is justified. This claim is found in countless current descriptions, for example in Krifka 1995: 1399, Möhlig & Heine 1999: 71 or in the WALS (World atlas of language structures online, Dryer & Haspelmath 2011, see features 28A, 49A and 50A). Creissels (2005: 247) explicitly states that to his knowledge, there is no African language that exhibits a case system “in which nouns are inflected for case, and where modifiers agree in case with the noun they modify”. It is thus not surprising that case and case-related notions are hardly used in modern grammars of Swahili.4

3 Case in Swahili: analyses from colonial times Grammars of colonial times present a very different picture. As has been noted by Hennig (2009), these works make ample use of constructs such as nominative, genitive, accusative and so forth. Analyzing her sample of grammars on African languages (which also includes Meinhof 1906) with respect to case, Hennig (2009: 128) notes that

|| 3 Like the vast majority of Bantu languages, Swahili exhibits an elaborate gender (or nounclass) system in which – depending on the underlying classification – up to 15 different nounclasses can be identified. Nouns of Class 1 (singular) and its corresponding class 2 (plural) prototypically refer to people. 4 ‘Modern grammars’ refers to work that attempts to give a comprehensive, primarily descriptive account of a language, working with an inventory of terms as known from Basic Linguistic Theory (see, for example, Dixon 2009). Approaches operating with dichotomies such as ‘deep case’ and ‘surface case’, as, for example, Government & Binding Theory, are not taken into consideration.

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 55 Obwohl erkannt wird, dass die Einheitenkategorie Kasus offenbar nachrangig ist, werden ihr eigene Kapitel gewidmet. Diese Diskrepanz ist besonders ausgeprägt bei Meinhof, der einerseits klar hervorhebt, dass es nie eine Kasusflexion im Bantu gegeben hat und andererseits dem Kasus ein Kapitel mit Teilkapiteln zum Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ und Genitiv widmet. [On the one hand, case categories are considered minor notions, on the other hand they are dealt with extensively. This discrepancy is particularly pronounced in Meinhof, who points out that there never was any case inflection in Bantu languages, yet devotes a whole chapter to case with subsections on nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.]

This statement also holds true of the set of grammars listed above: although the precise way and frequency with which case-related terms are employed may vary, none of the sample grammars gets by without referring to them, as the following, randomly chosen examples show. The equivalent of the English term subject is referred to as either Subjekt or Satzgegenstand, and the equivalent of the English term object is referred to as either Objekt or Satzziel. The various case-forms are referred to by either their Latin names, by ordinals (where 1. case = nominative, 2. case = genitive, 3. case = dative and 4. case = accusative) or by the use of the interrogative pronoun which in German is fully inflected for case (wer–wessen–wem–wen). These and further features which will be discussed below make such statements difficult to transfer into English. The translations are thus to be read cum grano salis. Eine Deklination der Hauptwörter gibt es nicht im Suaheli. Nominativ, Dativ und Akkusativ lauten gleich. Ersterer steht immer vor dem Zeitwort, Dativ und Akkusativ nach demselben. Treffen letzere beiden in einem Satze zusammen, so steht der Dativ vor dem Akkusativ, z.B. mwanamke huyu ana mtoto, diese Frau hat ein Kind, mwanamume huyu amemwonyesha mtoto maua yale, dieser Mann hat dem Kinde jene Blumen gezeigt. (Velten 1904: 35) [There is no declension of nouns in Swahili. Nominative, dative and accusative are identical. Nominative precedes the verb, dative and accusative follow it. If a sentences contains both dative and accusative, dative precedes accusative, for example mwanamke huyu ana mtoto, this woman has a child, mwanamume huyu amemwonyesha mtoto maua yale, this man has shown that child those flowers.] Der Wer-Fall (Nominativ) wird gekennzeichnet durch die Voranstellung des Hauptwortes, das Satzgegenstand ist; und durch seine Wiederaufnahme am Anfang des Zeitwortes durch die diesem vorangestellte Kennsilbe des Satzgegenstands: Mtoto amechukua kisu das Kind hat ein Messer genommen Der Wen-Fall (Akkusativ) wird dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass das Satzziel (Objekt) hinter das Zeitwort gestellt wird: Kisu kikali kimekata mtoto das scharfe Messer hat ein Kind geschnitten

56 | Susanne Hackmack Der Wem-Fall (Dativ) wird dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass das entferntere Satzziel des Wem-Falles vor das nähere des Wen-Falles gestellt wird: nimempa mtoto mzigo mdogo tu ich habe dem Kinde nur eine kleine Last gegeben. (Delius & Roehl 1939: 50) [Nominative is characterized by prepending the noun which is subject and referencing it at the beginning of the verb by means of a subject index-marker: Mtoto amechukua kisu the child has taken a knife Accusative is characterized by positioning the object behind the verb: Kisu kikali kimekata mtoto the sharp knife has cut a child Dative is characterized by positioning the indirect object in front of the object: nimempa mtoto mzigo mdogo tu I have given the child only a small load.] Der Nominativ ist der Kasus des Satzsubjekts und des Prädikats, sofern es ein Substantiv (bzw. Fürwort ist, z.B. Subjekt: muungu anaweza yote, Gott vermag alles Prädikat: mimi si dada yako, ich bin nicht Deine Schwester. […] Manche Verba regieren im Aktivum zwei Akkusative, deren zweiter im prädikativen Verhältnis zum ersten steht. Wendet man Sätze mit derartigen Verben passivisch, so werden beide Akkusative in den Nominativ verwandelt. (Seidel 1900: 254) [Nominative is the case of the subject and the predicate, if this is a noun or pronoun, for example: subject: muungu anaweza yote, God is capable of anything predicate: mimi si dada yako, I am not your sister […] Some verbs govern two accusatives in the active form, the second of which is in a predicative relation to the first. If such sentences are passivized, both accusatives change into nominatives.] Die Formen der persönlichen Fürwörter sind sich gleich für den dritten und vierten Fall, und unterscheiden sich von den Formen des ersten Falls nur in der zweiten und dritten Person (der mtu-Klasse). Bei den Hauptwörtern ist es meist nur aus der Stellung im Satz zu sehen, ob sie im ersten oder im vierten Fall stehen. (Büttner 1891: 17) [The forms of personal pronouns are identical in dative and accusative and differ from the forms of nominative only in the second and third person (of the mtu-class). As concerns nouns, the only way to identify whether they are nominative or accusative is by their position within the sentence.]

Even Planert, who specifically points out that Es bedarf keiner besonderen Auseinandersetzung mehr, um das im Indogermanischen geltende Kasussystem als für die Gesamtheit der Sprachen durchaus unzulänglich zu erweisen. [There is no need for discussion anymore to prove that the Indo-Germanic case system is quite inappropriate for the entirety of languages.]

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 57

Planert (1907: 12) repeatedly uses constructs such as accusative, dative etc. and compound expressions such as nominative/genitive or nominative/locative in his description of Swahili. Irrespective of the quality of the above translations, one thing is obvious: compared to modern grammars the descriptive category case seems to have undergone a conceptual shift since its application to Swahili in modern analyses (namely, no application) is diametrically opposed to the way it was used during colonial times. This conceptual shift is particularly obvious in statements such as “nominative is characterized by pre-verbal position”, i.e. statements that define a caseform on the basis of its position in the sentence, surely something that no present-day author would do.

4 An attempt at explanation One possible reason for the way the category case was used in grammars of colonial times is based on the assumption that the authors applied terminology familiar from grammars of German (or Latin) more or less naïvely to a language that exhibits quite different structural features. Amidu (2004: 47) calls grammars that operate on this basis “translational grammars” and describes them as follows: They are founded on the principle that given knowledge of English or French grammar, all one needs to do in writing a grammar of Kiswahili or other unwritten languages, is to present the material in such a way that English or French nationals can easily understand it.

A translational grammar in the sense of Amidu would involve the translation of Swahili expressions into German, the analysis of the German translations with constructs from traditional or Latin grammar and the application of said constructs to the corresponding elements in the Swahili data. In essence, this modus operandi constitutes (at least in part) what Hennig glosses a “German perspective” (cf. Hennig 2009). If this procedure involves an uncritical transfer of a formal concept that has no formal correlate in Swahili (as, for example, dative), it may well be viewed as naïve or even showing a colonial mentality. Hennig and Amidu are not the only authors who find fault with such practice. Welmers has voiced the following criticism: In conclusion, African language studies have too commonly – and sometimes still are – characterized by an uncritical and often naïve imposition of classical grammatical catego-

58 | Susanne Hackmack ries and terminology in structures to which they are quite foreign. In both description and labelling, it is past time to bring the era of linguistic imperialism to an end and make a more consistent effort to capture what is really going on in African languages. (Welmers 1973: 382–383)

Welmers’ reprimand seems a bit harsh considering the complexity of the task at hand: the prerequisite for capturing “what is really going on” in any language, i.e. a set of structural tools that would account for language-specific idiosyncrasies while at the same time being adequate for use in language comparison, has not been compiled as yet and constitutes a primary topic in linguistic theorybuilding to this very day (cf., for example, the Haspelmath-Newmeyerdiscussion in Language 86(3), 2010). As concerns the sample grammars of Swahili, accusing the authors of linguistic imperialism is tempting considering the overall imperialistic setting and frame of mind in which they worked but overlooks the fact that the majority of these grammars were intended to be used in teaching and that many authors used terms and constructs that they considered their potential audiences familiar with, putting up with the shortcomings of this approach quite consciously. And finally, one important point needs to be clarified before we ascribe “an uncritical and often naïve imposition of classical grammatical categories and terminology” to the sample grammars, namely how case and case related notions were generally interpreted and used at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and how the authors of these grammars may have been influenced by the linguistic theory of the times. The following sections are devoted to the discussion of this point.

5 Case then and now In order to pinpoint differences between the use of case and case-concepts during colonial and modern times, a first approach may be to compare standard definitions of case from the 19th and early 20th century with modern definitions. However, such a comparison does not lead very far. As a matter of fact, definitions in standard encyclopedias from the 19th and early 20th century and modern terminological dictionaries are not at all out of accord. As an example, compare the following entries for case from the 19th, 20th and the 21st century: Herders Conversations-Lexikon 1857: Beugungsformen, Fälle, nennt die Grammatik die verschiedenen Formen eines Nomens, um dadurch die Beziehungen auszudrücken, in welche es im Zusammenhang der Rede als Satztheil, gekommen ist.

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 59 [In grammar, inflectional forms or cases are the various forms that a noun may have in order to indicate the relations that it may enter into in connected speech] Pierer’s Universallexikon 1857: Beugefall od. die Veränderungen, welche am Ende des Stammes od. am Stammvocal eines Nomens vorgenommen werden können, damit die verschiedenen Verhältnisse der Objecte zu dem Subjecte in dem Satze angezeigt werden können. [Inflection or change that may occur at the end of the stem or the stem vowel in order to indicate the various relations of the objects to the subject in a sentence.] Brockhaus’ kleines Konversationslexikon 1911: Kasus (lat. Casus), Beugefälle, in der Grammatik die verschiedenen Formen, welche ein Nomen oder Pronomen zum Ausdruck der verschiedenen Beziehungen im Satz (Subjekt, Objekt etc.) annimmt. [In grammar, cases are the various forms that a noun or pronoun takes in order to express the various relations in a sentence (subject, object)] The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics 22007: Inflectional category, basically of nouns, which typically marks their role in relation to other parts of the sentence. E.g. in Latin vidi puellam ‘I saw a girl’ puellam ‘(a) girl’ has the ending of the *accusative case (puella -m) and this marks it as the object of the verb vidi. (Matthews 2007 s.v. case)

Judging solely from these definitions, the difference in the application of case and case-related notions with respect to Swahili seems none the clearer. The entries are all similar and name two parameters related to case, one of which refers to its more formal, morphological aspect, i.e. inflection, the other referring to the potential function of case-forms, i.e. marking relations in a sentence. These relations are specified in terms of grammatical functions, i.e. subject and object. Explications such as the ones above are problematic, though, in two respects: 1) it is in their very nature and owed to their need for brevity not to be concerned with the often complex and controversial discussion of the definiendum within theoretical linguistics, 2) they are based on a number of defining terms which themselves need to be clarified in order to fully grasp the entry at hand (here: grammatical functions). A deeper understanding of the discrepancy between grammars of Swahili in colonial and modern times will thus have to come about by a more thorough study of the discussion of case and notions such as subject and object during the time in question. To all intents and purposes comparable to modern linguistics, case and case-related concepts were lively debated issues at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century within German theoretical linguistics and had

60 | Susanne Hackmack been so for some time before, too (cf. Hübschmann 1875: 74–130). The following list shows that the topics addressed were manifold and often have a decidedly modern ring to them. As a matter of fact, many of these issues have not yet been conclusively settled and seemingly similar questions continue to be discussed up to the present day (see, for example, Cienki 1995 and Willems 1997). Controversies touched topics such as  the differentiation of so-called logical and localist cases (see below) and the question whether the latter can be assumed to be primary notions, underlying all cases, or not (see, for example, Holzweissig 1877, Marty 1910),  the question of whether specific case-forms may be allocated a stable basic meaning (Grundbedeutung or Grundbegriff) and if so, what this meaning is and how it can be described,  the discussion of the various uses (Gebrauchsweisen) of a specific case-form (such as dativus commodi, dativus incommodi, dativus possessivus etc.) (see, for example, Delbrück 1907: 225ff.),  methodological questions such as whether case and case-forms ought to be approached semasiologically or onomasiologically, i.e. whether the startingpoint for analysis ought to be the set of forms that a given language exhibits or the set of relations that these forms may potentially express. Brugmann (1904: 373) comments on the problems of the wide-spread onomasiological approach as follows: “Die Gruppierung und Benennung der Kasusbildungen geschieht herkömmlicherweise nach der Bedeutung, nicht nach der Form, was zur Folge hat, dass zumteil nicht nur formantisch Verschiedenes unter eine Benennung fällt, […] sondern auch formantisch Identisches oder doch im formantischen Wortteil etymologisch Verwandtes voneinander getrennt wird […]”. [Grouping and naming of case-formation is conventionally done on the basis of meaning rather than form which means that in some instances, formally distinct entities are subsumed under one designation […] while in other instances, formally identical or etymologically related entities are being separated […]] A thorough review of these discussions and the question of the degree to which they may have foreshadowed modern developments would be a very valuable endeavor but lies beyond the scope of this paper. In any case, the list shows that there were many open questions and varying opinions in connection with case. This means that in order to make sense of the way that an individual author of colonial times interpreted and applied case-notions or grammatical concepts in general, it is advisable to study the theoretical ‘affiliation’ of said author, i.e. the question by which of the proposed approaches or by which authors he or she may have been influenced. This task is by no means limited to authors of the past but also holds true concerning present-day work.

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6 Linguistic influences As concerns the authors of the set of grammars under consideration, the central figure is surely Carl Meinhof, whose work can be considered to have been the cornerstone for the development of African studies in Germany. The following, slightly longer excerpt from Meinhof’s obituary in African Studies underlines his massive impact on the field and its students: It would be extremely difficult to overestimate the value of the work done by Meinhof in the field of African linguistics. In its combination of quantity and quality, of range and depth, it holds a unique place. In the course of his fortunately long career – though the life of a man such as he must, to his friends and admirers, always seem too short – this great scholar engaged in the most numerous and varied activities for the promotion of the science which he had made his life's work, and with which his name must always remain prominently and gratefully associated. In his extensive researches and publications – kept up, we know, until the very eve of the latest world war, and continued, we may feel sure, during that war as it was during the previous one – he penetrated into every corner of the African linguistic field, and made, besides, more than one contribution of value to African studies other than linguistic, and to linguistic studies other than African. In his work as a teacher and guide of others interested in African languages and allied subjects, he gathered round him, both to his own school in Hamburg, and in places geographically far removed from that Mecca of the African linguist, an ever-growing band of pupils and collaborators, whom he inspired, stimulated, and in every way aided in the quest for knowledge of the African and his tongues; and, with Meinhof at its head, and as its chief forum the journal which he founded as the Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen (renamed the Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen when Germany had lost her colonies), the Hamburg school took and long retained the lead in African linguistic science, and, to say the very least, remained unquestionably in the very front rank when other schools of African languages became active elsewhere. (Lestrade 1946: 73)

With the exception of August Seidel, Meinhof’s close association with the other authors of the above set (or, rather, their close association with Meinof’s work) can be safely established. Büttner was a “good friend” of Meinhof, Meinhof’s and Velten’s tenure at the Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen in Berlin overlapped, Roehl and Delius were students of his and mention him both in their respective forewords and Planert explicitly thanks Meinhof and names him as influential for his work (Pugach 2012: 73, Delius & Roehl 1939: I & IV, Planert 1907: VI, and the respective entries in Jungraithmayr & Möhlig 1983). On the basis his of pivotal position in the newly developing field of African studies and the assumption that his viewpoints and methods have at least partially rubbed off on others, the question of which linguistic thought Meinhof himself was influenced by is of central interest.

62 | Susanne Hackmack Establishing to what precise degree specific work or specific authors may or may not have inserted influence on others can prove to be a difficult task, growing all the more complicated the more time has elapsed. Koerner, who devotes quite some work on this question (see as an example Koerner 1989), mentions various ways in which the exertion of linguistic influence may be detected. Of these, “the most important evidence in favour of a claim of influence may result from direct references by an author to the work of others.” (Koerner 1989: 41). In the case of Meinhof, there is one author who undisputedly exerted a strong influence and thus deserves special attention, namely Wilhelm Wundt and his school of thought. Wundt (1832–1920) is probably best known as one of the founders of Völkerpsychologie ( ‘psychology of peoples’), which is described as follows: Völkerpsychologie heißt seit Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts die Wissenschaft vom Volksgeist, von den Elementen und Gesetzen des Seelisch-Geistigen im Völkerleben. Die V. untersucht jene psychischen Vorgänge, die in ihrer Entstehung u. Entwicklung an menschl. Gemeinschaften gebunden sind. Ihre Hauptuntersuchungsgebiete sind die Erscheinungen des objektiven Geistes, vor allem Sprache, Kunst, Mythus und Religion, Sitte, Gesellschaft, Recht, Kultur überhaupt. (Schischkoff 1957: 631) [From the middle of the 19th century onwards, psychology of peoples is the science of ethnic spirit, of psychological elements and rules that are manifest in ethnic communities. Psychology of peoples studies those phenomena whose emergence and development are bound to human society. The primary areas of research are aspects of the objective spirit, such as language, art, myths and religion, moral conventions, society, law, or, generally speaking, culture]5

First and foremost a psychologist, then, Wundt devoted the first two books of his volumes on Völkerpsychologie to language and it is thus not surprising that he was an integral part of the discussion within general linguistics, too. Accordingly, Wundt was studied widely and read – amongst others – by Meinhof. This is not only evident from the fact that Meinhof cites Wundt repeatedly, but can also be deduced from other sources, which underline the strong bond between Wundt and Meinhof. Wundt wrote the following praise of Meinhof: Prof. Meinhof hat sich durch seine Lautlehre der Bantusprachen sowie durch verschiedene andere Beiträge zur afrikanistischen Völkerkunde ausgezeichnet. Er kann als ein her|| 5 Please note that the term ‘psychology of peoples’ and the following translation can only be considered an approximation as constructs such as Volk, Völkerpsychologie, Volksgeist, Erscheinungen des objektiven Geistes etc. are anything but clearly defined notions. Völkerpsychologie itself has been translated into English in a number of ways, for example as ‘folk psychology’ or ‘ethnic psychology’ (cf. Blumenthal 1975: 1086, fn. 1)

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 63 vorragender Vertreter jener aus der deutschen Mission [...] hervorgegangenen Männer betrachtet werden, die sich um die Erforschung der Sprachen und Kulturen vornehmlich der dem Umkreis der deutschen Kolonialgebiete angehörigen Völker in hohem Maße verdient gemacht [...] haben. (Wundt 1909, quoted from Brauner 1995: 59) [Prof Meinhof has distinguished himself with his study on the phonology of Bantu languages and various other contributions to African ethnology. He can be regarded as an outstanding representative of the German mission and those men that have rendered excellent service in researching the languages and peoples in and about the German colonial territories]

Meinhof in turn states that it was the study of Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie that enabled him to structure and organize all the many particulars that he encountered in his work over the years (Meinhof 1917, quoted from Brauner 1995: 64) and stresses the importance of Wundt’s work for linguistics in general and African studies in particular (Meinhof 1920: 241ff.). As concerns case, Wundt (1904: 71ff.) held the view that the development of case in a language follows a fixed pattern of stages. The first (or, in Wundt’s words, lowest) stage is evident in languages “bei welchen nicht nur Wortunterschiede, sondern auch andere Ausdrucksmittel der Kasusbeziehung bloß in schwachen Spuren vorkommen”, i.e. in which the means to express caserelations, such as modification of the noun or other means, are rare. Wundt names various African languages as well as the languages spoken on PapuaNew Guinea as examples. The second stage is more or less the opposite of the first and is found in languages that exhibit an excessive degree of nominal modification, in which the type of relation expressed also comprises ‘concrete’, i.e. spatial and temporal relations. According to Wundt, this type is manifest in languages spoken in northern America, Oceania and Australia, the “highest degree of excessiveness”, though, is found in Basque and the proto-Altaic and Caucasian languages. The third stage, finally, is represented by Indo-European and Semitic languages in which case-formation (on the noun) is restricted to mark but a few, as Wundt calls them Grundverhältnisse (‘basic relations’) while other relations (again primarily spatial) are expressed by the use of adpositions or particles which exclusively serve this purpose. Wundt considers as basic those relations that can be mapped onto grammatical functions such as subject and object and these he calls cases of “innere Determination” ( ‘internal assignation’) whilst other, more “remote” relations are called cases of “äußere Determination” ( ‘external assignation’). His whole theory on case hinges on this classification. However, Delbrück (1901: 129) points out that Wundt’s categorization of cases leads to precisely the same classes as in the time-honored division of cases into “grammatical/logical” cases such as nominative, accusative, dative etc.

64 | Susanne Hackmack and “local” cases such as ablative, locative, essive etc. This is surprising, for Wundt objected to this division. Delbrück, who devotes a whole book to Wundt’s linguistic theory, was not the only one who found fault with his approach. Another vocal critic was Marty (1910), who also notices that Wundt uses elements of a theory he disapproves of to substantiate his own, very similar classification (“Etwas, was er der von ihm bekämpften Theorie zum Vorwurfe macht, trägt er also auch wieder unbedenklich als Bestandteil seiner eigenen vor.” Marty 1910: 7). Surely one of the biggest problems in Wundt, however, is the fact that the terminology he used was anything but clearly defined, leading to severe problems in understanding and even contradictory statements. Concepts such as Kasus ‘case’, Kasusbegriff ‘case-concept’, Kasusform ‘case-form’, Kasusverhaltnis ‘case-relation’, Kasusbedeutung ‘case-meaning’, logisch ‘logical’, psychologisch ‘psychological’, grammatisch ‘grammatical’ etc. were used in an extremely inconsistent manner as evinced by the plethora of footnotes in Marty (1910) devoted to Wundt’s “Ungenauigkeiten” (‘imprecisions’). Not least because of this terminological confusion a detailed review of Wundt’s work on case is beyond this paper. The focus thus lies on those assumptions that most clearly can be seen to have had an impact on Meinhof. As the following two excerpts show, there are strong parallels in Wundt’s and Meinhof’s stance on case: Diese Vorgänge der Verschmelzung und Differenzierung der Kasus unter dem Einfluß mannigfacher Assoziationsbedingungen durchkreuzen sich nun noch mit zwei weiteren Erscheinungen von entgegengesetztem Charakter, die aber beide dahin zusammenwirken, daß die Kasusformen des Nomens überhaupt für die einer Sprache zur Verfügung stehenden Kasusbegriffe durchaus kein Maß abgeben können. Erstens kann nämlich die Sprache gewisse Kasus bloß durch die W o r t s t e l l u n g ausdrücken, ohne daß am Worte selbst irgendwelche Veränderungen eintreten, die mit dem Kasusbegriff in Beziehung stehen. Zweitens können sich besondere, von dem Worte trennbare Partikeln entwickeln, die als Äquivalente der Kasusformen funktionieren. Solche Partikeln sind die Präpositionen, an deren Stelle in selteneren Fällen auch Postpositionen auftreten. Infolgedessen kann eine Sprache an den spezifischen Kasuselementen des Nomens, den Kasussuffixen oder präfixen, sehr arm sein und gleichwohl über eine reiche Fülle wirklicher Kasusunterscheidungen verfügen. (Wundt 1904: 68–69) [Those processes of conflation and differentiation of case under the influence of associative relations are interwoven with two further phenomena of converse character, which both lead to the insight that the case-forms for nouns supplied by a language are no indication whatsoever of the case-concepts that said language may have at its disposal. First of all, case may be expressed by w o r d - o r d e r alone, without the word itself showing any modification that may be related to this case-concept. Secondly, special particles may develop which are separable from the word itself and function as equivalents of caseforms. Such particles are prepositions, in more rare cases postpositions, too. Thus, a lan-

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 65 guage may be very impoverished concerning case-specific elements of nouns, i.e. casesuffixes or case-prefixes, yet avail itself of a rich inventory of true case distinguishing means.] Wenn man von Flexion spricht, denkt man zunächst an die Abwandlung des Nomens und des Verbum durch Affixe, also an Deklination und Konjugation. Es unterliegt keinem Zweifel, daß viele, wohl die meisten der heute gesprochenen Sprachen eine solche Abwandlung des Nomen nicht kennen – mag das Nomen im Satz diese oder jene Stellung haben, es bleibt vollkommen unverändert. Damit ist natürlich nicht gesagt, daß die gegenseitige Beziehung der Worte im Satz, die z.B. im Lateinischen durch Kasusendungen ausgedrückt wird, überhaupt nicht angedeutet werden könnte. Es muß ja in allen Sprachen der Welt erkennbar sein, ob z.B. die drei Begriffe Mann, schlagen, Knabe bedeuten sollen, daß der Mann den Knaben schlägt, oder daß der Knabe den Mann schlägt. Ferner muß ja erkennbar sein, ob die beiden Begriffe Vater, Freund heißen sollen „der Vater des Freundes“ oder „der Freund des Vaters“ Also muß die Kasusbeziehung überall zum Ausdruck kommen. […] Wundt hat vorgeschlagen, zwischen Kasus der inneren Determination, die überall zum Ausdruck kommen müssen, und Kasus der äußeren Determination zu unterscheiden, da die letzteren eine entferntere Beziehung ausdrücken und in vielen Sprachen durch Präpositionen und Postpositionen oder andere Umschreibungen ersetzt werden. (Meinhof 1936: 83–84). [The first thing one associates with inflection is the modification of nouns and verbs by affixes, i.e. declension and conjugation. There is no doubt, however, that many, probably most of the languages spoken today do not exhibit any such modification of the noun, which stays invariant whatever its position in the sentence. This is not to say that the mutual relation of words in a sentence, which in, say, Latin is expressed via case-endings, cannot be expressed. Every language in the world needs to be able to indicate whether the three terms man, hit, boy are to mean that the man hits the boy or the boy hits the man. Further, it needs to be able to indicate whether the terms father, friend ought to mean ‘the father of the friend’ or ‘the friend of the father’. […] Wundt suggests differentiating between cases of internal and cases of external assignation. Cases of internal assignation must be expressed in any language while cases of external assignation, expressing a more remote relation, may in many languages be replaced by prepositions, postpositions and other means.]

Both Wundt and Meinhof differentiate between case as a conceptual notion (Kasusbegriff ‘case-concept’ in Wundt, Kasusbeziehung ‘case-relation’ in Meinhof) and the formal means by which this notion can be expressed. As concerns the latter, inflectional affixes are but one possible means to express the conceptual notion of case – Wundt specifically names word-order and adpositions as other potential markers and Meinhof adopts this point with respect to cases of “external assignation”. In these quotes both Wundt’s and Meinhof’s use of the term case – and, as will be shown below, case-related notions such as nominative etc. – correlates primarily with the functional aspect of this concept, which means that ‘case’ can be equated to ‘relation in a sentence’ and is thus dissociated from the for-

66 | Susanne Hackmack mal aspect of inflection. It is on this basis that Wundt and Meinhof could consider cases “of internal assignation” to be a universal concept. This observation is crucial for the discussion at hand, namely the discrepancy in the application of case and case-related notions then and now as described above: if case could be used in a way that is more or less synonymous with ‘relation in a sentence’ and which disregards the inflectional aspect of this concept, it comes as no surprise that Meinhof and others had no qualms in applying this term in the description of Swahili (or any language without case inflection). In modern grammars, on the other hand, this use of case seems outmoded. Thus, an answer to the core-question of this paper is arrived at. At the same time, another historiographically interesting question arises: how did the conceptual shift that case and case-related notions have undergone over time come about? The answer to this question will necessitate a closer look at what has been termed quite generally ‘relations in a sentence’.

7 Relations in a sentence Analyzing the set of colonial grammars of Swahili with respect to the question which relations (verb-governed) case-notions such as nominative, accusative etc. marked, the answer seems to be in accord with the definitions of case presented above: ‘relations in a sentence’ maps onto ‘grammatical functions’, i.e. subject, object, indirect object. This allocation is done with varying degrees of explicitness. Meinhof (1906: 27–28) directly correlates nominative and subject, accusative and object. As has been shown above, Delius & Roehl equate nominative, accusative and dative with Satzgegenstand, Satzziel and entferntes Satzziel ‘ topic’, ‘ sentence target’ and ‘ remote sentence target’ which – at the time – corresponded to subject, object and indirect object. Velten does not explicitly equate case-forms with grammatical functions, but gives examples which show that he has, in fact, such a correlation at the back of his mind for he describes case-forms in terms of word-order, i.e. by explicating how the grammatical functions in Swahili are identified. This mapping does not seem too remote from modern uses, i.e. the allocation of case-forms and specific grammatical functions is still being undertaken as the modern definition above shows where accusative case is said to denote objecthood.

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What has changed massively, though, is the elaboration and specification of the set of grammatical relations, which came about not least because of the work done on other types of relation in a sentence. Generally speaking, we can say that modern linguistics avails itself of a vast inventory of specific terms to denote various kinds of relation within a sentence: apart from the grammatical functions subject, object etc. there are sets of relations such as source, goal, agent etc., i.e. terms enumerating the semantic roles of the relation denoted by a specific case-form. Furthermore, there are terms such as given/new or theme/rheme or topic/focus etc. to specify a constituent’s function with respect to information structure and sentence perspective. The use of these constructs may not in all cases be consistent, their precise definition is still a matter of debate and the relative significance they have within a modern theory of grammar is as yet not settled. Still, they can be allocated a relatively stable core meaning: any contemporary linguist will have at least a basic understanding when it comes to expressions such as subject, agent or theme, and – most importantly – will not confuse a relation such as subject with either agent or theme. If this were not the case, one of the most widely-spread systems within syntactic typology would lose its conceptual basis: the description of sentences with respect to the three parameters S (only argument of an intransitive verb), A and P (agent-like and patient-like argument of a transitive verb, cf. Dixon 1972 or Comrie 1978) hinges on an analysis of sentence-relations which is more sophisticated than just subject and object. This state of affairs was rather different during colonial times, as the study and systemization of these constructs as well as the discussion concerning their place in grammatical theory took place after the structuralist turn in linguistics and consequently, grammarians of the 19th and early 20th century did not have them at their disposal in the same way. This is not to say that concepts such as, say, agent, were unknown. However, owing at least partly to the fact that the analysis of sentences for which these constructs are essential notions was not undertaken in the same way as in today’s linguistics, where various levels of description (morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) can be identified, each of which based on a large theoretical apparatus, these constructs were used in a much less systematic way at the time in question. In many instances, then, constructs such as subject or object – and accordingly, nominative, accusative, dative – were used to subsume a number of different types of relation for which modern linguistics offers specific terms: while modern linguistics distinguishes relatively consistently between, say, nominative, agent, subject and theme, linguistics at the turn of the century, for lack of a systematic terminology, sometimes had no option but to merge these constructs

68 | Susanne Hackmack or, more specifically, certain aspects of their meaning. A term like subject could thus either refer to the formal, inflectional features of a noun-phrase (case-form, verbal agreement, position with respect to the verb etc.), or to a semantic relation comparable to agent, or to a pragmatic notion such as ‘that which is being talked about’, ‘the starting point of the message’ – or, in a simple activedeclarative with an agentive verb, where these relations coincide in a constituent, all of the above. Actually, these various aspects of subject and, for that matter, nominative, have all cropped up in the grammars under discussion. The term wer-Fall ‘whocase’ used by Delius & Roehl (see above) refers to inflection and addresses the formal features of nominative/subject, as do specifications that draw on wordorder and pre-verbal position. Satzgegenstand ‘Topic’ on the other hand corresponds with a pragmatic function comparable to theme while Meinhof’s statement on case (see above) suggests a reading more in accord with semantic roles. Linguists at the time were of course aware of a problem, especially in those cases where the equation of say, subject with agent or subject with topic would not work (cf., for example, Gabelentz 1901: 370). As a matter of fact, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century marked the beginning of a more advanced nomenclature and the discussion of distinctions such as ‘logical’, ‘grammatical’ and ‘psychological’ subject. The following quote from Wegener (1885: 20) is an example of the way such concepts were discussed (for a more detailed overview see Seuren 1998: 120–133; for a thorough analysis Elffers-van Ketel 1991: 163–326). […] die Gruppe von Vorstellungen von der eine Aussage gemacht wird, nennen wir Subject, die Aussage selbst Prädicat. Das Subject ist das intresselose Bekannte, die Aussage das Intressierende und Neue, allerdings nicht immer findet dies Verhältniss zwischen grammatischen Subject und grammatischen Prädicate statt. Bei der Betonung: d e i n Vater hat es gesagt, ist das Neue und interessirende das grammatische Subject, aber logisch das Prädicat. Man darf darum jene Exposition das logische Subject, das Interessierende und neue dagegen das logische Prädicat nennen. Allerdings ist dabei der Uebelstand, dass der Ausdruck logisches Subject ein fester Terminus in der Grammatik schon geworden ist: Man versteht darunter das handelnde Subject, besonders wenn dies die Form des grammatischen Subjects, den Nominativ, nicht hat, wie in dem Satze: der Baum ist vom Knaben gesehen, hier ist logisches Subject vom Knaben. Vorzuziehen ist darum der Deutlichkeit wegen statt logisches Subject Exposition zu sagen. (Wegener 1885: 20) [The group of ideas about which some statement is being made is called subject, the statement itself is called predicate. The subject is the uninteresting given, the statement made about the subject is interesting and new. However, this relation does not hold between the grammatical subject and the grammatical predicate in all cases. In y o u r father said it, i.e. with the stress on your, the grammatical subject is interesting and new but logically the predicate. Such exposition may thus be called the logical subject, that what is

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 69 interesting and new the logical predicate. Unfortunately, however, logical subject has become a fixed term within grammar where it is understood to denote the acting subject, especially in those cases in which it does not exhibit the formal feature of the grammatical subject, i.e. nominative, as for example in the tree has been seen by the boy, where by the boy is the logical subject. In the interest of clarity, it would be advisable to use the term exposition instead of logical subject.]

One question worth pursuing would be how well such 19th century concepts compare with modern concepts such as subject, agent and theme or distinctions such as given/new. Would it be permissible to consider notions such as, say, exposition and logical predicate as discussed in Wegener as a kind of forerunner for distinctions such as given and new or topic and comment? Can the concept logical subject as “a fixed term of grammar” be equated with a notion like agent? An important point which must not be overlooked in any such comparison is that one prominent feature of much of 19th century linguistics is that for 18th and 19th century French and German general grammar [...] the existence of thought-counterparts of sentence elements was not an empty article of faith but a living reality, which provided the notions with some real domain, detached from the empiricallinguistic domain. (Elffers-van Ketel 1991: 200–201).

This means “that grammatical categories were assumed to correspond to mental categories, grammatical systems to systems of thought, word meanings to concepts and sentences to thoughts.” (Elffers 1999: 305). Graffi (2001: 15–72) accordingly speaks of “psychologistic syntax” – and, incidentally, mentions Wundt as one of its representatives. A notion such as subject thus had quite a different function compared with its modern use: it was applied to describe not only a grammatical, but at the same time a cognitive concept. This can be seen clearly in Wegener who uses the term subject not to describe a constituent, or a string of words etc. but instead a “group of ideas”. This point needs to be taken into consideration in any equation or comparison of seemingly similar concepts from 19th century and modern linguistic theory. Coming back to the problem at hand, i.e. the conceptual shift that case and case-related notions underwent: it has been shown that case-forms such as nominative, accusative etc. were equated with subject, object etc. These notions stood for a variety of different types of relation at the time. To the degree that post-structuralist linguistics elaborated and specified these relations and developed a special terminology for them, case and case-related notions were in some way liberated from conveying this information and can therefore be used in a more restricted way to first and foremost refer to formal, inflectional characteristics.

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8 Summary and conclusion The putative identity of grammatical concepts used during colonial and modern times (as suggested by the application of identical labels) ought not to obscure the fact that the content associated with specific terms may have undergone a conceptual shift. Such a shift seems to have taken place with respect to the concept case and related notions such as nominative, accusative etc.: the application of these concepts in grammars of Swahili during colonial times differs substantially from present-day approaches, where case is no descriptive category of Swahili. Interestingly, though, a comparison of standard definitions of case from the period under consideration and modern terminological dictionaries gives no indication that such a shift has taken place. A closer look at the grammars and the theoretical discussion of the period shows that it is in fact the constructs defining the functional relations expressed by (morphological) case that have undergone considerable changes. In other words, the interpretation of grammatical functions such as subject, object etc. during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is different, which itself is a result of the elaboration and specification of various other types of relation such as semantic roles or pragmatic functions, which used to be conflated with grammatical functions in the period under consideration. Consequently, the interpretation of case-concepts has changed as well: case-forms were closely associated, in some cases equated with grammatical functions, even to the extent that the morphological aspect of case was disregarded. Therefore, any modification of the interpretation of grammatical functions would necessarily lead to a modification in the interpretation of caserelated notions. Whilst case-notions were used not only to identify inflectional paradigms of the noun but also to identify various universal types of relation within a sentence, modern linguistics has developed a separate inventory of terms for these universal types of relation and interprets case-notions as primarily morphological entities. This accounts in part for the seemingly contradictory use of case-notions in Swahili grammars of colonial times as well as for the difference in the application of case-notions then and now. In order to arrive at this conclusion, a cursory look at the grammars of colonial times is insufficient. Instead, the linguistic environment of authors of colonial grammars has to be taken into account, i.e. their work has to be put into the larger context of linguistic discussion at the time and reviewed with respect to the influence that individual approaches and theories may have exerted. Such an analysis reveals that the use of case-notions in colonial grammars of Swahili is not – at

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least not in all cases – an indication of “linguistic imperialism” or “translational grammar” but very much in line with a wide-spread practice of the period in Germany in which case-notions would denote a multitude of different relations and be used completely independently of morphological features.

References Amidu, Assibi A. 2004. Kiswahili language description and translational grammar. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics 2(1). 45–68. Blumenthal, Arthur L. 1975. A reappraisal of Wilhelm Wundt. American Psychologist 30(11). 1081–1088. Brockhaus’ kleines Konversations-Lexikon. 1911. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Brauner, Siegmund. 1995. Carl Meinhof und Wilhelm Wundt. In Axel Fleisch & Dirk Otten (eds.), Sprachkulturelle und historische Forschungen in Afrika: Beiträge zum 11. Afrikanistentag, 59–69. Köln: Köppe. Brugmann, Karl. 1904. Kurze vergleichende Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Strassburg: Trübner. Büttner, Carl Gotthilf. 1891. Hülfsbüchlein für den ersten Unterricht in der Suaheli-Sprache. Leipzig: T. D. Weigel Nachfolger. Cienki, Alan. 1995. 19th and 20th century theories of case: A comparison of localist and cognitive approaches. Historiographia Linguistica 22. 123–162. Comrie, Bernard. 1978. Ergativity. In Winfred P. Lehmann (ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language, 329–394. University of Texas Press. Creissels, Denis. 2000. Typology. In Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse (eds.), African language structures. An introduction, 231–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Delbrück, Berthold. 1901. Grundfragen der Sprachforschung mit Rücksicht auf W. Wundts Sprachpsychologie erörtert. Strassburg: Trübner. Delbrück, Berthold. 1907. Synkretismus. Ein Beitrag zur germanischen Kasuslehre. Strassburg: Trübner. Delius, Siegfried & Karl Roehl. 1939. Wegweiser in die Suaheli-Sprache. Rügenwalde: Albert Mewes Nachfolger. Dixon, R. M. W. 1972. The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. 2009. Basic linguistic theory. Volume 1: Methodology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2011. The world atlas of language structures online. München: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at http://wals.info/. Accessed on 2012-11-08. Elffers, Els. 1999. Psychological linguistics. In Peter Schmitter (ed.), Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 4. Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit, 301–341. Tübingen: Narr. Elffers-van Ketel, Els. 1991. The historiography of grammatical concepts. 19th and 20th-century changes in the subject-predicate conception and the problems of their historical reconstruction. Amsterdam/Atlanta (GA): Editions Rodopi B.V.

72 | Susanne Hackmack Gabelentz, Georg von der. 21901. Die Sprachwissenschaft: ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig. Graffi, Giorgio. 2001. 200 years of syntax. A critical survey. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687. Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. The interplay between comparative concepts and descriptive categories. A reply to Newmeyer. Language 86(3). 696–699. Hennig, Mathilde. 2009. Zum deutschen Blick auf grammatische Eigenschaften von Kolonialsprachen. In Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus: Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919, 120–142. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Herder‘s Conversations-Lexikon. 1857. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herderʼsche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Holzweissig, Friedrich W. 1877. Wahrheit und Irrthum der localistischen Casustheorie. Leipzig: Teubner. Hübschmann, Heinrich 1875. Zur Casuslehre. München: Theodor Ackermann. Jungraithmayr, Herrmann & Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig (eds.) 1983. Lexikon der Afrikanistik. Berlin: Reimer. Koerner, Konrad. 1989. On the problem of ‘influence’ in linguistic historiography. In Konrad Koerner (ed.), Practicing linguistic historiography. Selected essays. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Krifka, Manfred. 1995. Swahili. In Joachim Jacobs et al. (eds.), Syntax. Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung, 2. Halbband [HSK 9,2], 1397–1418. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Lestrade, Gérard Paul. 1946. Meinhof’s contributions to our knowledge of African languages. African Studies 5(2). 73–81. Marty, Anton. 1910. Die „logische“, „lokalistische“ und andere Kasustheorien. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Matthews, Peter H. 2007. The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meinhof, Carl. 1906. Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen. Berlin: Reimer. Meinhof, Carl. 1920.Wilhelm Wundt†. Zeitschrift für Eingeborenensprachen 10. 241–243. Meinhof, Carl. 1936. Die Entstehung flektierender Sprachen. Berlin: Reimer. Meinhof, Carl. 1940. Die Sprache der Suaheli in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Berlin: Reimer. Möhlig, Wilhelm J.G. & Bernd Heine. 1999. Swahili Grundkurs. Köln: Köppe. Newmeyer, Frederick. 2010. On comparative concepts and descriptive categories. A reply to Haspelmath. Language 86(3). 688–695. Pierer’s Universallexikon der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart oder Neuestes encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der Wissenschaften, Künste und Gewerbe. 1857. Altenburg: Verlagsbuchhandlung Pierer. Planert, Wilhelm. 1907. Die syntaktischen Verhältnisse des Suaheli. Berlin: Süsserott. Pugach, Sara. 2012. Africa in translation. A history of colonial linguistics in Germany and beyond, 1814–1945. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Schischkoff, Georgi (ed.) 1957. Philosophisches Wörterbuch. Stuttgart: Alfred Körner. Seidel, August. 1890. Praktische Grammatik der Suaheli-Sprache. Wien/Leipzig: A. Hartleben‘s Verlag.

Case in selected grammars of Swahili | 73 Seidel, August. 1900. Suahili Konversationsgrammatik nebst einer Einführung in die Schrift und den Briefstil der Suahili. Heidelberg: Julius Groos‘ Verlag. Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1998. Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Velten, Carl. 1904. Praktische Suaheli-Grammatik nebst Wörterverzeichnis. Berlin: Wilhem Baensch. Wegener, Philipp (1885): Untersuchungen über die Grundfragen des Sprachlebens. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Welmers, Wim. 1973. African language structures. Berkley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Willems, Klaas. 1997. Kasus, grammatische Bedeutung und kognitive Linguistik: ein Beitrag zur allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Tübingen: Günter Narr Verlag. Wundt, Wilhelm. 1904. Völkerpsychologie. Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte. Erster Band: Die Sprache (zweiter Teil). Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

Susana Castillo-Rodríguez

The first missionary linguistics in Fernando Po Transliteration and the quest of Spanishness in an Anglicized colony Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to examine the early missionary linguistics in Equatorial Guinea, a territory disputed by British and Spaniards since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Special interest is on the Island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) where Baptist and Catholic missionaries described the structure of the unwritten native languages. It is a contribution with a new perspective1 insofar as it focuses about how translation into Spanish and English led to transcultural processes that reinforced the hierarchical condition of black people as an undeveloped human race and justified the civilizing mission. Also, I demonstrate that the enlightenment of the natives was envisaged as conditio sine qua non for them to “deserve” being recognized as Spaniards. Keywords: Bube, Kru, transliteration, Hispanization, Fernando Po, Equatorial Guinea || Susana Castillo-Rodríguez: 41 Clinton, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801, USA, [email protected] ||  All translations in the text are mine. I want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and excellent suggestions. Special thanks to Professor Justo Bolekia for his help with the Bubi language and to Professor Klaus Zimmermann for his relevant comments on the first draft of this manuscript. This work was funded by the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities (2011) and the Graduate Center (2011). 1 The two volumes of Sir Harry Johnston (1908, 1910) on the diaries and research of the Reverend George Grenfell in the Congo and adjoining districts includes a chapter on the languages of the native people from the Cameroons and the Island of Fernando Po. Sir Harry Johnston relied on the publications of three missionaries: the Reverend John Clarke (1841, 1848) from the Baptist Missionary Society of England, the clergyman Mr. Theophilus Parr (1881) from the Primitive Methodist Church (Bolton, Lancaster), and the Spanish Claretian Father Joaquin Juanola (1890) from Hijos del Inmaculado Corazón de María. As such, Sir Harry Johnston’s work on the Fernandian language (Bube) could be considered the first study on missionary linguistics carried out in the Island of Fernando Po even if the search for the same linguistic features in the surrounding languages leads him, sometimes, to make cautious albeit dogmatic statements on Bube’s etymology. In his work, Johnston does some comparative linguistics and describes the numerals in Bube. Following Hernández (2013: 225), the analysis of Usera y Alarcón’s work on the Kru language in Fernando Po (1845) that I present here is one of a kind in the field of missionary linguistics. Suárez Roca’s publication on Lingüística misionera española (1992) takes into account only Amerindian languages.

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1 Merging missionary and ethnolinguistic work In his semantic analysis of colonial dictionaries in Nahuatl and Yucatec, Pharo (2009: 345 and note 2) speaks about those Spanish evangelical ‘ethnographer missionaries’ or ‘missionary linguists’ who worked on indigenous culture, language and history through the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Although Pharo separates both labels, the role of some missionaries merged. The work developed by Maurice Leenhardt – a French missionary who worked among the Melanesians at the dawn of the nineteenth century – for instance, raises some questions about the inextricable relation between the cultural encounter and the translation task, and, I argue, gives us some room to think about the syncretic term ‘ethnolinguist missionary’. An open minded evangelist and profoundly interested in a deep comprehension of cultures, “[Leenhardt] saw in missions an overture, a constructive escape from a cultural and religious life that had become rigid, hierarchical and abstract” (Clifford 1980: 4). His dynamic conception of culture led him to a new approach regarding the practice of translation. For him, the translation process was embedded in the communicative dialogue that occurred inside the intercultural exchange.2 Rather than looking for equivalence in lexicon, he acted as an ethnolinguist, pursuing meaningful religious expressions for the natives. Les mots sont des expressions de vie, et si de la vie n’est pas enfermée en eux, ils ne signifient rien (…). Il faut trouver le sens vivant des mots indigènes pour n’employer ces mots qu’à bon escient. [Words are expressions of life, and if life is not embedded in them, they mean nothing (…). We must find the living meaning of native words in order not to misuse them] (Leenhardt 1922: 194).

As Leenhardt reminds us, “[I]l faut de la méthode” [A method is needed]; a method grounded on the epistemology of the “Other” and its way of constructing the world, that’s to say, to think and speak. Leenhardt proceeded in the same way as an indigenous evangelist would have done; he became a ‘cultural broker’ who translated Christianity into forms that indigenous people were ready to grasp (Sanneh 2009).3 His rich and extensive knowledge about the Melanesian culture prevented him from offering a simple literary translation or || 2 Clifford wrote that for Leenhardt “translation was part of the creative interpretation of two cultures, a liberation and revivification of meanings latent in each” (Clifford 1980: 14). 3 This idea of translation as an attempt of correctness, and therefore of cultural significance for the readers in the target language, has been around for many years. See for example Mounin (1963).

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from simply adding a list of foreign ideas, names and concepts to the language of the natives. As Zimmermann (2005: 120) puts it, work on the equivalence of lexicon does not mean to achieve an equivalence of systems. Moreover, in translating by this means, one runs the risk of eliminating significance and of losing the meaningful understandings of the new words that are going to be incorporated in the native language. Let us take, for example, the term God. Leenhardt (1930: 213) explains that “il est nécessaire de préciser d’abord le sens de quelques termes qui dénotent le domaine connexe á celui de la divinité.” [First, we need to define the meaning of those terms that denote the connecting field of divinity]. Subsequently, he devotes a whole chapter to analyze the complex system of the meanings and words related with spirits, deities and the souls among the Canaques. To go in another direction, says Clifford (1980: 9), would have suggested that, “as a new and foreign term, the Christian God might be simply added to the roster of deities as primus inter pares.” The way that the French ethnolinguistic missionary deals with translation and evangelization has been labeled a ‘transculturation process’ which, in opposition to an ‘acculturation one’ (Pharo 2007, 2009; Zimmermann 2005), is a process where those “evolving expressivities, (paroles)” (Clifford 1980: 15) take their meanings from and are informed by the incorporated (embodiment) experience of life. Missionaries were most likely identified as facilitators, and their work as vehicles for language and cultural change. Bridging two different cultural and linguistic systems, they opened a new pathway through the idea of the existence of a universally shared belief of God/Divinity/Deity. Consequently, the idea was, and still is, that Christianity – its faith and belief – could find a place in any other cultural system, no matter how remote that system may be. Nevertheless, this idea of ‘translability’ has been criticized not only for being supposedly interchangeable among cultures but also mostly because not all missionary work will present a new point of view. Among the preeminent voices of scholars that work in postcolonial studies (Errington 2008, Quijano 1992, Mignolo 1995, 2000, Comaroff 1985, Comaroff & Comaroff 1991, to name a few), criticisms are being raised against the proclaimed civilizing goal of the missions. Instead, these opposing ideas claim that the zeal of the missionaries was to convert pagans into Christians. Missionaries navigated through translation works that were rooted in a denotative process; they believed that a direct and unidirectional process would suffice for the translation since the meaning of the word would follow the translation of the form. Not only connotations, but also the intrinsic arbitrariness of the linguistic sign were left apart. Defined by Quijano (1992) as a transliteration activity, the Spanish dominium of the indigenous people in Latin America was seen as a colonization of the knowledge in the dominium of language and subjectivity, or rather – in a broader sense – “a

78 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez coloniality of being”. It is not a new idea or concept; “the colonization of consciousness” has been around for several years (Beidelman 1982; Comaroff 1985). As we will see, the missionary process of linguistic production in Fernando Po during the nineteenth century fits better under the category of transliteration than those of transcultural translation or bidirectional acculturation. Missionaries also play a role as agents for change, a change that takes place in different spaces and social groups; between colonialists and colonized, in the Spanish Peninsula or in the land of the natives. Among the natives, the preaching, the educational input, and the literary work carried out by the missionaries culminated in a process of cultural transformation. This transformation took place in the interrelationship between natives and missionaries (among other colonial agents) and resulted in a syncretic universe of meanings and loanwords to be incorporated by the native/target language. In this process it is essential to remember that the field of missionary linguistics focuses on the study of grammars and dictionaries written by missionaries and mainly for missionaries. Although early missionary linguistics revealed that the work of missionaries was led by Greco-Latin grammar and European language models, more recent studies carried out by linguists demonstrate the opposite. The missionaries’ production of language was the result of a collaborative task with other clergymen (most of whom had mastered the native languages) and natives. Confronted with a different language system, missionaries usually adapted the Greco-Latin model and/or worked with idiosyncratic features embedded in indigenous languages (Zwartjes et al. 2009, Zimmermann 1997). By colonial structure and missionary works a process of language contact emerged, resulting in a change both of the colonized language and the colonizer’s language. In addition to the basic components of the linguistic description (grammar, dictionaries) and evangelization (hymns, epistles, the Gospel), missionaries provided ethnographic documents which were used as a navigation map to colonize the ‘infidels’. In doing so, they also influenced the cultural view of the colonizers about the natives. This influence was cushioned by the fact that both missionaries and colonizers shared the same ideology about race, language and culture, which was rooted in the belief that they possessed a moral superiority over the natives. Race was considered a synonym for supposed differential biological components among individuals. What is more, underneath this idea of race underlie asymmetric social relationships of power between the colonizers and the colonized people, which eventually would lead to new historical social identities. White and black were synonyms for superior and inferior, literate and illiterate, Christian and pagan. Understood as a semantic chain, the lack of a written language correlated with the classification of people as uncivilized; similarly, dark skin color correlated with inferiority. This social Darwinism and

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these racist ideas (in Africa) were intrinsic in the European aim of colonizing native languages.4 The corpus on which my analysis is based is composed of a grammatical essay on the language spoken by Krumans of Fernando Po: Ensayo gramatical del idioma de la raza africana de Ñano, por otro nombre Cruman by Jesuit Father Jerónimo Usera y Alarcón 1845, and three texts in Bubi:5 Memoria de la isla de Fernando Poo con un pequeño diccionario del idioma Bubi, raza orijinaria de Fernando Poo, by the Jesuit Jerónimo Usera y Alarcón 1848; The Introduction to the Fernandian Tongue by the Baptist British missionary John Clarke 18486; and Primer paso á la lengua bubí, ó sea, Ensayo á una gramátical de este idioma by the Claretian Joaquin Juanola 1890. In 1881, the Reverend of the Primitive Methodist Church of Bolton (Lancaster), Theophilus Parr, published Parr’s Bubi na English dictionary with notes on grammar which I was unable to consult. As secondary sources I have relied on Captain William Allen’s and Dr. T. R. Heywood Thomson’s vocabularies of the Edeeyah, Dualla, or Cameroons, Bimbia and Fishmen languages (1848, vol. II: 439–471) as well as the appendix at the end of their book about the Kru, Edeeyah, and Bimbia languages written by Robert Gordon Latham. A few chapters with notes on Fernando Po, its native peoples and their languages collected by Sir Harry Johnston (1908, 1910) from the diaries of the Reverend George Grenfell (who visited Fernando Po between 1876 and 1901) have also served to document the context for the analysis. The following essay is rooted in a glottopolitical approach, and is historically contextualized in those political, ecclesiastical, and linguistic battles that confronted Spain and Great Britain during the nineteenth century. I analyze the ideologies embedded in the work of the missionaries, and I highlight their participation in the construction of the “blackness” of the colonized; by the same token the ideologies justified the need of a metaphoric “ethnic cleansing” by the Hispanization of the natives. Finally, and in connection with the ideology of the “coloniality” (Quijano 1992) of the subject discussed above, I give some examples of transliteration and analyze them as a part of the Hispanization project. || 4 As an anonymous reviewer pointed out, racial ideology changed towards Amerindian people after the tribunal de Valladolid where the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas succeeded in a swift of the official politics in Spain. Although legal status changed, oppression and nearly slavery conditions in the labor market continued. 5 In this text, Bubi and Bube are interchangeable. 6 Three more linguistic works are attributed to Clarke that I was unable to consult: The Adeeyah vocabulary for the use of schools in Western Africa (1841), Sentences in the Fernandian Tongue (1846) and Specimens of dialects: short vocabularies of languages: and notes of countries & customs in Africa (1848a).

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2 The beginning of the scramble for Africa and the settlement of European missions in Equatorial Guinea The first settlement of the Roman Catholic mission began with the establishment of Portugal in the gulf of Biafra in 1482 and continued into the sixteenth century. The Portuguese monopoly was so vast that “Portuguese became the common language of business, and was everywhere generally understood by such natives as had intercourse with foreigners” (Tracy 1844: 12). In the following years, the Portuguese empire decreased and as a result its colonies in the Gold Coast shrank. Spaniards came along in 1652 when fifteen Capuchins were sent to Sierra Leone. The Spanish Roman Catholic mission was not very successful though, and in 1723 the Pope’s nuncio in Spain announced its end.7 Spaniards were detested among the natives – even though their presence was indirect – because they were acknowledged for requesting labor force and increasing the slave trade in the area.8 After the signing of the Treaty of El Pardo with Portugal in 1778, the Spaniards struggled to establish their sovereignty in Fernando Po. Fallen into oblivion, Fernando Po and the adjacent islands fell prey to the British interested in dominating the Bight of Biafra and the slave trade; it was no man’s land but had a crucial geographical location. Besides that, the British were fully aware that the illicit commerce of slaves was far from an end even if the abolitionist law was in force since 1807. In 1839, Thomas F. Buxton propagated his ideas to stop the African slave trade and to convert Africans to Christianity by sending Africans in the Diaspora as ‘native agents’ with || 7 When the Spanish Capuchins gave up Sierra Leone in 1723, they left no trace; “they made no impression, except upon their immediate dependents,” says Joseph Tracy, “and what they made, was soon totally obliterated. Their stations were numerous, along the whole coast; but every vestige of their influence has been gone, for many generations” (Tracy 1844: 33). For more details regarding the failure of the Roman Catholic Mission in West Africa, see Hayford (1900). 8 Since 1503, Portugal, Genoa, and France have procured Spanish West Indies with slaves captured amongst the natives of the Gold Coast (Tracy 1844: 14). Nevertheless, in 1713, the British government, by the famous ‘Asiento’ treaty, secured it for the South Sea Company for thirty years (Tracy 1844: 20). In 1807, Britain declared that the slave trade was abolished but in spite of that, the prosperous slave trade flourished until several nations secured a law to prohibit it in 1813. Great Britain suspected that Spain continued to trade with slaves and urged her to sign an antislavery agreement in 1817, which stipulated the legal condition of the emancipated person (Roldán de Montaud 1982: 561). Subsequently, the Mixed Court for the Suppression of the Slave Trade moved from Sierra Leone to the island of Fernando Po in 1827 in order to control the slave traffic on the West coast of Africa.

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the belief that they would be immune to the African diseases (Buxton 1967). As a result, in 1841 the English Baptist Missionary Society in Jamaica sent Reverend John Clarke and Dr. G. K. Prince – long residents of Jamaica and considered “accustomed to the Negro character” – to Fernando Po.9 Soon after, they returned to the West Indies to recruit Jamaicans whilst Rev. Thomas Sturgeon opened a Baptist church and a day school in Fernando Po. Among the ‘black and colored’ families in Jamaica, a squadron of ‘natives agents’ was recruited to work as settlers or teachers. The group that arrived in 1844 was formed by thirty-six Jamaicans, classified by Clarke as “black-creoles”, “black boys”, “Congo from Kabenda”, ‘Fanti” or “black”. Being bilingual “they were expected to serve as excellent sources for language study in preparation for missionary expansion in the Continent. Many might even be used as interpreters and agents to coastal tribes” (Bela 1979: 21). Since the British arrival, the mission became not only a stopping-off point but also a reference point for the freed slaves.10 Little by little, the British began to populate Clarence, the capital of Fernando Po (named later on Santa Isabel and now Malabo), with West Coast Africans from Congo, Cameroon and the Niger-Delta. Sierra Leoneans were mostly Kru people working in the Bights’ oil trade from Kru country. They spread to the West part of Clarence, swamping the town with their early Creole character. They were soon augmented by a second group of arrivals: freed slaves taken from captured slave-ships by the Royal Navy and landed clandestinely at Clarence. A third group was composed of the thirty-six Jamaicans that arrived with the English Baptist Missionary Society, and a small handful of West Indians which found their way from the British Caribbean to Fernando Po (Bela 1979: 21). In addition to the Bubi people11 who arrived from the interior of the island, a fourth group mingled with the population of Clarence: transient Kru sawyers working for the West African Company in the early 1840s, and natives from the Gold Coast (Lynn 1984: 258–261). Krumen were by far the most acclaimed laborers;12 their reputation as “well made, muscular, vigorous and active” men (Ludlam 1825) proved them to be good workers in the business of navigation and trade (The African Repository || 9 Baptist Missionary Society Annual Report 1840 (quoted by Bela 1979: 17). 10 See Sir Harry Johnston (1908, vol I: 20, footnote) for a summary of the reasons that induced the British to purchase one mile from the Bubis and to settle their Government under the order of Captain W. F. Owen in 1827. 11 Regarding the etymology, Johnston points out that “Ediya [Edeeyah, Adeeyah], used by earlier writers, is nowhere recognized on the island” (Johnston 1908, vol II: 882). 12 From 1864 until 1867, five Spanish Royal Orders regulated the employment of Krumen in Fernando Po in order to counterbalance the lack of laborers.

82 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez 1872: 48, 12. pg. 366). Kroo or Krio, a language classified as a branch of NigerCongo, was the language spoken in the Kru (Kroo) country. Sierra Leonean Krio evolved with linguistic features brought by the Nova Scotia Blacks from North America and the Jamaican Maroons, as a consequence of the slave trade that took place during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see above).13

Figure 1: Fernando Po

|| 13 British control of the commerce of slaves in the Gold Coast was a historical factor for language contact. English being the language of trade, Krumen learned it and cleared the way to work as interpreters. They introduced Pidgin English to the Gold Coast.

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3 Leading to a linguistic colonization in Fernando Po Once Krumen settled in Fernando Po, the economy of the Sierra Leonean people flourished and their Creole culture became dominant in Clarence (Sundiata 1972; 1996: 146–159; Lynn 1978: 155–194). The population from Sierra Leone, West Indian and freed-slave origin formed the group known as ‘Poto’ among the Bubis (Johnston 1908: 23)14 or ‘Fernandinos’ (Sundiata 1972): they were the offspring of the slave trade who turned into plantation owners and traders (Lynn 1984: 265). The group was composed of West Indians and the Sierra Leone population brought to Fernando Po by the Baptists between 1827 and 1840 and of emancipated laborers from the West African coast. Their Pidgin English was the lingua franca, which evolved into Pichi, one of the leading languages spoken now in Bioko. From 1827 until the Spanish expedition of Lerena in 1843, Fernando Po developed as a British colony. The British flag (the Union Jack), along with British clothing, currency, commodities, manners and language ruled the social and political life on the island. Government and missions were also British. In line with this Anglicization, Spanish missionaries were sent to Equatorial Guinea as a part of the Spanish government project to legitimate Spain’s political dominion in the African territories and to ‘convert’ natives into Spanish subjects. These missionaries belonged to the ‘official’ colonial administration – whilst the ‘real’ one was the British establishment in the colony – and tried to put into play the civilizing mission conceived by the Spanish Queen Isabel II (1830–1904). To fulfill their duty, Spanish missionaries carried out practices of literacy in quest of the ‘Hispanization’ of the natives. Subsequently, the enlightenment of the colonized was envisaged as a conditio sine qua non for them to deserve being Spaniards. Along with the foundation of schools and churches, the translation of catechisms and epistles into vernacular languages || 14 Following Johnston “between 1827 and 1840, a large extraneous negro population [generally called “Poto” negroes] had been settled in the vicinity of Port Clarence”, the British settlement in Fernando Po. The word “Poto” seems to have meant ‘foreign’, and might have been an abbreviation of Portuguese (Johnston 1908, vol I: 21, 23). This is also the opinion of Mary H. Kingsley (1897) – a cultured adventuress in West Africa, daughter of a Christian gentleman of highest standing (Kumm 1917) – who referred to the so-called Portos, negroes (and not ‘Poto’) as the people living on the beaches and acting as middle-men between the Bubis and the whites. “Porto – said Kingsley – is the Bubi name for black men who are not Bubis, these were in old days Portuguese slaves, “Porto” being evidently a corruption of “Portuguese”, but it is used alike the Bubi to designate Sierra Leonian Accras, in fact, all the outer barbarian blacks.”(sic) (Kingsley 1897: 59) Portuguese and foreign were synonyms and go back to the Portuguese discovery of the island in 1471.

84 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez played a central role in this objective.15 More than a vehicle of communication with the natives, missionaries also used their linguistic work with the aim of inoculating in them the Catholic faith. The natives’ identification with Spain would be the ‘natural’ outcome, as they assumed. To illustrate this spiritual, political and cultural bond, let us quote Usera y Alarcón (1852: 19): “¿Pues quién de entre nosotros ignora que las verdades Evangélicas, conservadas únicamente en toda su pureza por la Iglesia Católica Romana, se hallan identificadas, no solo con nuestra existencia social, sino hasta con nuestra vida civil y política, sobre todo hablando de las provincias de Ultramar?” [So, who among us ignores that the Evangelical truths, only preserved in their whole purity by the Roman Catholics, are identified not only with our social existence but also with our social and civil lives, especially when we refer to our regions overseas?].

This assimilation project was reinforced by teaching and preaching in Spanish since the very beginning of the effective colonization of Fernando Po. Nevertheless, the Spanish missionaries realized that the British dominium was counterproductive for their evangelization project and searched for a solution. In a letter written by Father Armengol Coll in 1890, he complained how the Spanish tongue has been undermined by the dominion of English: In addition, the dominating spirit in everything was English: commerce, garments and, above all, the language, everything was English. The beautiful language of Castile was banished in such a way that in order to go shopping for essential commodities our brothers needed to bring a Spanish-English dictionary, or risk coming back without having reached an understanding with the storekeepers (quoted in Pujadas 1968: 105).

In spite of the Royal Order of 1845, urging the Baptist missionaries to leave the Spanish territories in Africa claiming that the Roman Apostolic Catholic religion was the only faith admitted in Spain and its territories overseas16, English continued to have a great presence in the daily life of Fernando Po. Even if English and || 15 Hastings (1997) highlights the relationship between literacy and the construction of nationhood, emphasizing in this process the role of the translation of the Bible into the vernacular languages. The case of Equatorial Guinea does not quite fit in this paradigm. Spanish missionaries built and monopolized the educational system on the basis of the Spanish language, and the colonial administration declared Spanish as the official language, pushing the vernaculars out of the public sphere and away from the literate subjects. As aforementioned, colonizing the knowledge and colonizing the subjectivity was the way to transform socio-cultural identities and assimilate natives as subjects of Spain. 16 For a detailed description of the Spanish persecution, see Brown Myers (1892: 162–167, pages 163 and 164 are missing in the document). In (Castillo 2013) I analyze the battle for the Spanish and the religion in Fernando Po.

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Spanish were both spoken at Santa Isabel the Spaniards struggled for recognition of Spanish as the official language while “trade or pidgin English [was] used as a lingua franca not only between whites and blacks but also between natives with distinct languages of their own” (Great Britain Foreign Office 1920: 6). In the meantime, Reverend Clarke and doctor G. K. Prince were joined in 1843 by the Jamaican missionary Joseph Merrick and by Alfred Saker, all of whom were committed for service in Africa (Brown Myers 1892: 158–159). Joseph Merrick, who worked as interpreter for Clarke, was a Baptist Reverend who succeeded in writing an Isubu dictionary and translating several books of the Bible. His work inspired Alfred Saker’s New Testament (1862) and Old Testament (1872) translations into the Duala tongue. Saker also contributed to the mission’s literary work by setting up a printing press. The presence of the Baptist Mission in Fernando Po began to flag soon after; Merrick died in 1849, Saker moved to King A’kwa’s town at the Cameroons River, and Clarke returned to Jamaica with his expeditionary men in 1848 where he spent the rest of his life as a Baptist minister. In 1846, the Jesuits Jerónimo Usera y Alarcón and Juan Del Cerro arrived in Fernando Po to establish the first Spanish Catholic mission. They were part of the Spanish government in the island. Eventually, the yellow fever forced the missionaries to return to Spain a couple of years later. After another seven years of abandonment, the Spanish administration, driven by the realization that the colonizing and civilizing project was in foreign hands, sent the Jesuit Miguel Martínez y Sanz to establish the Apostolic Prefecture in Fernando Po. Again, the terrible climatic and health conditions, the difficulties in demarcating their vicariate, and the push of the political turmoil in Spain (following the Septembrina revolution) obliged them to come back to the Peninsula. It was not until 1883 that a group of Claretian missionaries arrived in Santa Isabel and established the Roman Catholic mission by opening schools and churches for the spiritual and political conquest of the natives.

4 The work with the native languages Missionaries were well aware of their limits as linguists in such a way that they hoped, as the Baptist Clarke put it, “to afford aid to future missionaries in the study of the Fernandian tongue; and if, in connection with this, anything written may prove interesting to the philologist, [they would] rejoice that the time employed in arranging the following pages ha[d] not been lost” (Clarke 1848b: viii). His work as missionary went hand in hand with his avant-garde approach to the

86 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez language since he conceived it from a philological or ‘scientific’ side rather than a mere ‘collection of words’. It’s worthy to mention that these ideas weren’t very much around in the work of other missionaries before the nineteenth century. Clarke himself tried to transform the unwritten languages into grammatical forms in his first linguistic work on Fernando Po where he foresaw the need of ‘native agents’ as a cultural and linguistic bridge between the African Bubis and the missionaries. Caught in an island which was small in size but enormous in linguistic diversity, Clarke soon devoted his work to the study of language, helped, we assume, by the West Africans that he brought with him from Jamaica. His Adeeyah vocabulary 1841 (see note 6) is the first publication on the Bubi language. In his Specimens of dialects: short vocabularies about two hundred African languages, published in 1848, he compiled a number of dialects spoken by the diverse tribes settled in Fernando Po. This publication may have inspired Reverend S.S. Koelle’s Polyglotta Africana (Johnston 1908: 19; Bela 1979: 35). In sum, some missionary linguistics are in fact masterpieces and extremely valuable as works to reconstruct the cultural history of many unknown languages. And yet only a few of the works of the missionaries have been considered as models for grammar or description of linguistic features developed by professional linguists in the 20th century.17

5 A brief overview of the linguistic production in “Ñano”, Bubi and the “Fernandian tongue” Regarding Kru, linguists divide the language family into two parts, Eastern and Western although the internal classification remains incomplete. Usera y Alarcón’s short essay on Kru language is worthy of remark, but certainly not from an orthodox linguistic approach.18 Usera y Alarcón named the language of the “Cruman race” as “Ñano”, a synonym of “tierra de Crao” (‘land of Crao’); consequently, he stated, its etymology comes from Craw (‘line’) and man, || 17 In his work about the Bantu languages of Western Equatorial Guinea, Guthrie (1948, 1953) classified Bubi in the Bubi-Benga group A.31 and argued that the reliable information about this language was so minimal that it impeded his ability to include any linguistic feature to describe it. Neither Clarke’s (1848b) Introduction to the Fernandian tongue nor Juanola’s (1845) Primer paso á la lengua bubí were therefore taken into account by Guthrie at that time. 18 In the front cover of his manuscript, Usera y Alarcón addressed the Spanish government hoping that his grammatical essay would help to develop commerce and navigation in the island of Fernando Po (Usera y Alarcón 1845).

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cruman, because men had lines covering their faces. He also located this race in the Gulf of Guinea, specifically in the intertropical coast of Western Africa. This remark may suggest that the Krumen in Fernando Po – most of them coming from Liberia and mainly located in Clarence – were speakers of one of the Kru western language families (Krio, an English lexifier Creole language), Grebo or Bassa (Marchese 1984). Nevertheless, this is difficult to prove since the Hutchinson’s chart of inhabitants of Clarence in 1856 did not specify the origin of the 158 Krumen. Kru people were located in the south of the Ivory Coast and Liberia, with pockets of small clans surrounded by impenetrable forests. This geographical isolation explains the lack of studies about this linguistic family.19 Subsequently, a reliable classification of Kru languages remains still unresolved. First classified within the subgroup Kwa and then as a part of NigerCongo20, the Kru languages have been more likely accepted as an independent group within the Niger-Kordofanian (Welmers 1977: 353, Marchese 1984: 12). Although some Kru languages, such as Grebo or Bassa, have a long history of literacy, the Kru language family classification has only partially and very recently been documented.21 Taking into account this data, we can situate Usera y Alarcón’s small grammatical essay (1845) alongside that of scholarship pioneers in Kru languages. Moreover, to identify the template used by Usera y Alarcón among the great variety of the Kru linguistic families is a matter of guessing. Not only is the name Kru disputed as the name of the language but also as the name of the people. Westermann & Bryan (1952) argued that the name Kru was mistakenly given by the Europeans instead of the indigenous name Klau. The etymology of Kru seems to derive from Kroomen – ‘the crew’ – because of the people’s service as sailors for the European ships during the sixteenth century. Usera y Alarcón (1845: 5) offers a different explanation: Lo mismo es Ñano que tierra de Crao; así que Cruman, parece ser una palabra de origen inglés, que significa hombre de Crao, cuya etimología, á mi ver, es: Craw (barra) y man (hombre); esto es, hombre de la barra, porque todos ellos, como distintivo de su raza, traen una raya á modo de barra hecha artificialmente con un instrumento cortante en la frente, perpendicular á la nariz. [Ñano is a synonym of the country of Crao; so that Cruman seems to be an English word derived from the meaning of man from Crao, where the ety|| 19 No country has Kru as an official language in spite of the many literacy materials produced in different countries. Scholars working on Kru languages date the earliest documentation on Grebo and Bassa at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1854, Koelle added five Western Kru languages to his Polyglotta Africana. 20 Williamson & Blench (2000) continue to include Kru within the North Volta-Congo family. 21 For bibliographic references regarding the languages of West Africa, see Westermann et al. (1970).

88 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez mology is, in my opinion: Craw (bar) because all of them have a line – like a bar – in the forehead, perpendicular to the nose, which is made artificially with a sharp object.]22

The Jesuit focused his analysis on two features of the ‘idioma ñano’: the verb and the noun. Usera y Alarcón summarized some of the general linguistic characteristics as follows: abundance of monosyllables, syncope, noun phrase GEN + N, ellipsis, suffixes, and word endings in a vowel. Nevertheless he set aside a few relevant linguistic features of Kru such as basic Subject Verb Object order in unmarked utterances, remnants of noun class suffixes and a verbal system identified by suffixes to mark passive, causative or dative forms, or to signal the imperfective or perfective aspect (see Rickard 1970, Marchese 1984). What is more important, Usera y Alarcón seems not to have recognized the Kru tongue as a tonal language as he did not describe any lexical or grammatical tones currently present in all the Kru languages. Even his alphabet was based on a uniform orthography in Roman letters with accent and circumflex marks on vowels.23 Bubi is a Bantu language that belongs to Niger-Kordofanian phylum, the Niger-Congo subphylum, the Atlantic-Congo family, the Volta-Congo subfamily, the Benue-Congo branch and the Bantoid sub-branch.24 The scientific classification of the linguistic families was associated with different ‘races’ since the very beginning of the studies on African linguistics (see Müller 1876). This vitiated scholar and missionary works with the popular racist assumptions of the nineteenth century about the superiority of certain races. This question as well as the common origin and unity of the African languages have been disputed. Clarke (1848a) affirmed that the languages of the coast of West Africa (Isubu, Dwalla, Fernandian, and Mpongwe) had genetic relationships with Bechuana and Kaffir tongues, and that the same class of language expanded along the coast. In 1847, Thomson, in his speech to the Ethnological Society of London, argued that the natives from the South East and West could not make themselves intelligible to the Edeeyahs [Bubis] of Clarence: || 22 Since ‘craw’ means ‘buche’ in Spanish and not ‘barra’, Usera y Alarcón’s etymology is more likely to be ‘crowd’ (a group of men) and not ‘craw’ (as the representation of a line in the forehead of the native people, according to Usera y Alarcón). Allen & Thomson (1848, vol. I: 114) differed with the general statement that the appellation of the Krumen is derived from their forming part of the crew of a ship. Instead, they contended that their patronymic comes “from the part of the coast whence they were first employed, viz., Nana Kru and Setta Kru”. 23 See the standard alphabet recommended for adoption by the Church Missionary Society written by Lepsius (1863). 24 R. G. Latham was a pioneer in providing an Ethnographical Philology of Africa (see, for example Latham 1848). For a modern classification of the languages spoken in Equatorial Guinea, see Chumbow et al. (2007).

The first missionary linguistics in Fernando Po | 89 Thus, [continued T. R. Heywood Thomson] it is evident there are two or more dialects, if not distinct languages, in this small island; and it is to be regretted that the opportunity did not occur to procure vocabularies, as no doubt a comparison would have removed any questions as to their common origin, which we are inclined to believe, from the general resemblance of their physical characters (Thomson 1850: 106).

In a remark about Thomson’s Vocabulary, Latham agreed with him of Bubi being an independent language, unintelligible to every tribe of the Continent, although he assured that “it is by no means an isolated language ethnologically speaking” (Supplement at the end of Thomas R. Heywood Thomson’s speech of 1847. Published in 1850: 118).25 In spite of the discussion about the different varieties or dialects of the Bubi, Bolekia, a native scholar and speaker of Bubi, argues that we can distinguish different accents, all of them being mutually intelligible. Missionary linguistics at the end of the nineteenth century, – maintains Bolekia – were rooted in dialectology theory and comparative linguistics, which allowed missionaries to assert the existence of Bubi’s different dialects (Bolekia 2008).26 Despite the fact that they were aware of the dynamic nature of languages, their ability to extend and capacity for change, phonetic and lexicon variation was not wanted; in his first words about the Fernandian tongue, Clarke argued that: “this [variation] can be restrained only by the introduction of a written system, and by making the people acquainted with the art of reading.” (Clarke || 25 In the supplement “Upon the Edeeyah vocabulary of Thomas R. Heywood Thomson, M. D” published at the end of the conference on the Bubis, or Edeeyah of Fernando Po read before the Ethnological Society of London on December 8th, 1847 by Thomas R. Heywood Thomson, Latham contended that “my comparison entirely verifies the statement of Dr Thomson of its being an independent language” and that “It has miscellaneous affinities, with almost all the languages between the Gambia and Gaboon; in other words, it belongs to that great class which, from comparing the Ibo, Ashantee, and the other tongues, I call Ibo-Ashantee” (Latham 1850: 117–118). The vocabulary was in the printer’s hand at that time. Although R. G. Latham spoke of Dr Thomson as the only author for this unique vocabulary that “fill[s] an important hiatus in African philology”, in the appendix of W. Allen and Thomas R. Heywood Thomson’s narrative of the Niger River (1848: 469) he said that “The Edeeyah vocabulary of Captain Allen and Dr. Thomson represents one of the dialects of Fernando Po, and like the Bimbia, is the first of its kind that has been laid before the world.”. 26 Theophilus Parr, Reverend of the Primitive Methodist Church of Bolton, Lancaster, expressed his view with this regard: “After having somewhat mastered the language of the people of the North-west district, we found ourselves unable easily to converse with the people of other districts – the dialects differing as widely as the dialects of broad Yorkshire and Somersetshire” (Parr 1889: 28). Johnston (1908, vol II: 882) also mentioned that the Reverend Theophilus Parr completed a remarkable study of the Bube language drawn from the three principal dialects of the island of Fernando Po.

90 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez 1848b: 11). Clarke was in the avant-garde of a language building policy approach, conceptualizing the standardization and normalization process in Bubi as a solution for the variation and change in the language. While diatopic differences persevere in the Bubi spoken at Bioko, a linguistic classification of mutual intelligibly varieties among the Bubi language such as ëtyö, ëssö or ëdyö is widely accepted.27 Clarke (1848b: 10) highlighted that “[i]n different parts of the island, the sounds, and even the words differ considerably” and provided a list of five ‘dialects’ based on their diatopic variation: Bateti district, Bani, Bakaki, Balilipa and Boloko (Clarke 1848b: 42). Usera y Alarcón (1848) did not mention any geographical variation in his linguistic work about the ‘Ñano’ tongue, and Juanola (1890) underscored in the title of his book the diatopic varieties between the Bubi spoken in Concepción and San Carlos. Juanola (1890: 91) introduced the first part of his grammatical essay as follows: “comprende el idioma bubí que se habla en el norte, nordeste y noroeste de la isla de Fernando Póo” [It covers the Bubi language which is spoken in the north, northeast and northwest of Fernando Po Island]. For Juanola, the geography of the island – divided into north and south by the Mount Santa Isabel – facilitated the spread of the same variety of dialects between the villages aligned at the slope of the mountains. Nevertheless, fixation, uniformity and simplification of dialects were linguistically and socially wanted for the sake of a harmonic literary work. This has been the common practice among the translators of the Bible, especially in zones where many dialects that are very close to each other are, even for a non-native, indistinguishable. Overall, missionaries’ goal to overcome variation by composing a unified system of language exceeded in their result: “They welded it and molded it into a unity and into an instrument of power” (North 1938: 12).

6 Transliteration and ideology in Bubi and “Ñano” Both Baptist and Catholics missionaries used natives as interpreters.28 As we have seen above, the Baptist Missionary Society’s movement for repatriating || 27 Bolekia (2008: 46) relates the difficulties of communication to external factors such as the relationship among the zones in contact, the volition of the speakers to understand each other and the actual prejudices stimulated by the unitarist colonial ideology. 28 Johnston (1908, vol II: 890) mentioned that Parr was assisted by Reverends W. B. Luddington and W. N. Barleycorn – this last a Krio Fernandino of Igbo descent. In “Fernando Po, West Africa”, Parr wrote: “Having no books to assist us, our work of learning the language

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freed slaves on the West Coast of Africa held two roles for them; to teach the gospel and to serve as interpreters. Clarke sketched out in this Introduction to the Fernandian tongue that “formidable difficulties have stood in the way” and complained about the few helps he had for his linguistic work. One of the helpers, a friend of his and fellow laborer, Joseph Merrick, was “a civilized native who can read English”. Son of Richard Merrick and the first Jamaican ordained as minister of the Jamaican Baptist Church, Joseph Merrick was “Highly educated and facile in several languages (…) [and] had served as a printer’s apprentice and later editor of an antislavery newspaper” (Bela 1979: 17). Usera y Alarcón spent a year writing his Ensayo gramatical del idioma de la raza africana de Ñano (1845). He was “helped” by the two Krumen, Felipe Quir and Santiago Yegüe, in the task of penetrating the structure of the language and sowing the pathway to understand it. In turn, both Krumans were indoctrinated in the Catholic religion. The two Krumen met Captain Lerena when he reached the port of Clarence in 1843, and by May 1844, they had already received civic and religious education, and were baptized and designated sergeants of the future militia in Fernando Po (Usera y Alarcón 1848: 5–6). Jerónimo Usera y Alarcón also mentioned José Mariano Vallejo as the Krumen’s instructor in Spanish. The two Krumen learned to read and write in Spanish and assimilated the basics from arithmetic, history and geography.29 In the following cite, the Jesuit wisely underlines some problems regarding the pedagogical steps needed to take advantage of the interpreters (Usera y Alarcón 1848: 5): [T]ampoco puede desconocerse la gran dificultad que hay para penetrar á fondo un lenguaje, teniendo unicamente por maestro, quien no solo carece de un medio para darse siquiera medianamente á entender, sino de aquellos conocimientos más generales y comunes á todo idioma, comprendidos bajo el nombre de Gramática General. [Also we cannot forget the enormous difficulty to deeply penetrate a language, having solely as a teacher whom not only lacks of a way to make himself understood, even if incomplete, but also he lacks of the most general and commons knowledge of any language, included under the name of General Grammar.]

|| was a groping in the dark for a long time, and we were conscious of many imperfections in our speaking even to the last. The most prominent characteristic is the principle of “alliteral concord”. An assimilation which takes place between the initial letters of words grammatically connected in a sentence, the word governed generally changing its initial into that of the word by which it is governed” (Parr 1889: 27). 29 See Vaz (1998) for a full account of Quir and Yegüe’s episode in Madrid and for a thorough review of Usera y Alarcón’s pedagogical work.

92 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez On the contrary, the Claretian Father Juanola complained about the lack of written materials on Bubi (he was unaware of the existence of Clarke’s Introduction, in English) and about the attitudes of the natives regarding their unwillingness to cooperate. Racist ideologies about the natives, metaphorically articulated on geographic views, impinged the complaints of Juanola (1890: Prenotandos) about the lack of collaboration from the natives: Sin camino ni sendero, ni siquiera rastro ninguno, esto es, sin ningún escrito sobre esta lengua bubí, un idioma completamente nuevo, negándonos muchas veces las respuestas o diciéndonoslas opuestas á lo que con franqueza y lealtad preguntábamos al indígena, tan ladino y desconfiado como sus caminos y bosques, donde vive una vida poco menos que de bruto ó salvaje; sin intérpretes competentes en esta primera parte, nos hemos visto muchas veces á peligro de desmayar y perecer en nuestra idea. [Without a track or a path, not even a trail to follow, that’s it; without anything written about this language Bubi, a brand new language, many times denying us the answers or telling us the opposite to whatever we frankly and with loyalty asked the native (being as sly and distrustful as his trails and woods where he nearly lives the life of a savage or an ignorant); without any competent interpreters in this first part of the book, we had envisaged ourselves in peril of dismay and abandoning our idea.] The following pages contain a first attempt to reduce an unwritten language to grammatical form. Formidable difficulties have stood in the way, and comparatively few helps for such a work have been enjoyed; perfection therefore is not pretended, though, it is hoped, few serious mistakes have been made. From a civilized native who can read English, I have had much assistance; and most efficient aid from my friend and fellow-laborer, Mr. Joseph Merrick (Clarke 1848b: vii).

As we can see, Baptist and Catholic interpreters greatly differed: for the former, the interpreter was highly educated and fluent in the native languages, as for the Catholic interpreters, the priest had to ‘educate’ them while translating. Besides that, we can argue about some theoretical and methodological implications. On one hand, while we can contend about the nature of those coauthored books, the fact is that natives were only mentioned in the prologue along with a description of the methodology. On the other hand, missionaries put into play western philosophical ideas of language hand in hand with a philology of the races: they speak about the native’s experiential – naturalistic – approach on language compared with their scientific one. Categorized as ‘savages’, natives’ experience on language is explained by their undeveloped nature and lack of complex forms of organization. Methodologically, the implications of having English as the bridge language to work with the interpreters (case of Usera y Alarcón) open the question about the accuracy of the translation. Clarke relied on Joseph Merrick as a translator because of his African origin which could not guarantee his competence

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with Bubi. Again, the idea about one common language in West Africa with pockets of different dialects is embedded in this assumption. Missionaries played the role of linguists hand in hand with their evangelization work. They dealt with semantic analysis, discourse structure and cultural transfers to give form to unwritten languages such as Bubi. Missionaries struggled between connotative and referential meaning and sometimes did not find an object to point out and to ask for its meaning, regarding, for example, moral concepts such as compassion or remorse. Nevertheless, they believed that they were speaking not only on behalf of God but also as his incarnation, and from their hearts they quoted: one of the marvels of translation is that, in regard to spiritual truth, no matter how profound, we have always found a way to express it. With careful search, a good native helper, a knowledge of the language and the use of judgment in selection, no essential truth need be lost to the native mind. (Good quoted in North 1938: 8)30

As a matter of fact, the idea of a real, effective, natural and transparent way to communicate the Scriptures directly from the Holy Spirit was rooted in the missionaries’ mind. John Purvey, a helper of John Wycliffe, a translator of the Vulgate to vernacular English, said: A translator hath nede to lyve a clene lif, and be ful devout in preiers, and have not his wit ocupied about worldli thingis, that the Holi Spiryt, autour of wisdom and kunnyng and truthe, dresse him in his werk and suffre him not for to erre. By this maner, and with good lyving and greet travel, men moun come to trewe and cleer translating, and a trewe undurstonding of Holi Writ, seme it nevere so hard at the bigynnyng. God graunte to us alle grace to kunne well and kepe wel Holi Writ, andsufre ioiefulli sum peyne for it at the laste. Amen. (quoted in North 1938: 9)

God’s help did not always work out, though. Clarke, Usera y Alarcón and Juanola looked for equivalent words in Spanish or English with their Bubi counterparts but they missed the richness of the native languages when polysemous headwords were rendered in one plain word.

|| 30 Albert Irwin Good was appointed to the West Africa Mission in 1909 and served there until 1949 as a Presbyterian missionary. He taught and did evangelical work in Cameroun. He published a number of folktales, proverbs, grammars in Bulu language; he also translated thirtythree books of the Old Testament into Bulu and edited various Bulu, Mabea, and Banok language hymnals. The date of this quotation is unknown (Archives from Presbyterian Historical Society. http://www.history.pcusa.org/collections/findingaids/fa.cfm?record_id=170. Accessed January, 17 2014).

94 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez From Introduction to the Fernandian tongue, I will use Clarke’s Hymn translated into Bubi as an example of the introduction of new concepts into the Bubi culture. The title of the hymn is “There is Beyond the Sky,” a version of the current “Heaven and Hell.” Notice first how the hymn’s title in Clarke’s English version has changed from a corollary to two indexical terms in the Christian context. Clarke’s words are chosen to bring the meanings of the original terms closer to the Bubi realia. The idea of heaven and hell is rooted in a philosophy shared by various religions, with the location of God’s abode traditionally depicted as existing above the sky. Nevertheless, the natives had not incorporated the idea of God – nor heaven nor hell – into their cultural system. We can argue that Clarke sought to force the meanings upon the Bubi language using words from the colonial language (English). As a matter of fact, the translation work is a two-folded process: it serves as a bridge between the native culture and English, and reinforces the breach between the colonizers and the colonized upon the control and separation of languages. This last task is exemplified by the introduction of cultural specific items – as we will see – used to underscore the difference and assimilate the subjectivity of the native. Clarke uses the words heaven and hell in a discretionary way, as we can see in Table 1. Table 1: “Heaven and Hell” in Clarke’s Fernandian tongue (1848b) and Bolekia’s Dictionary (2009) Word

Source

Translation

Source

Above the clouds, heaven (English, in Divine and Moral songs 2012, “Heaven and Hell”) Sky

(English in Clarke’s 1848b hymn “There is Beyond the Sky”

hell

(English in Clarke’s 1848b hymn “There is Beyond the Sky”

world

(English, in Divine and Moral Place of fire songs 2012, “Heaven and Hell”) Boso

(Fernandian tongue in Clarke’s 1848b)

Böisó = fire, bonfire

(Bubi in Bolekia 2009)

(English, in Divine and Moral Itshe songs 2012, “Heaven and Hell”) Tyé = country, nation, territory, place

(Fernandian tongue in Clarke’s 1848b) (Bubi in Bolekia 2009)

As we can see in the hymn below, the differences between the original and Clarke’s version in English to be used with the Bubi people are striking.

The first missionary linguistics in Fernando Po | 95 Table 2: “Heaven and Hell” in Christian Classics Ethereal Library (2012) and “There is beyond the sky” in Clarke’s Fernandian tongue (1848b)

“Heaven and Hell”

Hymn, translation

“There is beyond the sky”

There is beyond the sky A heaven of joy and love; And holy children, when they die, Go to that world above.

There is a country above the clouds, A world of joy and of love; The persons who are good, in the day of death, They go to it, to this world, the country above.

There is a dreadful hell, And everlasting pains: There sinners must with devils dwell In darkness, fire, and chains.

There is a country, a dreadful place of fire, A great fire for all people, to be driven into, who do bad; There dwell the spirits who do bad, in the midst of darkness; There: in the fire, and in chains always.

Can such a wretch as I Escape this cursed end? And may I hope, whene’er I die, I shall to heaven ascend?

A bad person such as I am! Be saved can I, from this dreadful end? And may I hope on the day I die, That I shall go above the clouds?

Then will I read and pray, While I have life and breath, Lest I should be cut off to–day, And sent t’ eternal death.

Then I shall be praying to Christ Jesus, While I am in this world, and while I have breath; Death may happen today; then I should not like it, To be driven away to where nothing good is done, and where Death is never ending.

(Christian Classics Ethereal Library: http://www.ccel.org)

(Clarke 1848b: 51)

Clarke’s version is a sort of ‘digression’ from the original hymn; he avoids the synthetic version and goes for a fully developed description of the key ideas embedded in it (Heaven, Hell, sinner, Holy). Although the modern approach to translation (whether as an art or science, it does not matter here) recognizes the essential role played by the cultural transference in the act of translation, this is not the case with the missionaries’ work in Equatorial Guinea. They neither became familiar with the culture from inside (lacking the emic point of view – arguably vague as a theoretical concept) nor the native linguistic system. Both of these elements (culture and linguistic system) were new to the colonizers. The missionaries found themselves involved simultaneously in the reverse action of learning-creating. They did not have a body of native readers, which could have borne witness to the correctness of the translation. Missionaries relied on themselves as the only means to prove that meaning of the source language targeted the native one (in the case of Clarke, he was also able to rely

96 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez on the help of bilinguals’ English-native tongues).31 This obviously opened a problem not only regarding the significance and correctness of the translation but also of the word choice. Words that represented images not found in the native language (needless to say those that are ‘culturally produced’) became “culture-specific items” defined by Franco Aixelá as: Those textually actualized items whose function and connotations in a source text involve a translation problem in their transference to a target text, whenever this problem is a product of the nonexistence of the referred item or of its different intertextual status in the cultural system of the readers of the target text. (Franco Aixelá 1996: 58)

That is the case with words such as Jesus Christ, spirits and dreadful in Clarke’s version of the Fernandian tongue. For Clarke, Pidgin English was, apparently, the solution. Christ Jesus was transfered as Krist Jisus in Bubi, although there are in fact two Bubi words to express the idea of Jesus Christ.32 Another type of intercultural interference occurred with the “method” of translation. For example, translating spirit into Bubi using the word imo, which becomes mmó [‘devil, demon, ghost’] and böribbò [‘spirit, demon’] according to the isoglosses to Clarke’s work. These translation procedures of incorporating new and fashionable words went hand in hand with the missionaries’ and colonizers’ goals of colonizing the subjectivity and the knowledge of the natives. Spanish missionaries Usera y Alarcón and Juanola were much more active in their work to conquer the consciousness of the natives and hispanicize them. The goal was to fill the natives with patriotic and Catholic faith; nevertheless, the Spaniards blamed the English language and the Baptist missionaries for thwarting the action of the Catholic missionaries. This was a real threat since Clarke stated: “several have learned a little English, and can read in the first class book. Hundreds have attended our schools, and a few have been converted to God. A large vocabulary, several translations of school books, and of portions of the word of God are in a state of preparation for the press” (Clarke 1848b: viii).

|| 31 As I have aforementioned, it is likely that the interpreters used by Clarke were speakers of Pidgin English and possessed other mother tongues such as Krio. I am reluctant to accept that they were Bubis. The frequency of English words in the text as well as the mix of north and south varieties of Bubi speaks to this regard. 32 These words coincide with the isogloss that divides Bioko north and Bioko south: Elaló is common in Bioko north such as Baney, Topé, Baresó, Cupapa and means el visto in Spanish [‘the seen‘]. This word is rooted in the verb o eláála = ‘to see, to discover’. And Bòllá éRuppé means ‘God’s son’. I want to express my most sincere thanks to Professor Justo Bolekia for this explanation.

The first missionary linguistics in Fernando Po | 97

In the missionary strategies of Equatorial Guinea, contrary to other centuries and colonies in America, the native languages didn’t jeopardize the Hispanization project; rather they served as the means to bring Spanish missionaries closer and to facilitate the immersion of natives into the colonialsource language. The colonization of the subjects is represented in some translation and phraseology in Spanish and Bubi. In Juanola’s (1890: 71) grammatical essay addressed to other Spanish missionaries, the examples to be translated are ideologically constructed around the inferiority of the Bubis and the superiority of the whites – meaning Spaniards. Not only their human nature but also their customs are judged, and they are classified as savages: ¿Quién habita aqui en esta isla? Muchos salvajes – Me gusta, pues vengo a civilizarlos. – ¡Hola bubí! ¿Estás casado? – si – ¿Cuántas mujeres tienes? – dos – Eres un salvaje. ¿Cuántos hijos?– muchos: unos veinte – ¡Jesús! (Mkuéiu!). [Who lives in this island? Many savages – I like it here because I am here to civilize them. – Hello Bubi! Are you married? – yes – How many women do you have? – two – You are a savage. How many children do you have? – many: twenty or so – Jesus! (Mkuéiu!)]

In another example, Spain and its population set the standard for comparison: Este vino de España es mejor que aquél de palma (Juanola 1890: 45). [This Spanish wine is better than that made of Palma.] Los blancos son sabios, los bubis mienten. (Juanola 1890: 139) [Whites are wise, Bubis lie.]

Spanish language is considered one of the European – developed – languages while Bubi and Kru are not considered fully developed languages. Similar to Juanola, Usera y Alarcón’s description of the “ñano language” is rooted in the ideology of white supremacy. Discussing the way of speaking about the Krumen, Usera y Alarcón said: […] teniendo el lenguaje que nos ocupamos mucha analogía con el modo de espresarse nuestros niños y gente inculta, que no usa mas palabras que las necesarias para darse a entender. (Usera y Alarcón 1845: 26) [[…] having the language we are discussing here poses a great analogy with the way that our children or ignorant people express themselves, who don’t use more words than are needed to make themselves understood.] Admiremos aquí que el verbo sustantivo ser, es constantemente irregular en todas las lenguas, aun en aquellas que por su sencillez y naturalidad, parece que debían estar eximidas de los giros sustituciones é innovaciones propios de los idiomas, que son el órgano de una extremada pulidez y cultura. (Usera y Alarcón 1845: 12) [Let’s admire here that the verb to be is always irregular in all languages, even in those that, because of their simplicity and naturalness, seem to be exempt from the linguistic turns, substitutions and innovations belonging to all tongues, being them the organ of an extreme polishness and culture.]

98 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez In the same manner of Clarke, the Spanish missionaries encountered several problems regarding the translation of religious terms. To tackle the task of finding meaningful terms, Usera y Alarcón and Juanola resorted, on the one hand, to metaphors. “God” is then a “king” (1) and “hell” is a “place with dead bodies”. ‘To rise from the dead’ is translated as eujori which appears in Bolekia’s dictionary33 as euhöri = (a) ‘the beginning, the start’, (b) ‘a preparation’ (Bolekia 2009: 171). On the other hand, though, new components are also inevitably introduced in the target language as we can see with Satanas, mortal or venial (2, 3). In this last case, and unlike Clarke’s strategic use of English Pidgin, the Latin form is the word model. Some examples are as follows: (1)

¿Quién es Dios? – Un rey muy bueno. Nkelo e Rubbe? – E muchuku – Muemuelomo. ‘Who is God? A very good king.’

(2)

¿Cuántas clases hay de pecados? Nkibojabe ie mehe? ‘How many types of sins are there?’

(3)

Dos: mortal y venial, o sea grandes y pequeños Jebba: lo mortale, lo veniale, ‘nkote lo ‘nkichi ‘Two: mortal and venial, big and small ones.’

There are different ways to refer to God in the Bubi language. Missionaries took this into account and translated it as Rubbe (4), Poto (5), E Kóru (6). (4)

Dios lo hizo todo O Rubbe34 ebaso oboja obomma. [Ruppé e báèssó bobba bömmaa] [Ruppé: divinidad, Dios (divinity, God) (Bolekia 2009: 286)] ‘God created everything.’

(5)

Dios se lo pague Potó emomuacha-Poto abiaso Potó’mme. [Potóo e mó mö’atya-Potóo a bëasso-Potóo e mmë] [Potóo or potóö: thanks (Bolekia 2009: 270)] [Potto: Dios, Supremo (God, Supremacy) (Bolekia 2009: 270)] [Abiaso [a bëasso]: extensiones (extensions) (Bolekia 2009: 84)] ‘God bless you.’35

|| 33 Taking into account that Bolekia’s dictionary Ë ribúkku ra balláa offers a double entry of Spanish-Bubi, I have sometimes inserted the Spanish word for clarification. 34 The phonetic ambiguity between labial consonants ‘b’ and ‘p’ is very frequent in the writings of these missionaries.

The first missionary linguistics in Fernando Po | 99

(6)

¿Quién hizo el mundo? – Dios. Nke’ bao orichó- E Kóru. [Kè e báyórityö? Ë Kòru] [Körí: rico, hacendado (rich, wealthy) (Bolekia 2009: 213)] ‘Who created the world? – God’

Similarly, the word hell is translated as different words, such as Rié36 [ríë: ‘río, afluente, arroyo’ (‘river, stream’)], Mosobola, Bileppe and Bosó buelá [bössó: ‘fuego’ (‘fire’) and buelá/wellá: ‘lluvia’ (‘rain’) or buelá: ‘vidente’ (‘clairvoyant’)]. (7)

¿Dónde está el Diablo? Nkae o mosalabe je? [Möösó: ‘flames, fire’ and lobe: ‘bad’ (Bolekia 2009: 236)] ‘Where is the Devil?’

(8)

En el infierno. ’Aló bileppe [Bilëppé: (a) ‘dead bodies’ (b) ‘mortal rests’ (Bolekia 2009: 104)] ‘In hell.’

Although we can argue about the missionaries’ work on the native languages as a vehicle to evangelize, a tool to enlighten and alphabetize the natives, or an effort to bridge two different cultural and linguistic systems, they were also part of the colonization of the subjectivity and language of the colonized. It is very likely, as we have seen, that the missionaries didn’t reach Smith’s (a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) view when he quoted “Losing their native speech, a people lose their continuity with the past and sink to intellectual helotry” (Smith 1920: 37); rather they believed the opposite: their transliteration process should facilitate the exertion of power and the inoculation of “culture-specific terms” needed for the conquest (Hispanization) of the infidels.

7 Conclusion In sum, the missionary linguistic works in Fernando Po show that missionaries did not deeply penetrate the structure of languages. From a semantic point of view, the lexicon is limited to words of practical use, religious purposes and || 35 The translation in Bubi for this idiomatic expression is Ë Ruppé a lo mpellö böhullá. (Bolekia, p. c.) 36 There is no entry for hell [infierno in Spanish] in Bolekia’s dictionary.

100 | Susana Castillo-Rodríguez evangelical conquest. That’s to say, an example of missionaries’ linguistic horizon and their strategy of parroting natives words to build a written representation of native languages. They use interpreters as a means to navigate between two different cultural and language systems. Since language was seen as a selfcontained system occupying a territory, missionaries obliterated the differences between European and African structures of languages. Missionaries worked essentially with three levels of the system: phonetics, grammar and lexicon. They also used Latin or Hebrew (Usera y Alarcón 1845) as metalanguages to describe illiterate languages such as Kru and Bubi. Subsequently, semiotic and hermeneutic problems arose in the writings of the missionaries in Equatorial Guinea. They couldn’t recognize the different meanings embedded in the various words of the target language and so they used them interchangeably as the translation of one word in the source language. Those words happened to be the core words of the philosophical-religious system that the missionaries were trying to instill into the natives. Those words carried the weight as ‘culturespecific items’ (Franco Aixelá 1996) and required an ethnolinguistic approach to grasp the meaning of the language. Lacking this, the missionaries were driven by the urgency to master the unknown tongue and reduce it to writing. Needless to say, the beneficiaries were not the illiterate natives but the priests at the missions and the colonial government. Having the language in a writing form would ensure the continuation of the evangelizing project and would provide the instruments to exert power over the natives. The Hispanization of the natives was part of the colonizing project of the self as I have argued above. Spain needed to reaffirm its power after years of abandoning the African territories. During the period of 1778 until 1843, European powers settled in the island of Fernando Po, Corisco, and Annobón, and established an efficient system of evangelization, education and government. The menace of seeing Fernando Po transformed into an “English colony” motivated Spain to take action. Missionaries were sent to Equatorial Guinea as government agents and, as such, their missions, churches, school and projects were financed. Putting into play their role as agents of literacy, missionaries not only preached the Bible but also engaged in the government project of colonizing the natives. This project covered many fields of intervention to achieve the Hispanization of the indigenous; in addition to the administration, the conquest of the infidels, the displacement of English from the linguistic repertoire and the colonizing of the knowledge – by the rhetoric made real – were the essential measures tackled by the missionaries. The production of grammars, dictionaries and word lists in Spanish and native languages helped the Spanish missionaries get closer to the natives. This turned out to fulfill the multiple goals sought by the government. Missionaries opened the way to sow the Catho-

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lic faith; they pressured the Spanish administration to expel the Baptist Missionary Church (and the English language with them), and they used examples of the target language to instill the idea of the superiority of the Spaniards and to lay down the Spanish dominion, a clear feature of collaboration in the colonial-political domain. The predominance of Spanish, Catholicism and identity ties with Spain in Equatorial Guinea (even after 44 years of independence) account for this epilogue. In spite of (or because of) the misleading translations, inaccurate semiotic processes and inoculations of new cultural-specific items, Spanish missionaries succeeded in the colonization of the natives.

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Martina Anissa Strommer

Imagined communities, invented tribe? Early missionary language documentation and the creation of the Herero Abstract: In 2011, Germany returned 20 Herero and Nama skulls which had been brought to Berlin for research during colonialism in the early 20th century. Who is considered Nama and Herero up until today, was largely influenced by the Rhenish missionaries, who started working in 1842 in what is Namibia today. This article will describe how the Protestant missionaries Johannes Rath (1816– 1903) and Carl Hugo Hahn (1818–1895) shaped the Herero identity by actively developing the Herero lexicon, advocating for the Herero language, and standardizing the language as a unifying factor for the individual Herero groups. Keywords: Herero, imagined community, language documentation, Namibia, Rhenish Mission || Martina Anissa Strommer: Jedlersdorfer Platz 2/2, 1210 Wien, AUSTRIA, [email protected]

1 Introduction Colonialism and British imperialism are often associated with a ‘divide and rule’ strategy, which divides the indigenous population into ‘tribalized’ groups in order to make them easier to identify and control. Nonetheless, in many cases it was unclear which criteria should be applied, and colonizers first had to create the different ethnic identities they wanted to divide the indigenous population into. In the case of what is Namibia today, this process started not with the onset of German colonialism, but when the first European missionaries permanently settled down in central Namibia as early as 1842. Because language is a critical factor for national and ethnic identity, this paper will explore how linguistic research conducted by the first missionaries in the area influenced the ‘tribalization’ and development of a distinct Herero identity. In addition to mission documents and published works, the most important data for this analysis include Johannes Rath’s unpublished journals and

108 | Martina Anissa Strommer letters (archive of the Vereinte Evangelische Mission, Wuppertal, Germany) as well as his linguistic manuscripts (archive of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Namibia, Windhoek; National Library of South Africa, Cape Town). This article addresses the formation of, and influence on the Herero identity by the Rhenish missionaries in the pre- and proto-colonial context. Therefore, political questions of the German colonial era have been excluded since the present study does not constitute an analysis of possible reasons for later conditions or conflicts. Regarding the destiny of the Herero from 1904 onwards and particularly the role of the missionaries in the conflict between the indigenous population and the German colonial power, the reader is referred to relevant studies (e.g. Gewald 1999, Graichen & Gründer 2007, Henrichsen 2010, Oermann 1999, Pierard 2005, Zeller & Zimmerer 2003). Detailed analyses of the social, political and economic structures in pre- and proto-colonial central Namibia can be found in Henrichsen (1997) und Lau (1987). Proto-colonial is defined in this text as a situation in which tools of colonial control were already common but no European claims to power had been explicitly stated yet (Steinmetz 2007: 76). In the regional and historical context discussed here, a strict dichotomy of pre-colonial and colonial would ignore the fact that European presence in central Namibia did not coincide with German colonial appropriation: the first Europeans – travelers, traders, but primarily Rhenish missionaries – had already significantly influenced the indigenous population long before the area was claimed by a European nation. In other words, certain characteristics which were formalized or institutionalized during the colonial period, such as the educational system, trades or jurisdiction, were already in place without the missionaries stating any explicit claims to political power. Thus, the proto-colonial period in central Namibia can be interpreted as a continuous process of Europeanization and industrialization, starting in 1842 with the arrival of the first European missionaries and ending in 1883 with Adolf Lüderitz’s first contracts on which the German colonial rule was based. During the first half of the 19th century, the settlement area of the British Cape Colony was expanded north to the Orange River, which serves as the present-day border between the Republic of South Africa and Namibia. While the northern region of the Cape Colony and the southern part of modern-day Namibia were mainly settled by Nama groups, central Namibia was inhabited by both Nama and Herero groups. In contrast to the Nama, which belong to the Khoikhoi and were condescendingly called ‘Hottentots’ or ‘Bushmen’ by the Europeans, the Bantu-speaking Herero – then also called Damra – started migrating into modern-day Namibia only in the 16th century. From the 18th century onwards, Orlam groups started moving north from the Cape Colony. What was unique about these partially Europeanized Khoikhoi

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was that they had guns and horses, wore European clothes, drove the typically South African ox wagon, spoke Dutch and had been in touch with Christianity. As a result of the ethnic and linguistic similarities, an alliance of Orlams and Nama emerged in central Namibia; consequently, these two groups were hard to distinguish for outsiders and will also be viewed together in this paper. After 1823, Jonker Afrikaner (1790–1861) led another wave of Orlam migration to the north. In 1814, the German Johann Hinrich Schmelen (1776–1848) became the first European to enter present-day Namibia as he explored potential mission territory for the London Missionary Society. In 1838, Schmelen asked the Rhenish Mission Society (RMG)1 for support, and they sent Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt (1812–1864) in 1840 and Carl Hugo Hahn (1818–1895) in 1842. Together, Schmelen, Kleinschmidt, and Hahn entered present-day Namibia by crossing the Orange River and settling down with Jonker Afrikaner in Windhoek the following year. They left Windhoek in 1844, founded the Herero mission stations Okahandja and Otjikango, and occupied the Nama stations Rehoboth and Bethany. In order to repay his debts to English traders, Jonker started frequent raids on the neighboring Herero, which some historians describe as civil war-like conditions. Some scholars argue that in this conflict, the RMG decided to support the Herero in order to avoid an economic, political and military Orlam hegemony because, in contrast to the Orlams, the Herero were not perceived as a threat to possible colonial ambitions.

2 Theoretical framework In the mid-19th century, two theories prevailed for interpreting the social and political situation of the Herero and explaining the differences to the conditions in central Europe, which was characterized by sprouting nationalism at that time. One theory suggested that the Herero were stuck in an early stage of human development, which enabled the Europeans to investigate the “human mind in its most primitive stages” (Bleek 1864: xxv, Ohly 1990b: 2) and meant that the Herero had the potential for development and civilization (cf. Ranger 1983: 247). A second theory saw the de-centrally organized Herero society as an indicator for decay: the Herero were supposed to be the descendants of a more ‘highly’ || 1 The Pietist RMG was founded in 1828 by merging four smaller mission societies and started sending missionaries to the Cape Colony in 1829.

110 | Martina Anissa Strommer developed culture and faced – possibly due to contact with and negative influence from the Nama and Orlams – cultural, intellectual and linguistic decay. They were considered “an almost extinct nation” (Bleek 1862: 13) in danger of social fragmentation (Andersson 1856: 217–218, BRMG 1852: 99, Büttner 1881: 199, Chapman 1868b: 475, ELCRN I.1.1: 71–72, Fries 1903: 59, Gewald 1999: 10, Irle 1917: v, Kolbe 1885: 43, Lau 1989: 280). The discussion of the developmental stage of the Herero was centered on the friction between the theories of evolution and of decay, which were occasionally addressed in parallel. In doing so, the missionaries supported the theory of decay with linguistic arguments by noting that younger Herero speakers did not know certain words the Europeans had elicited from older informants. From a modern linguistic point of view, this phenomenon does not indicate decay but rather a neutral and natural aspect of language change. While missionary Carl Hugo Hahn followed the theory of decay less vehemently than many others, he remarked that Johannes Rath believed the Herero language was about to waste away (Lau 1984/5: 1136). In stark contrast to essentialist theories emphasizing “the significance of ‘primordial ties’ and a ‘given’ common history (ancestry), culture and language” (Lentz 1995: 306), the present analysis is based on the constructionist theories of scholars such as Benedict Anderson, Terence O. Ranger, and Leroy Vail. They argue that pre-colonial Africa was not “composed of tribes or ethnic groups with distinct boundaries. On the contrary, the dominant characteristics of pre-colonial ‘societies’ […] were mobility, overlapping networks, multiple group membership and the flexible, context-dependent drawing of boundaries” (Lentz 1995: 319). Political scientist Benedict Anderson created the concept of Imagined Communities and highlighted the relation of language (and, subsequently, of letterpress), religion and nationalism (Anderson 1983). Anderson draws on numerous historical examples to discuss the significance of these three elements in creating group identity, solidarity and national and ethnic consciousness. One of his essential ideas is that “[m]uch the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities” (Anderson 1983: 133). That same year, British historian Terence O. Ranger published The invention of tradition in Colonial Africa (Ranger 1983). It is important to note that Ranger did not imply that all traditions are euro-centric constructs by definition, which is a common misinterpretation of his theory. Instead, he claims that during British colonialism, Europeans and Africans used existing and newly invented traditions to establish their preferred power structures (Ranger 1994, cf. Lentz 1995: 318, Spear 2003). These traditions were not necessarily deliberate distortions, but rather over-generalizations and attempts to force African realities into

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European categories. Some of the adaptations and re-interpretations of African behavioral patterns had far-reaching consequences and thus can be considered as re-inventing tradition. Monarchical ideology “was not enough in itself to provide the theory or justify the structures of colonial governance on the spot. Since so few connections could be made between British and African political, social and legal systems, British administrators set about inventing African traditions for Africans” (Ranger 1983: 212). In his work The creation of tribalism in Southern Africa, American historian Leroy Vail (1989) argues that ethnicity in southern Africa was introduced by European intellectuals and was only established once an indigenous elite had emerged. Vail suggests, “intellectuals carefully crafted their ethnic ideologies in order to define the cultural characteristics of members of various ethnic groups. […] Thus, firm, non-porous and relatively inelastic ethnic boundaries, many of which were highly arbitrary, came to be constructed and were then strengthened by the growth of stereotypes of ‘the other’” (Vail 1989: 11–12). While there exist certain limitations to constructionist theories (cf. Spear 2003), these three pioneering scholars offer an indispensable framework for discussing the crucial role European authorities played in imagining and shaping ethnicity and identity in Africa.

3 Early Herero language documentation The first two Rhenish missionaries in present-day Namibia were Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt and Carl Hugo Hahn. Kleinschmidt was a German carpenter and arrived in South Africa in 1840 in order to become a Nama missionary. He married Schmelen’s daughter Johanna (1818–1884) and occupied the Nama stations Rehoboth and Bethany. With missionary Franz Heinrich Vollmer (1819–1878), Schmelen translated the Bible into Nama and published a Nama dictionary in 1855. Kleinschmidt died in Rehoboth during an Orlam attack in 1864. Hahn, the most colorful personality among the first generation of RMG missionaries, was born in present-day Latvia in 1818 and married the British Emma Sarah Hone (1814–1880) soon after arriving in Namibia in 1841. During his time among the Herero, he worked at different stations but abandoned the mission several times because of reoccurring conflicts with the mission directors. In 1873, Hahn received an honorary doctorate for his Herero grammar published in 1857 from what is now Humboldt University, Berlin. The following year, he permanently left the mission and became the head of the German Lutheran community in the Cape Colony, where he died in 1895.

112 | Martina Anissa Strommer In 1845, Johannes Rath joined Kleinschmidt and Hahn in their endeavor. Rath was born in 1816 to a Catholic family in Vienna, Austria and converted to Protestantism after moving to Germany at the age of 18. In 1848, he married the German mission aid Anna Jörris and founded his own mission station Otjimbingue the following year. After his wife and four of his six children died in a shipwreck in 1859, he decided to move to Cape Town, where he retired in 1893 and passed away in 1903. Together with Rath’s wife, the German printer Friedrich Wilhelm Kolbe (1821–1899) arrived in Namibia in 1847 and worked at the stations Otjikango, Okahandja, and Otjimbingue. The other missionaries considered Kolbe to be the most linguistically talented one, and after leaving the RMG in 1852, he published several ground-breaking linguistic works before he died in Cape Town in 1899. When Hahn settled among the Herero in 1844, their language was completely unknown and unstudied in Europe. In contrast to many missionaries deployed to other regions, the Nama and Herero missionaries did not receive any instruction in the languages of their target area due to the lack of material. As a rule, most missionaries could only start to learn the most widely used language of their destination once they had reached the area, which greatly restricted and delayed their activities (ELCRN X.1.2.2). Rath and Hahn were overwhelmed by the linguistic tasks they faced and criticized the poor training they had undergone in the mission house before their departure (RMG 1.581b: 60b–61b). They asked for instruction in Greek and Hebrew so they would be able to translate the Bible from the original. They also requested more instruction in German, as they believed that only those who firmly grasp their mother tongue can learn, study, organize and create a new language (Lau 1984/5: 329–331, RMG 1.581a: 45b). Communication with the local population was restricted to a minimum: only a few people among the Herero spoke a little Nama or Dutch, and all other communication depended on gestures and the use of inadequate interpreters (Bonn 1928: 178, Lau 1984/5: 229, 297–298, NLSA G.40.d.33: 5, Ohly 1990a: 198). Spreading the Gospel and delivering sermons in the respective local language had traditionally been of the utmost importance for Protestant missions; therefore, the Herero missionaries dedicated most of their time to improving their language skills to be able to promote Christianity as quickly as possible. Many missionaries defined their value for the mission endeavor through their knowledge of the local languages, and this constituted a significant part of their identity. For instance, Hahn stated, “Durch die Unkenntnis der Sprache bleibt

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der Missionar ein Fremdling unter dem Volke”2 (Lau 1984/5: 668) or after a major linguistic breakthrough, “Wir haben nun den Schlüssel zum Herzen Afrikas”3 (Lau 1984/5: 474). When they started working among the Herero, Rath and Hahn estimated that it would take them several years to acquire a good working knowledge of the language, which ultimately proved to be true (Lau 1984/5: 226, RMG 1.581a: 15a). In the beginning of their studies, the missionaries searched for similarities between Herero, Arabic, and Hebrew, which was the state of the art based on the biblical account of creation. As part of the linguistic research he conducted later, missionary Kolbe even aimed to uncover a relationship between European, Polynesian, and African languages, and Nama was believed to be related to Coptic and Ancient Egyptian (Bonn 1928: 178, BRMG 1850: 42, Lau 1984/5: 290, RMG 1.581a: 45b, RMG 1.581b: 61a–b, Kolbe 1888). While studying the works of missionaries who were active in other regions, Rath and Hahn discovered parallels among several African languages and started to establish what is today known as the family of Bantu languages (BRMG 1852: 216, Chapman 1868b: 473, Drießler 1932: 54, Hahn 1857: v–vi, Lau 1984/5: 226, 454, 473–474, 1192, J. Hahn 1869: 481–482, T. Hahn 1868: 268, Irle 1906: 231, Kolbe 1885: 40, Mossolow 1966: 11, Viehe 1897: vii). Despite the lack of a common language to communicate with the local population, church services were held in German from the beginning on, which usually attracted many visitors (Mossolow 1966: 19). In order to make services more attractive for the Herero, the missionaries tried to deliver parts of it in Herero. To this end, they often asked a bilingual Herero to translate their sermons and then read them to a Herero speaker to verify their intelligibility (Bonn 1928: 177, BRMG 1850: 36–37, Drießler 1932: 54–55, Lau 1984/5: 97, Mossolow 1966: 11). However, this method of communicating the Gospel was not very efficient as it was time-consuming and bound to cause misunderstandings. Although there were no explicit claims to power by the Europeans at that time, the missionaries assumed biblically founded superiority and oftentimes found it rather humiliating and frustrating to depend on Herero speakers as interpreters for their missionary work (Gilmour 2007, Graichen & Gründer 2007: 44, Gründer 1982: 21). The missionaries’ language classes typically consisted of Rath and Hahn pointing at objects around them and a Herero giving them the corresponding vocabulary (Bonn 1928: 178, BRMG 1850: 41). Consequently, it was a milestone in Rath’s research when he learned the word otjikuatjike ‘what || 2 [Through the ignorance of the language, the missionary remains a stranger among the people]. 3 [Now we have the key to the heart of Africa].

114 | Martina Anissa Strommer is this’ so he could ask for words and no longer needed to rely on silent gestures (Drießler 1932: 54, Irle 1906: 231). Encouraged by others, Rath took the opportunity during an 11-month trip to the Cape Colony in 1846 to publish a primer, the first book printed in Herero (BRMG 1850: 33–34, Rath 1846, RMG 1.581a: 108b). Rath’s text was also noticed in Europe and considered by both the mission society and academia as an important breakthrough. Not long after Rath’s journey to Cape Town, Hahn held the first sermon in the Herero language. Rath noted that Hahn delivered the sermon “in einem Anfall von Heldenmut, Verzweiflung oder Glauben oder [einer] Mixtur aus allen dreien”4 (BRMG 1848: 78, Drießler 1932: 55, Fries 1903: 59). South African historian Carl Pieter Heese suggests that Hahn’s linguistic studies stalled during Rath’s absence of almost one year. Due to the noticeable chronological proximity of Rath’s return from the Cape on December 19, 1846 and Hahn’s first Herero sermon on January 24, 1847, Heese suggests a direct causal relationship between the two events and suggests that Rath aided in preparing Hahn’s sermon (Heese 1981: 152). Rath himself delivered his first sermon in the Herero language on the following Sunday, January 31, 1847, which also happened to be his 31st birthday (BRMG 1848: 79, ELCRN V.25: 5). After Hahn and Rath felt they were able to preach in Herero, their linguistic studies and the practical application of their language skills progressed quickly. As Hahn and Rath repeatedly encountered lexical gaps for central Christian concepts, they had to create Christian Herero terminology in order to spread the Gospel. Rath’s linguistic activities referred to characteristic aspects of corpus planning (documenting, standardizing, expanding the lexicon); however, since these measures also had a long-lasting impact on the role of the Herero language within the society, they are also significant for status planning. Rath and Hahn relied on various strategies for their lexical engineering. The Herero language was thought to consist of an unnecessarily vast number of synonyms in certain lexical fields, so oftentimes one of the known synonyms was reserved for the specifically Christian meaning (Bühlmann 1950: 89, Büttner 1881: 195–196, Chapman 1868b: 475, RMG 1.581a: 33b, RMG 1.581b: 61a, Vedder 1934: 275). Once the missionaries better understood the rich morphology of the Herero language, they began coining new expressions using semantic loans or calques. This practice was sometimes perceived by observers as inventing new words; however, Hahn and Rath simply used productive Herero morphemes to express new Christian concepts using the language’s own elements. The advantage of this method was that new terms, in contrast to expansion of meaning and || 4 [“in an outburst valor, despair, or faith, or a combination of all three].

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relexification, were transparent to the Herero and did not have any undesired heathen connotations (Bühlmann 1950: 30–31, Köhler 1960: 355, Ohly 1990a: 201). Examples of semantic change and new Christian meanings introduced by the first Herero missionaries include omuhungirire ‘prophet’ (lit. one who speaks on behalf of someone else) and ehonakori ‘crown’ (lit. chief’s hat). Finding adequate words was crucial for introducing central Christian concepts, and selecting the Herero word for the Christian God turned out to be highly problematic. At a time when systematic comparative religious studies were in their infancy and no systematic training in this field was possible, missionaries all over the world faced the challenge of learning as much as possible about the respective beliefs of the indigenous population in order to identify potential parallels, make them visible and utilize them for their purposes (Bühlmann 1950: 67, Gilmour 2007: 533). When Hahn witnessed a cleansing sacrifice, for instance, he noted that this ritual could serve as a possible connection to salvation in Christianity (Lau 1984/5: 342). In line with contemporary research of the time, the missionaries expected the Herero to believe in a possibly monotheistic or at least henotheistic creator while expecting animistic or totemistic beliefs at the same time. The first Herero missionaries struggled continuously to find any tangible information about the local religion. From the beginning onwards, Rath was surprised that he did not witness any customs or ceremonies, which for him would have indicated a developed and homogenous culture and religion (BRMG 1846: 59–60, Moritz 2000: 184, RMG 1.581a: 33a). As the predominant religious practices of the time did not resemble the European expectations and concepts, they were not identified as religious acts. To refer to the Christian word ‘God’, the Herero missionaries chose the word mukuru, which was derived from the Herero word for ‘old’; however, mukuru does not refer to a superior being but rather to an ancestor, elder or also to a charm. Discrepancies between form and content soon became obvious, yet the missionaries insisted on their meaning of mukuru. It was not until 1871 when Irle, who was working as a missionary among the Herero then, first heard the more appropriate term ndjambi or ndjambi karunga (Köhler 1960: 354, Vedder 1966 [1928]: 164). While mukuru refers to one of many ancestors, ndjambi and karunga are different manifestations of a benevolent creator residing in the heavens. Since ndjambi plays the less prominent role of a deus otiosus, mukuru influences many aspects of daily life and, therefore, was probably more present in the lives of the earlier missionaries (Irle 1906: 73–86, Vedder 2001 [1933]: 4). As an undesired collateral consequence, due to the inappropriate choice of terminology by the missionaries, the Herero were presumably encouraged to worship their own ancestors and did not perceive Christianity as a very different religion from their own (Drießler 1932: 55, Ohly 1987: 14).

116 | Martina Anissa Strommer Rath and Hahn avoided introducing overt loanwords for several reasons. First, loanwords were not transparent for the Herero and were more prone to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. For instance, ondeveli ‘devil’ was confused with ondembeli ‘temple’, and omupilisti ‘Philistine’ was confused with omupristeri ‘priest’ (BRMG 1850: 56, Bühlmann 1950: 52–105, Büttner 1881: 194, Lau 1984/5: 410, Heese 1981: 153, Ohly 1987: 13, Ohly 1990a: 201, Ohly 1995: 289). Another motivation for avoiding loanwords could have been to give the Herero a certain degree of autonomy and authority over their own language, which of course is only possible if the elements are transparent and can be used by the speakers independently (cf. Bühlmann 1950: 44, Gilmour 2007). In other words, Hahn and Rath initiated the process of lexical engineering and later left the finished product to the Herero for further use. If it is the speakers themselves who create a specialized language, cultural contextualization is warranted, and ideological manipulation can be largely avoided (Webb 1995: 86). However, this certainly was not the case during the RMG’s early work since the Herero did not see any need to change or expand their lexicon in order to accommodate Christian terminology. Towards the end of the 19th century, missionaries were more inclined to introduce loanwords, most likely encouraged by German colonial rule. Rath is known for compiling nearly 2,000 pages of word lists, which are preserved in five manuscripts (ELCRN XI.2.1a–c, ELCRN XI.2.2, NLSA G.17.d.41, NLSA G.40.d.33–49, NLSA G.40.d.50). In his letters and journals, he recorded only very little about this endeavor, hence we do not know much about his motivation, methods, or informants. He might have believed that the mission directors were mostly interested in the results and benefits of his activities but not in the course of his actions. Nonetheless, Rath’s word lists remain the most extensive and impressive result of his endeavors. The present paper does not attempt to analyze the linguistic validity of Rath’s research, evaluate his results according to today’s criteria, or judge their contribution to modern linguistics. The fact that Rath’s achievements were praised by his contemporaries and successors shall suffice as an indicator of their significance (e. g. Bleek 1869: xxi, Brincker 1886: vii, Irle 1906: 232, Irle 1917: Vorwort, Kolbe 1869: 32, Kolbe 1883: iii, Viehe 1897: ix). Rather, the goal is to investigate whether Rath’s word lists reflect a ‘colonial gaze’ or manifest his identity as a European missionary, similar to Mathilde Hennig (2009) examining a “German gaze” on grammatical features of colonial languages. While Ohly argues that missionaries Kolbe and Brincker deliberately used their respective dictionaries to spread prejudices against the Herero and their language (Ohly 1987: 12–13), such claims cannot be found in Rath’s work: there are no introductions or prefaces, no examples or explanations, and the reader is left with uncommented synonyms or homonyms. In addition, the results of

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Rath’s own corpus planning and lexical engineering are largely absent from the lists as he did not add any of the new Christian words or meanings. Consequently, Rath’s lists can be understood as a descriptive inventory of symmetrical communication among the Herero, and not as a prescriptive rulebook of correct and desirable language usage for outsiders during colonial times. Another significant aspect of Rath’s linguistic activities was additional ethnographic research: he compiled a collection of 25 Herero fables, which exists today in manuscripts of different lengths in Windhoek and Cape Town (Henrichsen 1997: 312, NLSA G.10.d.26(8)). Brincker added 15 of the stories as the appendix of his Herero dictionary, Bleek published one text, and Theophilus Hahn (who was not related to Carl Hugo Hahn but a son of the Nama missionary Johannes Samuel Hahn) printed three of the fables (Bleek 1864: 90–94, Brincker 1886: 328–351, T. Hahn 1868: 308–309).5 Rath likely referred to the texts as “fables” because they contained similar elements as found in classic fables such as Aesop’s. For example, readers can find animal protagonists and a morale or etiology at the end of the tale. However, most attempts at classifying the narratives as legends or fairytales are futile since these classifications would be mostly based on European categories and features (Bleek 1864: xxvii, Hennig 2009, Henrichsen 1997: 314, Ohly 1990b: 5, Schmidt 1996: 188–189). Rath does not mention in his journals or letters when, where or by whom he was told the stories.6 There were many reasons for missionaries to create such collections. For instance, many complained that the locals did not have any literature and that no complete texts were available as a point of departure for linguistic studies and bible translations (BRMG 1846: 61, Büttner 1881: 190, Callaway 1868: ii–iii, Grout 1859: v, Lau 1984/5: 669–670). This suggests that Rath could have written down the fables in order to obtain a text corpus for his Herero dictionary and to see grammatical structures in context. Another compelling reason for using the fables this way is Kolbe’s remark that Bantu folklore per se is uninteresting and only useful for acquiring a language (Kolbe 1885: 40). However, one cannot disregard the possibility that Rath deliberately wrote || 5 While this was a very important act by the missionaries in formalizing the Herero language and making their traditions accessible to others, it is disputed to what extent the narratives can be considered unique to the Herero. It is known that due to the close cultural relations between Nama and Herero, many of the motifs were known to both groups, and there is evidence that both groups have a history of adapting narratives from other cultures (Bleek 1862: 22, Bleek 1864: xxvii, Ohly 2000: 64–65. 6 While Henrichsen assumes that Rath started collecting the fables in Stellenbosch after Bleek had asked him to do so in 1861, the NLSA manuscript was already written in 1859, which means that Rath started his collection earlier (Henrichsen 1997: 312, NLSA G.10.d.26(8)).

118 | Martina Anissa Strommer the fables in order to prove that the Herero did in fact have a literature, and to give the general public an opportunity to participate in their cultural heritage. Because the Herero mission was abandoned several times in the mid-19th century and the Herero themselves were considered an “almost extinct nation” (Bleek 1862: 13), Rath might have wished to document parts of their culture for later generations or even prove that their traditions were very much alive. In addition, Bleek explains his interest in southern African oral literature as an opportunity to study and document “the human mind in its most primitive stages” (Bleek 1864: xxv, Ohly 1990b: 2). Except for the 1846 primer, Rath does not appear as author, co-author, publisher, editor or translator of any other publication. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that he printed one book in Cape Town in 1859. Since documenting published material was not mandatory, and the majority of publishing staff and librarians did not speak Herero and consequently did not necessarily label the texts correctly, it is not clear which book this was. The 1849 collection of Bible stories was likely translated into Herero by both Rath and Hahn, while some sources indicate that Rath was the only translator and editor (e. g. Bleek 1858: 170, Rath 1857, Vedder 1934: 388, Vedder 1966 [1928]: 211). As Rath’s extensive word lists remained unpublished, one can assume that they were compiled primarily so travelers and fellow missionaries could copy them for their own use (for instance, cf. Galton 1853: 82) but not as an academic benchmark. Since Rath’s fables were the only part of his legacy that was published by others later, they were the most likely to have a potential impact on public opinion. Like most linguistic studies of that time, Hahn’s and Rath’s achievements would not conform to present-day standards and have been repeatedly reviewed and built upon in the meantime; nonetheless, they constitute the stepping stone for all future linguistic endeavors and were central in the creation of a Herero identity.

4 Discussion Constructionist theories such as the concepts by Anderson, Ranger, and Vail described earlier suggest that language and, consequently, also the linguistic research conducted by missionaries, played an important role in the creation of tribal classifications. These three theorists explicitly included missionary linguistics into their considerations, for example by stating, “Missionaries themselves were often instrumental in providing the cultural symbols that could be organized into a cultural identity, especially a written language and a re-

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searched written history. It was the missionaries who chose what the ‘proper’ form of the language would be, thus serving both to further unity and to produce divisions by establishing firm boundaries” (Vail 1989: 11, cf. Gilmour 2007: 522). Strengthening the Herero language as a unifying factor for the individual groups was an important aspect in the identity formation of a homogenous Herero society, and Rath and Hahn state several times that they had to “create” the Herero language by studying and documenting it.7 While establishing a standard variety in order to strengthen an ethnic identity was very important for missionaries in other regions, this task was not a priority for Rath and Hahn. Compared to larger speech communities, there was probably less variation within the Herero language. Additionally, one can assume that at least towards the beginning of their activities, Rath and Hahn did not have sufficient language skills to perceive such subtle differences in register. Before the arrival of the missionaries, there was no graphic representation of the Herero language, it was first written down and standardized by Hahn and Rath during the course of their linguistic studies. At some point Hahn saw similarities between the Arabic and Herero phoneme inventories and briefly suggested using the Arabic script for Herero, which was not pursued any further, probably due to ideological conflicts (Lau 1984/5: 326). For their publications, the missionaries opted for different spelling conventions. For his 1857 grammar, Hahn chose the international orthography suggested by the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius while the later missionaries developed their own systems based on the English and German spelling conventions, respectively (Brincker 1886, Hahn 1857, Lau 1984/5: 709–712, Kolbe 1883, Ohly 1987: 15–16, Ohly 1990a: 198–200). Since then, a standardized Herero orthography was often desired but neglected, until the Bureau for Indigenous Languages was commissioned to complete this task in 1969 (ELCRN XI.16.1, Ohly 1990a: 206). In the light of the frequent raids by Nama and Orlams against the background of sprouting nationalism in Europe, it was hard for the missionaries to understand why the individual Herero groups did not join forces to defend themselves. The Herero did not fit the expectations the missionaries had of a ‘nation’ or ethnic group. In the context of colonial Tanganyika, British historian John Iliffe described this situation as follows: “Refining the racial thinking common in German times, administrators believed that every African belonged to a tribe, just as every European belonged to a nation” (Iliffe 1979: 323). These || 7 For example, “Es muss berücksichtig werden, dass hier eine Sprache nicht nur zu lernen, nein, zu ordnen, zu bilden ist” [One has to take into consideration that here a language does not only have to be studied, but organized, created] (Lau 1984/5: 329).

120 | Martina Anissa Strommer examples bring us to the conclusion that labels such as “tribe”, “chief”, “Volk” or “Stamm” are European categories that were superimposed on complex African realities and do not do them justice. However, since the European missionaries were firmly bound by these ideas, this approach formed the basis of their studies. From what European sources tell us, the Herero did not have a common ruler and did not perceive themselves as a homogenous group but instead they rather identified themselves through clans than nationality (Andersson 1856: 218, Chapman 1868b: 473, Fries 1903: 59, J. Hahn 1869: 231, Siiskonen 2000: 346, Vedder 2001 [1933]: 14). German historian Heinrich Loth argues that – with a colonial impact – the RMG administration chose to support the Herero in their fight against the Nama and Orlams because the Europeans sought to avoid nation building by the Orlam leader Jonker Afrikaner (Loth 1963). In order to avoid such a development, the missionaries first had to ‘unify’ the Herero and later, in order to diminish claims to power by a single Herero ruler or even by Jonker Afrikaner, encourage the individual chiefdoms – similar to the colonial ‘divide and rule’ strategy. According to Loth, the RMG was aiming at the destruction of the Orlam hegemony through an externally-inspired war of liberation of the Herero (Loth 1963: 51), since this development would have been more desirable for the mission endeavor than an expansion of Jonker Afrikaner’s rule. To this end, the RMG missionaries strived, knowingly or unknowingly, to ‘unite’ the Herero and support them in creating a national and ethnic identity. In addition to Loth’s socio-political considerations claiming that strengthened Herero groups would warrant better conditions for the continued existence of the RMG mission, one more aspect seems to be crucial in the formation of a specific Herero identity, although it is not a scientific parameter, strictly speaking. Several of the consulted archival sources, in addition to various publications, prove that the first RMG missionaries among the Herero, in contrast to many other missionaries around the globe, did not just consider their task as mere obligation but developed a personal bond with the Herero and tried their utmost to sustain the proclamation of the Gospel for the Herero (RMG 1.581c: 55b, cf. Chapman 1868a: 343, Irle 1906: 237, Menzel 1978: 110). Rath’s last letter to the mission director clearly states that he and Hahn felt an unusually strong emotional connection with the Herero and, as dedicated Herero missionaries, felt responsible for them: Allen Zumutungen, das öde Land zu verlassen und die hoffnungslose Arbeit aufzugeben, hatte ich die Entgegnung: ich bin hieher [sic] gesandt und so lange die äußere Möglichkeit des Bleibens besteht, so lange bleibe ich. Es ging mitunter nahe an den Rand. Ich weiß, daß ich zu meiner Frau, trotz ihres guten Mutes, sagte: Anna! Nicht heute, aber morgen

Imagined communities, invented tribe? | 121 wollen wir mit dem Einpacken zum Aufbruch beginnen. Ja, morgen. Aber das Morgen brachte unerwartet etwas, das ein längeres Bleiben ermöglichte, und so haspelten wir weiter. (RMG 1.581d: 46a–b, Gareis 1902: 215) [To all propositions to leave this barren country and quit this hopeless work, I used to reply: I have been sent here, and as long as there is the utmost possibility to stay, I will stay. Oftentimes, the situation was pushing me to the brink. I remember, despite her good courage, saying to my wife: Anna! Not today but tomorrow we will start packing and prepare our departure. Yes, tomorrow. But then tomorrow would bring something unexpected that made staying possible again, and so we stumbled on.]

Either formalizing existing customs or introducing new ones, as discussed by Ranger, is an important aspect of the ‘invention’ of a ‘tribe’. Rath’s and Hahn’s seemingly desperate search for traces of religion and rituals indicates the significance of indigenous traditions for the definition and perception of the Herero as a homogenous group. When Rath first arrived in Namibia, he noted that the Herero – in his opinion – lacked culture and tradition. From the beginning on, he had a strong interest in the indigenous folklore and beliefs, which resulted in his collection of Herero fables. Rath formalized a part of the Herero heritage and made it accessible to the European general public: now the Herero appeared in folkloristic collections and were perceived as a homogenous, independent community. From a European perspective, the Herero were established as a ‘nation’ or ethnic group through their admittance into the circle of literary languages. This created a new sense of identity and solidarity among the Herero, which had far-reaching consequences and contributed to the RMG maintaining the Herero mission in spite of many setbacks. Drawing on the concepts of Imagined Communities (Anderson 1983), Invention of Tradition (Ranger 1983, Ranger 1994) and Creation of Tribalism (Vail 1989), one can argue that Rath’s corpus planning (i. e. documenting, codifying and standardizing the language as well as the systematic expansion of the lexicon), translations and collection of fables significantly contributed to the emergence of an independent Herero identity. What historian Patrick Harries notes about Swiss missionaries Paul and Henri Berthoud may also hold true about Rath and Hahn and their work among the Herero: “The work of these two men would lay the foundations of Gwamba as a written language, provide the mission field with new and ambitious frontiers, and create an imagined community that would one day mobilize itself as a political entity” (Harries 2007: 159).

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5 Conclusion Johannes Rath from Vienna, Austria, was one of the first Herero missionaries who worked in central Namibia until 1861. During the course of his linguistic research, Rath collected Herero fables and translated several Christian texts, for which he introduced numerous new words into the Herero lexicon. He documented his findings in comprehensive unpublished manuscripts, which served as the basis for the work of several of his colleagues and successors. Interestingly, his dictionaries do not document a ‘colonial gaze’ or reflect his identity as a European missionary. However, even if there are no manifestations of colonial aspirations in his manuscripts, he still influenced the way in which the Herero were portrayed and perceived in Europe in the pre- and proto-colonial era. Research indicates that Rath’s linguistic activities not only extended to corpus planning of religious semantic fields, but they also left long-term effects on the language itself and on group solidarity among the Herero. Especially with his collection of fables, Rath contributed to the Herero being perceived as a homogenous, independent community that deserved to be supported in their freedom struggle against the Nama and Orlams. By bringing the Herero language and culture to a wider European audience, Rath helped form a distinct Herero identity throughout the colonial era until today. Consequently, one can also assume that Rath significantly influenced the self-perception and the external perception of the Herero. The decentralized social and political structures in central Namibia at the time led Europeans to believe that Bantu-speaking groups were nothing but fragments of a ‘more developed’ Herero society, threatened by decay or even extinction. Because hostile Nama and Orlam groups raided the area frequently, the missionaries did not understand why the individual Herero groups did not join forces. In order to work against the assumed cultural and linguistic decay of the Herero and to protect themselves against the hostile Nama and Orlams, the German missionaries first had to unify the Herero and make them one ‘tribe’. By documenting the Herero language and making their cultural heritage available to a wider European audience, Rath and Hahn significantly contributed to the formation of a distinct Herero identity.

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124 | Martina Anissa Strommer ELCRN = Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia XI.2.1a-c: Wörterbuch des Otjiherero von Rath. ELCRN = Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia XI.2.2: Wörterbuch des Otjiherero von Rath. ELCRN = Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia XI.16.1: Archiv für Nama und Otjiherero No. 12. Fries, Hans Hermann. 1903. Missionar Johannes Rath. Das Missionsblatt. 58–60. Galton, Francis. 1853. Narrative of an explorer in tropical South Africa. Glasgow: Grand Colosseum. Gareis, Reinhold. 21902. Geschichte der evangelischen Heidenmission mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen. Emmishofen, Konstanz: Carl Hirsch. Gewald, Jan-Bart. 1999. Herero Heroes. A socio-political history of the Herero of Namibia 1890– 1923. Oxford: Currey. Gilmour, Rachael. 2007. ‘A nice derangement of epitaphs’: Missionary language-learning in mid-nineteenth century Natal. Journal of Southern African Studies 33(3). 521–538. Graichen, Gisela & Horst Gründer. 2007. Deutsche Kolonien. Traum und Trauma. Berlin: Ullstein. Grout, Lewis. 1859. The Isizulu. A grammar of the Zulu language accompanied with a historical introduction also with an appendix. London: Trübner. Gründer, Horst. 1982. Christliche Mission und deutscher Imperialismus. Eine politische Geschichte ihrer Beziehungen während der deutschen Kolonialzeit (1884–1914) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Afrikas und Chinas. Paderborn: Schöningh. Hahn, Carl Hugo. 1857. Grundzüge einer Grammatik des Herero im westlichen Afrika nebst einem Wörterbuche. Berlin: Hertz. Hahn, Josaphat. 1869. Die Ovahereró. Zeitschrift für Erdkunde zu Berlin 4. 226–258, 482–511. Hahn, Theophilus. 1868. Sagen und Märchen der Ova-Herero in Südafrika. Globus 13. 268– 270, 308–311. Harries, Patrick. 2007. Butterflies & barbarians. Swiss missionaries & systems of knowledge in South-East Africa. Oxford: Currey. Heese, Carl Pieter. 1981. Sendingonderwys in Suidwes-Afrika 1806–1870. Goodwood: Nasionale Boekdrukkery. Hennig, Mathilde. 2009. Zum deutschen Blick auf grammatische Eigenschaften von Kolonialsprachen. In Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus. Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919, 119–140. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Henrichsen, Dag. 1997. Herrschaft und Identifikation im vorkolonialen Zentralnamibia. Das Herero- und Damaraland im 19. Jahrhundert. Universität Hamburg dissertation. Henrichsen, Dag. 2010. Pastoral modernity, territoriality and colonial transformations in Central Namibia, 1860s–1904. In Peter Limb, Norman Etherington & Peter Midgley (eds.), Grappling with the beast. Indigenous southern African responses to colonialism 1840– 1930, 87–114. Leiden: Brill. Iliffe, John. 1979. A modern history of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Irle, Johann Jakob. 1906. Die Herero: ein Beitrag zur Landes-, Volks- und Missionskunde. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann. Irle, Johann Jakob. 1917. Deutsch-Herero Wörterbuch. Hamburg: Friedrichsen. Kienetz, Alvin. 1977. The key role of the Orlam migrations in the early Europeanization of South-West Africa (Namibia). International Journal of African Historical Studies 10(4). 553– 572.

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126 | Martina Anissa Strommer Ohly, Rajmund. 1995. Lexical engineering in African languages: Exemplified through Herero. In Martin Pütz (ed.), Discrimination through language in Africa? Perspectives on the Namibian experience, 285–298. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ohly, Rajmund. 2000. Herero ecology: The literary impact. Warsaw: Academic Publishing House. Pierard, Richard. 2005. The Rhenish Mission and the Colonial War in German Southwest Africa. In Ulrich van der Heyden & Holger Stoecker (eds.), Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen. Europäische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800 und 1945, 389–401. Stuttgart: Steiner. Ranger, Terence O. 1983. The invention of tradition in Colonial Africa. In Eric Hobsbawm & Terence O. Ranger (eds.), The invention of tradition, 211–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ranger, Terence O. 1994. The invention of tradition revisited: The case of Colonial Africa. In Preben Kaarsholm & Jan Hultin (eds.), Inventions and boundaries. Historical and anthropological approaches to the study of ethnicity and nationalism, 5–50. Roskilde: Roskilde University Press. Rath, Johannes. 1846. Buchstabir- und Lautirbuch in der Herero-Sprache. Cape Town: Solomon. Rath, Johannes. 1857. To the Rev. Mr. Morgan. South African Commercial Advertiser 24 December 1857. RMG = Archiv der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft 1.581a-d: Rath, Johannes: Briefe und Tagebücher, 1843–1903. Schmidt, Sigrid. 1996. Tiergeschichten in Afrika. Erzählungen der Damara und Nama. Köln: Köppe. Siiskonen, Harri. 2000. The Seven Year War (1863–1870) in Namibian historiography. In Ulrich van der Heyden & Jürgen Becher (eds.), Mission und Gewalt. Der Umgang christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt und die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien in der Zeit von 1792 bis 1918/1919, 343–356. Stuttgart: Steiner. Spear, Thomas. 2003. Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa. Journal of African History 44. 3–27. Steinmetz, George. 2007. The devil’s handwriting. Precoloniality and the German colonial state in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trüper, Ursula. 2000. Sprach-Gewalt. Zara Schmelen und die Verschriftlichung der NamaSprache. In Ulrich van der Heyden & Jürgen Becher (eds.), Mission und Gewalt. Der Umgang christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt und die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien in der Zeit von 1792 bis 1918/1919, 357–370. Stuttgart: Steiner. Trüper, Ursula. 2005. “Eine Frau hat keine Stimme in den Versammlungen”. Frauen, Mission und politische Macht im Namibia des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel der Missionsstationen Bethanien, Windhoek und Rehoboth. In Ulrich van der Heyden & Holger Stoecker (eds.), Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen. Europäische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800 und 1945, 437–450. Stuttgart: Steiner. Trüper, Ursula. 2006. The invisible woman. Zara Schmelen: African Mission Assistant at the Cape and in Namaland. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien. Vail, Leroy. 1989. Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African history. In Leroy Vail (ed.), The creation of tribalism in Southern Africa, 1–19. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Imagined communities, invented tribe? | 127 Vedder, Heinrich. 1934. Das alte Südwestafrika. Berlin: Warneck. Vedder, Heinrich. 1966 [1928]. The Herero. In Carl Hugo Linsingen Hahn, Heinrich Vedder & Louis Fourie (eds.), The native tribes of South West Africa, 153–215. Cass: Oxon. Vedder, Heinrich. 2001 [1933]. Einführung in die Geschichte Südwestafrikas. Werther: Moritz. Viehe, Gottlieb. 1897. Grammatik des Otjiherero. Berlin, Stuttgart: Spemann. Webb, Victor. 1995. The technicalization of the autochthonous languages of South Africa: Constraints from a present day perspective. In Martin Pütz (ed.), Discrimination through language in Africa? Perspectives on the Namibian experience, 83–100. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Zeller, Joachim & Jürgen Zimmerer (eds.) 2003. Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Der Kolonialkrieg (1904–1908) in Namibia und seine Folgen. Berlin: Links.

Stefan Castelli

Pre-colonial language policy of the Rhenish Mission Society perceived as the type of Gustav Warneck’s mission doctrine? Abstract: The essay at hand shows that the language policy of the Rhenish Mission Society (RMS) in pre-colonial South-West Africa can be described as a type of the mission doctrine supported by mission scientist Gustav Warneck. Just from the beginning, the official language regime of the mission administration, located in Barmen, was committed to the concept of indigenization and is rooted in the pietism’s world of thought. The language concept had been designed for the language situation inside the Cape Colony and therefore it was only applicable to a limited extent in Namaqualand, Great-Namaqualand and Damaraland. The realization of the language political directive, which was handed to the missionaries on departure, only succeeded gradually and with an enormous effort. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that the mission had not prepared the missionaries sufficiently to acquire and transcribe varieties of Khoekhoe and Herero. On the other hand, the vast amount of tasks in daily routine did not allow sufficient time for studying languages. Nevertheless the linguistic acting of the RMS can be described as the type of Gustav Warneck’s theory.1 Keywords: indigenization, language acquisition, language policy, codifications and standardization of Khoekhoegowab, Rhenish Mission Society || Stefan Castelli: Osterholzer Str. 161, 42327 Wuppertal, GERMANY, [email protected]

|| 1 I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Saskia Kessens, who translated the article from German into English. Moreover, I would like to extend my gratitude to Wolfgang Apelt, archivist of the Archives and Museum Foundation of the UEM in Wuppertal. He provided helpful information and advices for this treatise.

130 | Stefan Castelli

1 Introduction Vor allem seid bemüht, ihre Sprache recht bald und gründlich zu lernen. Sie werden sich freuen, daß sie euch auch etwas lehren können, und das wird ein Band zwischen ihnen und Euch binden; Euch aber ist es das nothwendigste Erforderniß Eurer Einwirkung auf sie.2

Shortly after recognition of the statutes and the conferment of all rights as “a state-approved missionary society” granted by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III on June 24, 1829,3 this emphatic plea can be found in accounts of deputation conferences of the Rhenish Mission Society in Barmen. It is part of the instruction given to the brothers Theobald von Wurmb, Johann Leipold, Gustav Zahn and Daniel Lückhoff at the occasion of their departure to their mission career. This plea clarifies that from the very beginning the administration of the RMS in Barmen was aware which important role language competence plays in the success of the entire operation of evangelization. In 1828 the RMS was founded by the association of the former individual Protestant mission societies of Elberfeld, Barmen, Köln and Wesel “in order to send forth messengers to the pagan in South Africa” (RMG 1, Bl. 012a). The mission order (Acts 2, 1–47) was taken very seriously and therefore language policy was oriented by the concept of indigenization. Around 1900 Gustav Warneck criticized several mission societies to have mistaken this order for “go forth and teach English to all peoples”. To impose English or even German on African ethnicities was ineligible for the Rhenish Mission administration during the pre-colonial mission activities, which were initiated in Great-Namaqualand and Damaraland in May, 1842 (Warneck 1900: 51).4 || 2 RMG 1, Bl 015a-016a: “First of all, strive to acquire their language soon and thoroughly. They will be delighted that they can teach you something and that will create a tighten relationship between them and you. But your most important assignment is, to have an impact on them.” In the following, German text sources are translated into English in the running text. Essential, longer quotes are presented in their original in the running text, but translated into English in the footnote. 3 RMG 1. 284, Bl. 1. 4 In the treatise at hand, the expression ‘pre-colonial’ refers to the RMS’s language policy in South-West African Great-Namaqualand and Damaraland. Both areas were located beyond the border of the British colony in South Africa and got under German colonial rule not before 1884. The latter territories were socially and economically affected by the language policy of the German mission society. The RMS had freedom of action in its concrete organization. On the contrary, in Namaland, where the Rhenish missionaries got acculturated with support of Heinrich Schmelen, culture, organization of society and economy were already highly Europeanized. That was on the one hand, due to the influence of Dutch and British colonists and on

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Warneck, professor for mission sciences in Halle from 1896 to 1908, influenced fundamentally the Protestant mission sciences as he was the first tenured professor for this research area in Germany. His dictum regarding language policy in the so called ‘mission of pagans’ resembles the directive of the RMS, founded 70 years earlier (Warneck 1897: 17) In seiner Muttersprache denkt der Mensch, sie ist der Spiegel des Geistes, der ihn beseelt. Und wie bei den Individuen so bei den Völkern: in den Volkssprachen kommt die Volksseele zu Worte; ein Volk, das seine Sprache verlöre, würde Schaden leiden an seiner Seele. Zumal das innerste Leben eines Volkes, das religiöse Leben, pulsiert in der Muttersprache; die Muttersprache ist die Sprache des Gebets. Das Christentum kommt nun zu den Völkern als eine fremde Religion, und diese fremde Religion kann nur einheimisch in ihnen werden, wenn sie dargeboten wird in der Sprache, darinnen sie geboren sind und wenn sie sie selbst in ihre Muttersprache gefaßt haben. Darum ist es unverbrüchlicher Grundsatz der evangelischen Mission, daß sie jedem Volke die großen Heilsthaten Gottes verkündet in seiner Muttersprache. Es ist also ein Gebot eiserner Notwendigkeit, daß der Missionar die Sprache des Volkes erlernt, dem das Evangelium zu verkünden er berufen ist.5

Between 1871 and 1874 Gustav Warneck had been working for the RMS in Barmen and held mission seminars. It’s not unfounded, that during that time he was concerned with the history of former missionary sending of the RMS. The records of the Rhenish apostles sent from the today’s nations South Africa and Namibia to the administration in Germany can be read like a concept paper of Warneck’s mission doctrine. Deputation reports, diaries, letters, word registers and brief descriptions of grammar from early mission activities in South-West Africa are stored in the archive of the United Evangelical Mission in Wuppertal. The handwritten sources testify the Rhenish Mission’s guidelines for language policy; they provide information about the missionaries’ language experience in South-West Africa and build the basis of this treatise. || the other hand, due to the missionaries’ acting, e. g. introducing settlement policy and regular school lessons. A language policy of the RMS, which had pursued an opposite aim of the trend of strengthening Afrikaans and English, would have remained without impact on the former linguistic situation in the South African colony. 5 [In his native language, the human being thinks, it is the mirror of spirit, which ensouls him. As with the individual it is with the nations: language of people reflects the soul of people; when a nation lost its language, its soul would suffer. The innermost life of a nation, the religious life, pulsates in its native language; the native language is the language of prayer. Now Christianity comes to the ethnic people as a foreign religion, this foreign religion only can become familiar when it presents itself translated into their native languages. Therefore, it is an essential policy of Protestant mission to proclaim God’s salvation in the native language of each nation. Thus, it is absolutely necessary for the missionary to acquire the native language of that nation he wants to proclaim the Gospel to.]

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2 Sending instructions for the first missionaries as the manifest of language policy for the RMS The population’s multiethnicity and multilingualism in South-West Africa constitute the sociocultural frame in which the language policy of the RMS had to gain orientation and prove successful (Buys & Nambala 2003: xxiii–xxv; Kaulich 2003: 31–44). On July 4, 1829, the sending of the first missionaries from Barmen via Rotterdam to London took place, where on July 19 the “vessel weighed the anchor” to “direct the messengers of peace belonging to three nations to distant Africa” (JBRMG 1830: 10–11). After their arrival in Cape Town on October 7, 1829, the initiation phase of independent mission work in the South African colony under British rule, turned out to be difficult. Even though, the administration had advised the first missionaries on their departure in Barmen “to stay a while with the London Missionary Society, the Moravian Church or Methodists” to “get to know mission work in practice”, their defined goal was “the foundation of their own mission station in central South Africa beyond the border of the Cape colony” (JBRMG 1830: 32). Soon the missionary Theobald von Wurmb managed to purchase the farm Rietfontein in the Cederberg Mountains for the RMS. In 1830 this first own mission station was called Wupperthal, according to the home base of the mission society. In 1832 the second mission place, called Eben-Ezer, was accomplished by Wurmb (Menzel 1978: 53–56). The intention of the RMS regarding language policy in its early stage was clear. The initially quoted plea clarifies, that right at the beginning, the administration in Barmen was aware of the important role of their Christian emissary’s linguistic competence for the success of the entire operation. In their opinion, language competence was essential to ensure a position of the young mission society among other European organizations in South Africa. Therefore, the first four missionaries were charged with “an unofficial duty” to apply “particular studiousness to English to keep in contact with Europeans in South Africa, as, with increasing culture, the English language probably would develop to the national language” (RMG 1, Bl. 017a). This duty was not primarily meant to spread the Gospel, but essential for communicating at eye level with the British government as well as with the European settlers in the Cape Colony. That this attitude had left a good impression showed the approval of Governor Sir Lory Cole in Cape Town for setting up the mission work in Cederberg Mountains. Hitherto, the colonial administration had disallowed this to the London Missionary Society (LMS), whereas missionary Wurmb could manage to win the confidence of the British colonial power on the spot (Bilbe 2009: 79).

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“Equally important” so the text of the following instruction is “the continued practice of the Dutch language, since almost all tribes are familiar with it.” As a result of the colonization Cape Dutch, respectively Afrikaans as it is titled since 1925, owned, as lingua franca the strongest communication potential (Orman 2009: 78–85). Still in postcolonial times, Afrikaans and English have remained the most important common languages in South Africa and Namibia (Brenzinger 2009: 33). The linguistic situation in the south of Africa provided orientation and a guideline for the official language policy of the RMS. By emphasizing explicitly the regional communicative range of English and Dutch in the “instructions”, the RMS followed rational and utilitarian principles. In contrast to this directive concerning English and Dutch, given by the deputation, stands the non-rational motivated instruction of how to deal with indigenous African languages. Wherever language and Christian catechism coincided, the missionaries were advised to make use of the autochthonous languages. The mission’s administration declared “learning the native languages as intensively and as quickly as possible,” as an unofficial obligation. Moreover, the administration urged the emissaries (RMG 1, Bl. 016b) Übt Euch untereinander darin, theilt Euch Eure Bemerkungen mit, fragt die Eingeborenen wo immer Ihr könnt und merkt Euch sorgfältig ihre Ausdrücke. Sobald Ihr könnt, macht Versuche, einzelne Sprüche der Schrift oder kurze Sätze oder Liederverse, die zehn Gebote, die drei Glaubensartikel, das Gebet des Herrn zu übersetzen und laßt Kinder und Erwachsene sie durch öfteres Vorsagen auswendig lernen.6

What had been valid to the pastoral care was at the same time the deputation’s guideline for the liturgy “in the parish of God among the pagans.” The freshly examined and ordained members of society were asked to “hold the church service as soon as possible alternately in local language and grant access to the indigenous.” This language regime for Christian catechesis also applied to school lessons, which should start straight away (RMG 1, Bl. 016b). The official RMS’s language policy was obliged to the principle of indigenization, in no way trying to colonialize the indigenous population politically, but mentally. The missionaries acted multilingually. Due to the linguistic diversity in the south of the world’s third largest continent and the distinct preconditions of the missionaries, it is comprehensible, that the realization of guidelines came up against limiting factors very soon. Nevertheless, it is apparent, how well|| 6 [Train yourselves, inform each other, ask the indigenous people wherever it is possible and keep the expressions diligently in mind. As soon as possible, try to translate several verses of the Bible, short sentences, song verses, the Ten Commandments, the three articles of faith and the Lord’s prayer. Children and adults should memorize them by multiple recitations.]

134 | Stefan Castelli developed the consciousness for the necessity was, to overcome language barriers, which naturally appeared because of the diametric relation of South-West African and Occidental culture. From the mental historical point of view, this language instruction was an expectable consequence, as the RMS was rooted in Pietism and Revival Movement (Altena 2005: 46). Since the last quarter of the 17th century, Pietism, that was meant to be a religiousness movement, orientated to the inwardness and external service, as well as the Revival Movement, that produced enormous religious enthusiasm and missionary activities in Scotland and England at the turn of the 18th century beyond the institutional churches, released missionary activities. “New impetus” was given to all areas of Protestant Mission “by this Pietism, that extended to the profane domain” (Altena 2003: 228; Scriba & Lislerud 1997: 175f.). Extremely effective was the spreading of pietistic ideology in the German speaking area at first in Halle, Württemberg and especially with the engagement of the Moravian Church. Later, Elberfeld and Barmen had also become a centre of the movement (Wellenreuther 2004: 173; Nipperdey 1983: 423–427). But how did the pietistic element, which the RMS wanted to be practiced, find its expression? The Rhenish apostle’s obligation to study as quickly as possible the indigenous languages in Africa and make use of them at school and in church reflects the pietistic “preference of German, compared with Latin in religious writings” (Jacob 2007: 87). Following the theory of affect, RMS perceived the native language as the most sustainable concept for missionary work in Africa, as the key to their inner Christian revival and conversion. The model for their language policy guidelines is provided by Pietism. Its “basic motive against ‘dead’ bible scholarship but in favor of ‘lively’ gnosis, which should affect the whole human being and power of mind, leads to a particular attention concerning language form and impact” (Jacob 2007: 86). The acting of the RMS was obliged by this dictum, at least conceptually. Certainly, it should not be overlooked that the RMS’s language policy guideline wasn’t the philanthropic enthusiasm’s result of an on equality based encounter with non-Christian cultures. The RMS was far from the intellectual climate of political, social and cultural acceptance with regard to the nonChristianized ethnicities (Bilbe 2009: 82). Horst Gründer outlines the constitutive mentalities of the “mission euphoria”, which seized “starting from England” the European Protestantism at the end of the 17th century. On the one hand, “a colonial, biblical and Christian based feeling of being elected and superior”, on the other hand, “an activism, consisting of cultural optimism, faith in progress and philanthropy”, characterized this movement (Gründer 1982: 21). The RMS in Barmen shared this assumption of the Christian Occident’s superiority in civilization and culture compared with the autochthonous African

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South. This can be seen in the opinion that “the English language would probably become the national language” of the south of Africa. The deputation concluded the instructions for pastoral care with a theological oriented directive, which gave some indication of the original mentalities forming further acting (RMG 1, Bl. 017a) Merket in Eurem Umgange mit den Heiden auf alle ihre Sitten und Gewohnheiten, eben so aufmerksam seid auf alle Gegenstände und Erscheinungen der Natur, die Ihr in Eurer Umgebung findet. Dem Reiche Gottes muß alles dienen, und ein treuer Haushalter des Herrn weiß, der Biene gleich, aus allem Honig zu saugen oder etwas zu finden, das ihm zur Erreichung seines Zweckes dient.7

3 Coping with daily routine in Namaqualand: practice and language experience in Komaggas On April 24, 1840, Johannes Heinrich Schmelen arrived in Eben-Ezer at Olifants River in order to meet the longed-for missionary brother Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt and took him to Komaggas. After some days of travel the time had come: On May 7, 1840, Kleinschmidt noted in his diary that they “finally have arrived in Komaggas. It was a great mutual pleasure and a pleasant welcoming” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 44a). During the following years many missionaries sent by the RMS, like Kleinschmidt, had been prepared for practice beyond the Orange River in GreatNamaqualand. Komaggas, the mission place, founded by Heinrich Schmelen in 1828, required a “40 day’s travel beyond the border of the colony” to introduce Africa to novices (RMG 2.598, Bl. 44a; RMG 1.572, Bl. 11a). This realistic simulation was made in Schmelen’s charge, an experienced missionary who demonstrated what the Rhenish apostles were going to expect northern the Orange River. That was on the one hand, because the mission stations Komaggas, Steinkopf und Lilifontein were increasingly integrated in social and economic structures of South Africa, which had been expanded north-westwards since 1820 (Elbourne & Ross 1997: 39). On the other hand, Orlam, Nama and San had retracted to that area in order to escape from hostile social living conditions in

|| 7 [“When dealing with pagan people, pay attention to all their customs and traditions and be attentive to all items and phenomena of nature, which occur in your surroundings. Everything has to serve the Kingdom of the Lord and a faithful administrator of God knows, like a bee, how to take honey out of everything or to find ways to serve his intention.]

136 | Stefan Castelli the Cape Colony (Kienetz 1977: 559–561). In Namaqualand the African-European hand in hand, side by side and against each other, brought up the full range of challenges for the multi-facetted missionary activities. Due to the aggressive competition between white farmers, Coloreds and indigenous Africans because of landholding problems, European agricultural and craft technology expanded together with the Cape Dutch language from the Cape to Namaqualand. In 1853 the RMS reports that “communication in Dutch works just barely with people from Komaggas and the Bastards of Steinkopf, even though they tend to talk Namaqua with each other” (BRMG 1853: 66). According to the will of the deputation, linguistic acculturation of the emitted missionaries was meant to take place in this atmosphere, all of them kindly welcomed and introduced by Heinrich Schmelen and his family. Schmelen was the precursor for mission activities organized by the RMS in South-West Africa (Buys & Nambala 2003: 11–14; Trüper 2000a: 11). He was the one in Komaggas, who had been frequented by the first generation of Rhenish missionaries. First of all, because this place was halfway between the South African Wupperthal and the unexploited mission station Bethany, therefore favorable for a 2nd attempt of an opening for missionary activities in GreatNamaqualand. Secondly, Heinrich Schmelen’s geographical reports and his studies on Nama language were indispensable for the following Christian emissaries (RMG 1.572, Bl. 22a). On July 29, 1841, appreciating remarks from the Rhenish missionary Johann Friedrich Budler from Cookfontyn in the South African Namaqualand reached the headquarter of the missionary society in Barmen (RMG 2.598, Bl. 58b): “Brother Schmelen had been working a lot […] and did preparatory studies for the following younger brothers, God may give them speech and wisdom.” To some extent missionary work in Komaggas was a family affair and every family member an essential part of the puzzle of Christianization. Shortly after his arrival, missionary Kleinschmidt reported the following information about the participants of family background to Germany (RMG 2.598, Bl. 25b): “Sister Schmelen welcomed us with open arms. […] Her brother and an old aunt are living here too, […] three daughters of Schmelen’s 1st wife; his only beloved son died lately. His 2nd wife has not given birth to a child yet.” Beside his daughters Anna, Hanna and Frederika he got support of his brother-in-law. A close look reveals that his wife’s brothers, Christian and Jan Hendrik Bam, had also moved from the Cape of Good Hope to the mission station: One of them a carpenter and woodworker, the other one a coppersmith and tailor (RMG 2.598, Bl. 252b). Daily life was filled with tending cattle, farm work and gardening, house-, stove- and path building, briquetting, reparation of ox-wagons, carpentry, forging, and other manual work that had to be done (cf. RMG 2.598, Bl. 189b; Lau 1985: 321,

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375, 422). Additionally, medical care at the station and in the surroundings had to take place (RMG 2.598, Bl. 25).8 The Rhenish missionary’s diaries give a vivid impression of the pastoral activities. Division of labor and responsibilities were taken as self-evident and inflexible rule. Schmelen and Kleinschmidt held service in turns, the North-German additionally held praying hours “with the male gender” and Kleinschmidt “a monthly mission hour”. Schmelen’s wife Elizabeth “started to attend sewing lessons twice a week; in addition she held a praying hour with the female gender once a week” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 79b). The pastoral care for the elderly people also was subject to her responsibility (RMG 2.598, Bl 26b–27a): “In the afternoon, after brother Schmelen had given lesson, sister Schmelen read aloud to the elderly people and talked with them about affairs of the heart. This is of immense advantage; this way she gets to know some hearts better.” Only “the nuisance of school remained my personal responsibility” Kleinschmidt remarked for the purpose of the deputation. Children and adults were taught “reading and for advanced learners: calculating and writing”. The pupils read extracts taken from Luther’s Small Catechism or Bible passages, probably written in Dutch or Nama, if the translation of the Gospel by Zara and Heinrich Schmelen was used. “We don’t fail to learn by heart either” he added to his report and mentioned, not without pride, that since his arrival “the number of pupils, had increased on to 100, whereas there were only 30 until recently, in the morning class and much more in the evening class with the elderly people” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 79b). The morning class lasted three to four hours in Komaggas. The course can be reconstructed due to missionary Budler’s report, who also worked in Namaqualand and was the successor of the deceased London missionary Michael Wimmer. He worked at the Station Kookfontein near Steinkopf, not far from Komaggas. In January, 1841, he wrote down in his diary that he had managed to form a reading class comprising seven pupils, chosen out of his class of 60 students. While one part was reading, Budler divided “the other pupils into four groups”, they were taught to learn “the alphabet and spelling”. “After reading we sang some verses, while” the spelling class had to “sit down quietly on the floor (because we didn’t have any school desks) and say the Ten Commandments, the confession of faith and the prayer of the Lord; then again we sang a verse”. Afterwards everybody turned to the “stories of the bible”. In this context, Johann Friedrich Budler particularly praised their joy of || 8 Missionaries travelled through the large catchment area of the mission places, because due to the lack of water and food indigenous people wandered with their cattle and could not settle at a place for a long time. Referring to that matter, Kleinschmidt noted in Komaggas in May, 1840 (RMG 2.598, Bl. 44b): “I didn’t see many people at the mission place as the time has come that they move with their cattle to the outer fields.”

138 | Stefan Castelli learning, their talent and their intelligence.9 His fellow clergyman Kleinschmidt also reports about envy and jealousy, especially among adults (RMG 2. 598, Bl 79a). The fact, that “the children couldn’t stay at school continuously”, caused serious problems for the missionaries. “I wish adults would prefer agriculture and gardening to be able to stay at the institution instead of wandering with their cattle” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 79b). One of the biggest challenges for the Christianizing Europeans was the “cultural re-education” to settledness of the indigenous peoples, a task that couldn’t always be managed due to the arid areas in South-West Africa. Even Christianized families, as the one of Daniel Cloete from Komaggas, who later was a very important local catechist, led a transhumant life during the longest time of the year (RMG 2.598, Bl. 26b). Heinrich Kleinschmidt didn’t remain all alone with “the plague of school” as he mentioned (RMG 2.598, Bl. 78b). “At Schmelen’s instigation, two of his daughters started to support him due to the considerable increase of pupils. They listened to tasks in individual classes and showed great talent.” Especially Anna and Hanna, the older daughters, held language courses. Additionally, Kleinschmidt remarked that “English and Namaquas” was taught at school by “brother Schmelen’s children, but was ended, since Dutch was getting most practicable. English was only included in favour of the governments” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 79b). The missionary’s diaries neither give information about the development of native language lessons in Komaggas, nor about reasons for dropping out English as the official language of the curriculum. There are probably two reasons for having dropped-out Khoekhoegowab. On the one hand, Heinrich Schmelen’s intellectual and social authority could have suffered extremely in a male dominated African society, since he, as the missionary in charge, only spoke insufficient Khoekhoegowab compared to his wife and daughters (Hastings 1993: 110). On the other hand, it is easily conceivable that the Orlam, who preferred Cape Dutch, and other ethnicities, were less interested in learning and making use of a Khoisan variety (Vedder 1981: 274f). Learning Afrikaans, especially as written language, was economically more beneficial and socially more prestigious with regard to the expected connections of South-West Africa to the material streams from and to Cape Town, as a centre of the South African trade. The proximity to Cape Town could have intensified this trend. || 9 RMG 2.598, Bl. 59a: “In the first couple of days I chose the shortest and made it as easy as possible for them to answer and recite. After a while they succeeded in [not readable, S. C.] understanding and reciting the content of longer passages, in plain language. At the end I asked the adults (I had some students whose children and grandchildren took part) for the impression the story left. They discussed this matter and affected the impression of the younger ones in a good way.”

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The trend of the thirties and early forties was to strengthen Cape Dutch, native language lessons were given up. On the long run, that implicated the weakening of the Khoisan varieties, which became extinct to a large extent. At the same time, the option of using Cape Dutch as the lingua franca hindered the missionary’s commitment to learn the autochthonous languages. A remarkable fact is that Kleinschmidt did not mention the language in which he, Heinrich Schmelen or his wife and daughters held service, catechized or read and taught. Apparently, there occurred problems in the acquisition of Khoekhoe. The difficulties became obvious with the extension of mission activities to GreatNamaqualand and Damaraland in 1842. In September, 1842, on his journey to Jonker Afrikaner in Damaraland, Kleinschmidt reported (RMG 2.598, Bl. 225a) Eine Frau, welche sehr lebhaft und froh war, als sie uns sah, sprach zu mir, aber ich verstand nichts. Ich zeigte nach oben und sagte: Tsuékwap (Gott)! welches sie begriff und freundlich lachte; nachher kamen noch mehrere. Unsere Dollmetscher [sic] waren beiseits Jagen gegangen und wir konnten nicht mit ihnen sprechen. O, welch ein Jammer und Hindernis ist‘s doch, daß man die Landessprache nicht versteht. Oh Herr gib Lust und Gabe!10

Furthermore, in numerous Rhenish missionary’s reports regarding the organization of mission activities in Komaggas, the participation of female family members in the implementation of catechesis and school education, as the core of Christianization, is remarkable. In view of this source material, the common validity of the widespread thesis, that woman in African history remain invisible, has to be questioned (Lau 1986: 62–71; Bowie 1993: 2; Gaomas 2008: 25). Not historical sources withhold the role of women to be associated with missionaries, but the public works of mission societies and scientific historiography partly do that.11

|| 10 [A woman who was very vivid and happy, when she saw us, talked to me, but I didn’t understand anything. I pointed up [to the sky, S. C.] and said: Tsuékwap (God)! She understood, smiled friendly, later on more people arrived. As our translators had already gone hunting, we couldn’t talk to the people. O, what a wretchedness and handicap it is, that we don’t understand the nation’s language. O Lord, give passion and gift!] 11 Cf. the discrepancy between Kleinschmidt’s journal entries and the small catechism printed in Rehoboth in June, 1855 (RMG 1.574a, Bl. 018b-21a) and the printed extracts of the RMS’s reports (BRMG 1856: 104).

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4 First steps of acquisition and documentation of African languages in Namaqualand Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt left the missionary seminar with knowledge of three languages: He had been learning German, English and Dutch in Barmen and during his passage on a ship.12 Like almost all of his brothers before and afterwards he entered the black continent with this knowledge of foreign languages. The young man was supposed to acquire the indigenous languages on the spot. In May, 1840, one week after his arrival in Komaggas, missionary Kleinschmidt recorded: “On 14th I started learning the Nama language with support of brother Schmelen. I already can foresee, how difficult it will be; as only the pronunciation of the correct clicks will take a lot of time” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 26a). The writings of Kleinschmidt’s second journal show how helpful the pioneer work of Schmelen and his wife was for the acquisition of Nama for the following missionaries.13 At the same time the journals unveil his effort, not to stir any hasty optimism in his home country, with regard to a quick acquisition of the Nama language. It was to avoid an unreasonable weight of expectation. Missionary Budler concurred with Kleinschmidt and noted down (RMG 2.598, Bl. 58b) Die meisten Gemeindemitglieder verstehen und sprechen das Holländische, jedoch unter sich gebrauchen sie auch die Namaquasprache, deren Erlernung für die Fremden sehr schwer ist. Ich habe wohl Leute angetroffen, die sich Jahre lang viel Mühe gegeben haben, ihrer mächtig zu werden, aber noch niemand, der es so weit gebracht hätte, daß er sie gründlich verstand und gut sprach.14

|| 12 In RMG 2.598, Bl. 094a Hans Christian Knudsen wrote to the deputation on his passage on September 1, 1841: “Besides those tasks we read and spoke German and English, we had a bible group in recent time every morning, we worked on Dutch with three passengers to get the opportunity to help them with the Gospel.” 13 They received Christian and educational functional literature in their native language from Schmelen, according to Missionary Budler’s annotations (RMG 2.598, Bl. 61a): “On Friday morning [February 5, 1841, S.C.] I arrived at the missionary house [in Komaggas, S.C.] and found my brothers and sisters in faith all feeling well. The day before brother Kleinschmidt had returned from Lilyfontyn. – I received from my beloved brother Schmelen the required testaments and spelling books. He and his wife have given me a good treat since I am in Namaqualand; may the Lord reward them richly.” 14 [Most church members understand and speak Dutch, though they use also the Nama language, which is very difficult to learn for foreigners, to talk to each other. I have met people who had made great efforts to learn Nama for years, but I never met anyone who succeeded in understanding and speaking without difficulty.]

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Nevertheless, the sent missionaries followed the instruction of the deputation and studied the Khoisan language. Budler too reports that he had already begun “to get familiar to the language” in Komaggas. “In Cookfontyn I kept on working on it, depending on the availability of time” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 59a). The order, given by the mission’s administration he took literally: “Ask the indigenes wherever it is possible and memorise their words thoroughly” (RMG 1, Bl. 016b). Budler was the first Rhenish apostle who scripted the Nama language, especially its grammar, in great detail (RMG 2.598, Bl. 59a) Besondere Schwierigkeiten machen die 4 Arten von Schnalzlauten, hier Klappe genannt. Bei einigen Wörtern wird mit der Zunge nach der linken Mundseite geschlagen (’eyp: Zorn); bei andern legt man die Zunge nach oben um und schlägt an den Himmel (eŷp: Fuß); wieder bei anderen wird mit der Zungenspitze an den Gaumen gestoßen und zurück geschnallt (eӯp: Feuer); endlich stößt man mit der Zungenspitze nach oben (ko̓ep: Herr). Die Substantive männlichen Geschlechts enden auf p (oeüoeüaup: Seligmacher; eigentlich: der das Leben lebendig Machende), – des weiblichen auf s (üs: Mutter), – des sächlichen auf a (Kaʹyn koemmsa: eigentlich: verbietendes Wort). Der Dualiter wird gebraucht. Die Pronomina setzen sie in ihrer Abkürzung hinter die Verba: zütaa üp nānoep nʹa haʹp: Unser Vater Himmel in ist der („der“ liegt im letzten p und ist die Verkürzung von ʹayip: der, welcher). Bei den persönlichen Fürwörtern unterscheiden sie nicht nur bei der 3ten Person das Geschlecht, sondern auch beim Plural der ersten und Singular und Plural der zweiten. Z. B. züta: wir (allgemein, in vielen Fällen allein bezüglich auf Männer), züssü: wir (Frauen) – zaats: du (Mann), zaas: du (Frau) – zaakoo: ihr (Männer), zahsoo ihr (Frauen) –. Bei der Konjugation der Verba haben sie kein Imperfectum und Plusquamperfectum.15

“To allow inspection in syntax” he made a one to one translation of the Gospel of John (John 3: 16–18). Budler’s transmission of his handwritten text to Germany presented the graphematic coding of the four primary clicks, which had been worked out by Schmelen and his wife. In the printout of the Gospel in Nama || 15 [Especially the four types of clicks cause difficulties. Some words are produced by flicking the tongue to the left side of the mouth (’eyp: wrath); some need the tongue to be turned up and flicked to heaven [palate] (eŷp: foot); then again others need the tip of the tongue to touch the palate and flick back (eӯp: fire); finally the tip of the tongue flicks to the top (ko̓ep: Lord). The male nouns end with p (oeüoeüaup: the one animating life) – the female nouns end with s (üs: mother), – the neuter ends with a (Kaʹyn koemmsa: in fact: forbidding word). The dual is used. Synthetic syntax causes pronouns to be positioned after verbs: zütaa üp nānoep nʹa haʹp: Our father heaven in is who (“who”is located in the last p and is the abbreviation of ʹayip: he, who). Personal pronouns aren’t only differentiated by the gender of 3rd person, but also in the plural form of the first person and singular and plural of the second person, e.g. züta: we (referring to both genders, but in many cases only referring to male gender), züssü: we (for female gender) – zaats: you (male), zaas: you (female) – zaakoo: you [pl.] (male), zahsoo: [pl.] you (female) –. The conjugation of verbs in imperfect and pluperfect does not exist.]

142 | Stefan Castelli they only could be printed partially (Haacke 1989: 403f.). Totally against the trend of the geographical and social expansion of Afrikaans as the lingua franca in South and South-West Africa, the missionaries collected words of the indigenous language and recorded the basics of the grammar.16 It wasn’t only Budler, but also Carl Hugo Hahn, the probably most popular missionary of the 1st generation of the Rhenish missionaries, who wrote down African words shortly after his arrival in Komaggas. On the inside cover of the 3rd journal he placed a word register in four languages; he compared German words with its equivalents in “Dammra language”, “Namaqua language” and “Kafir language” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 172a).

Figure 1: Quadrilingual list of words by Carl Hugo Hahns in 1842 (Source: RMG 2.598, Bl. 172a)

|| 16 RMG 2.622, Bl. 0012b: the report of the Omuherero and Namaqua conference in Otjimbingue in 1856, notes, that in case of a resettlement of the Damara it can’t be assumed “that the Damra keep their language, as they already start to lose their language with just little [cultural, S.C.] change.”

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Carl Hugo Hahn followed the proposed rules, predefined by Zara17 and Heinrich Schmelen, of marking the clicks on a graphematical level.18 As well as Kleinschmidt and Budler, Carl Hugo Hahn stressed in the explanations of his short dictionary how difficult it is to understand phonetics of “the Namaqua words“ for Europeans and therefore gave advice for pronunciation.19 Probably he thought that his register of words combined with Budler’s grammar could be helpful for future trainings for missionaries in Barmen to give them an initial impression of Khoekhoegowab. Implicitly it can be inferred which impression of Nama Hahn himself had. “The highly recurrent clicks sound peculiar” he wrote down in his diary in Komaggas in 1841. Maybe he wants to excuse “brother Kleinschmidt and Schmelen preaching with the help of a translator.”20 Whether his qualification ‘peculiar’ has to be interpreted as “fascinating” or “strange”, obviously remains Hahn’s secret (cf. Deutsches Wörterbuch 1854–1961: 1841– 1850). That those clicks appeared strange to him can be deduced from his utterances referring to “Dammra language”. “This language sounds good and especially tender, therefore no clicks do occur”, Hahn noted in his diary after having met a young Herero. He provided Barmen with exact information of the Herero’s physiognomy, language and multilingualism (RMG 2.598, Bl. 170b) Dienstag den 3. Mai [1842, S. C.]: Diesen Morgen kam ein Dammra aus GroßNamaqualand, der seiner Muttersprache noch mächtig war, zu mir. Ich erinnere mich nicht einen so schönen Mann hier in Africa gesehen zu haben. Seine Länge konnte 5 Fuß 8 Zoll sein, seine Figur war kräftig und doch schlank, die Haut glänzend und schwarzbraun, die Augen groß und lebendig und die Gesichtsbildung fast ganz europäisch; das Haar jedoch kleine kurze wollige Locken und eben solch einen Bart. Ich ließ ihn Dammraisch reden und schrieb auch mehrere Worte auf, die ich ihm dann später vorlaß und er musste sie dann wieder auf Namaquaisch sagen.21

|| 17 In 1818 Heinrich Schmelen married Zara, a Khoikhoi women. She was born some when between 1794 and 1796 in the area of the Orange River. She died on her return from Cape Town to Komaggas in April 1831 (Trüper 2000b: 360-364; RMG 2.381a, Bl. 046a; RMG 2.598, Bl. 201b). 18 The transcribed examples (‘soul’), (‘hand’), (‘heart’), (‘God’) prove that. 19 RMG 2.598, Bl. 172a: “I don’t want to be responsible for the correctness of the Kafir words, as the man who taught me had nearly lost that language himself. The marks of the syllable which has to be pronounced are made at the top in Dammra and Kafir, but at the bottom in Namaqua words. The characters of Namaqua words represent the clicks. A very difficult sound in Namaqua language is the one between v and l, e.g. the sun can neither be notated soris nor solis.” 20 RMG 2.598, Bl. 140a. 21 [Tuesday 3rd May [1842, S. C.]: This morning a Dammra, who still spoke his native language, came from Great-Namaqualand. I can’t remember that I have ever seen such a handsome man in Africa. He was about 5 foot 7 inches tall, his physique was strong but at the same

144 | Stefan Castelli Emissary Hahn was fascinated by the man of the Damara people. Though his criteria of men’s beauty were obviously attached to European aesthetics, there is no racist undertone, to be found in his writings “which got more and more perceptible during the second half of the 19th century” (Dedering 1997: 177; RMG 1.575, Bl. 181a). Without explicitly pointing it out, his writings do present how Hahn proceeded constructing his registries of words: First he analyzed sentences of the speech into single words, respectively, he tried to isolate words and to record them phonetically. Afterwards, he matched phonemes with its corresponding grapheme of the Latin alphabet. Finally, he recertified the correctness by reading out the words in Damara and asking the young men for saying it again in Nama. Moreover, this source emphasizes that multilingualism among indigenous peoples was common. Very often the peoples of the Damara and Herero have been mixed up in the European’s reports. They seemed to be legendary to the missionaries and their origin was vague (RMG 2.598, Bl. 170b). Both peoples lived north of the spring of the Fish River, a region totally unknown to the missionaries. The Herero had immigrated to this area and had oppressed or driven out the majority of the Damara (Vedder 1981: 107–111). There are many reasons to believe that also missionary Hahn had mixed up Damara and Herero in this source (RMG 2.598, Bl. 172a). In columns separated from each other he noted “Dammra language” and “Namaqua language”, even though Damara people usually speak Nama. Comparing the registry of words for Dammra with Hahn’s sample words for Herero grammar from 1852 and published in 1857, it is obvious that the word for eye in Herero (Hahn 1857: 12) corresponds to the supposed Damara word . A similar result can be found comparing the Dammra word (earth) to the Herero word (Hahn 1857: 13, 100), and the Dammra word (human being) to the Herero word (Hahn 1857: 13, 152). Due to these results Hahn’s word registry provides an early documentation of the Herero. A comparison of the equivalents for arm in the diary and grammar proves the opposite: The Dammra word doesn’t correspond to Hahn’s Herero word (Hahn 1857: 12), the Dammra word (mouth) doesn’t correspond to in Herero (Hahn 1857: 13, 141). At the beginning of the 20th century, Carl Hugo Hahn probably created a linguistic monument of the Damara language with his writ-

|| time he was slim. His skin was shiny and black-brown, his eyes were big and vivid and the shape of his face nearly European; his hair was short and curly, so was his beard. I let him speak Dammra and also noted down several words, which I read out loudly to him later on and asked him to say them once again in Namaqua].

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ten records that only survived in the form of some Damaracisms in Nama language (Vedder 1981: 180f.), though they require further investigation. Possibly this recorded lexemes are also regional variants of Herero language expressions. As we have seen, missionaries had already been documenting basic vocabulary and grammar of indigenous languages in Komaggas. Their willingness to learn and their attitude towards autochthonous languages were positive – according to the language policy of the protestant theory. Missionary’s records about lessons at school, Hahn’s encounter with a Damara and Kleinschmidt’s diary entry referring to a prayer “in Nama, which was inspiring even though I couldn’t understand a word,” prove it (RMG 2.598, Bl. 26a). But were the Rhenish apostles able to make use of codified memorized achievements in daily routine?

5 Communicative calamities in Great-Namaqualand and Damaraland In his early days of missionary activities, Kleinschmidt comments only once explicitly on the preaching language in Komaggas in Namaland. He mentioned that “Gerd Sadel, a translator, preached in Nama”. Consistent with this is Carl Hugo Hahn’s journal entry reporting on Kleinschmidt’s and Schmelen’s preaches “with the help of a translator” in Komaggas (RMG 2.598, Bl. 140a.). Even language pioneer Schmelen could only communicate little without a translator. That also held true for Heinrich Kleinschmidt. In May, 1842, he drastically realized his dependency on a translator. Together with Jan Hendrik Bam, a brother-in-law of Schmelen, and other assistants, he started from Komaggas, crossed the Orange River, to move to Bethany in Great-Namaqualand. On May 8th he notes in his journal, that he and his companion “sit in good spirits in a Matjeshaus in Bethany waiting for God’s voice and guidance.”22 According to the

|| 22 RMG 2.598, Bl. 188b-189a: “Venerable and beloved fathers! God has leaded us through water and deserts and now we sit optimistically in my Matjeshaus in Bethany. We keep waiting for God’s guidance and voice. As Hahn has not arrived with the expected brother yet, and we don’t know when he is going to arrive, we decided to move on to Dammraland. As follows: Jan Bam, who should be known from other reports, and I move with several people and some ox to Jonker Afrikaner. There we will have a look. If we see any chance to settle or expand, Bam will stay and I return to get my wife, vehicle etc. Hopefully, the other brothers have arrived until then and we can discuss the matter thoroughly.”

146 | Stefan Castelli

Figure 2: Great-Namaqualand and Damaraland (Source: Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft (21891): Rheinischer Missionsatlas. Neun Karten nebst Text, Barmen: Verlag des Missionshauses)

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reports, missionary members of the expedition “couldn’t achieve anything anymore without support of a translator” (RMG 2.598, Bl. 189a).23 The way things stood in Great-Namaqualand had not changed until 1853, as the RMS’s reports unveiled “that the people still speak a real Namaqua with each other and the ability of speaking Dutch is scarce.” Therefore, missionaries who “do not speak Namaqua” were reliant on an interpreter (BRMG 1853: 66). With the beginning of mission activities in the area of today’s Namibia, missionaries were also forced to learn how to use autochthonous languages actively in communicative situations, instead of producing only passive documentations. Otherwise, the efficiency of missionary work could not be ensured, as they were dependent on translators and could be manipulated (Dedering 1997: 164). With the foundation of the mission station Rehoboth in May, 1845, Kleinschmidt “started learning Namaqua again after a long time and fixed the early hours of the day for this activity” (RMG 1.573, Bl. 006a.). The fourth mission place of the RMS in South-West Africa was supposed to serve the Christianisation of the Nama people under guidance of Commander Willem Swartbooi, who was home with his people alongside the Fish River between Bethany and Warmbath (Lau 1985: 1295). Kleinschmidt had difficulties learning the language. “What I had learned in the past, I had almost forgotten due to the unsettled life and especially during our stay with the Dammra” he noted. Bam, who had accompanied Kleinschmidt since his departure from Komaggas, became his language teacher, and “started to teach us 10 to 20 words per day” (RMG 1.573, Bl. 006a). Kleinschmidt, who had always been committed to avoid unreasonable expectations in Barmen concerning a quick learning of Nama by the missionaries, prayed: “Lord, help! Give diligence and gift” (RMG 1.573, Bl. 006a). Wie wunderbar sind des Herrn Wege, aus einer Wirksamkeit wie Kookfontein und Elberfeld mich in solch eine Unthätigkeit zu versetzen und ohne Aussicht je wieder etwas thun zu können, es sei denn, daß Bruder Rath’s Plan glückt unter die Ovaherero zu ziehen, woran ich jedoch zweifle. Aber der Herr sieht ja unsere Noth, kann ja das menschlich Unmögliche leicht möglich machen. Die Sprache, die ist mir ein unübersteiglicher Fels und nun schon 1 ½ Jahre im Lande, bin ich noch nicht im Stande die einfachste biblische Wahrheit den armen Heiden zu sagen. Wenn einzelne der armen Ovaherero des Abends beim Hausgottesdienste sich auch unter unsere [Leute, S. C.] setzen, dann möchte ich wohl weinen, daß ich ihnen nichts sagen kann. Warum mußte unsere erste Dolmetscherin eine Hure sein? Warum mußten wir das lieblich be-

|| 23 [Während unserer Reise ins Dammraland, wenigstens bis zu dem Vordertheil desselben, bleibt meine Frau mit unserem Dolmetscher Gert Kloete hier unter diesem Häuflein, welches täglich zunimmt, und arbeiten, so gut sie können, dieser in Gottesdienst oder Versammlunghalten und jene im Schulhalten und Privatsprechen mit den Frauen; freilich können sie es besser als wir, weil wir nichts mehr ohne Dolmetscher ausführen können.]

148 | Stefan Castelli gonnene Werk wieder aufgeben? Dies sind Fragen, die unwillkürlich bei mir aufsteigen und mich oft denken machen, daß es um meiner Sünde willen ist. Sähen Sie den Franz, unsren Sprachlehrer, hörten Sie seine ganz unbeschreibliche, ganz unvorstellbare Dummheit, seine falsche Aussprache, dann würden Sie selbst sagen: Nein, von solch einem könnt ihr die Sprache nie lernen. Und was das Schlimmste ist, er will sich nie überzeugen lassen, sondern [illegible, S. C.] beharrt dabei, was er einmal gesagt hat. Fürchtete ich nicht die Hand des Herrn, ich liefe weg und überließe es andren Brüdern, die mehr Gabe und Energie besitzen, diese Sprache zu lernen. Ja [in, S. C.] Geduld muß ich aber ausharren bis mich der Herr nach oben oder anderswohin ruft” (RMG 1.575, Bl. 181a, underlining is taken from the original).24

Obviously, Hahn seemed to despair of his interpreters: Of their, from his point of view, poor moral integrity, their stupidity and their stubborn know-all attitude. Those, who originally were supposed to teach the Herero language to Hahn, made him indecently furious with their broken Afrikaans, a reaction, that wasn’t at all appropriate to a Christian missionary (Lau 1985: 308). In the first half of 1846, Hahn was “very depressed” because of the Herero language, “which remains a mystery to me and reveals difficulties and obstacles every day” (Lau 1985: 328). Those messages of emissaries regarding the great efforts of learning African Khoisan and Bantu languages reached the mission society in Barmen in sequences. Immanuel Friedrich Sander, being president of the RMS that time, was not satisfied with the moderate learning progress of the missionaries. After having read the reports, Sander indignantly made the following remark on the title page of the rough book containing the collection of diaries “Kleinschmidt 1845– 1847” (RMG 1.573, Bl. 001, (underlining is taken from the original)) || 24 [How wonderful the ways of the Lord are, that he takes me from such active places like Kookfontein and Elberfeld to such an inactivity, without any prospect of ever doing something again, unless brother Rath’s plan will be successful, even though I doubt it, and we can move to the Ovaherero. But the Lord sees our hardship and can make the impossible for humans easily possible. This language, remains an obstacle to me, impossible to overcome and after having already stayed in the country for 1 ½ years I am still not in a position to convey the most simple truth of the Bible. Whenever individual poor Ovaherero attended our home church service in the evenings, I feel like crying, because I can’t tell them anything. Why did our first translator had to be a whore? Why did we have to give up the beloved started work? Those are questions coming up to me and I often think it is due to my sins. If you saw Franz, our language teacher, you would hear his indescribable and incredible stupidity, his wrong pronunciation, then, you would also say: No, from such a man you can never learn a language. The worst is that he is unpersuadable, but sticks to what he had once claimed. If I didn’t fear the hand of the Lord, I would run away and leave learning the language to my brothers in faith, who are more gifted and have more energy. But I have to wait patiently until God calls me up to heaven or to somewhere else.]

Pre-colonial language policy of the Rhenish Mission Society | 149 Kleinschmidt, der, obwohl schon Jahre lang unter den Namaqua’s, doch von der Sprache noch so wenig kann, daß er nur durch Dolmetscher zu ihnen redet, ist uns eine starke Mahnung nach Leuten uns auszusehen, welche so begabt sind, daß sie der Sprache mächtig werden. Ein Missionar, der nicht anders als durch Dolmetscher reden kann oder reden lernt, ist nicht einmal ein halber Missionar. [gez., S. C.] Sander.”25

The Head of the Mission was angry with his missionaries. That they couldn’t get along with learning the language of the Nama and Herero, didn’t go at all with the RMS’s language policy ideas and instructions, called out on their departure. Sure, Sander’s anger about the rarely non-self-critical observations, sent to Barmen by his missionaries, was justified, but his judgment about the linguistic acting of the men on the spot is much too sweeping a statement. He underestimated that the missionaries had been insufficiently qualified to learn and codify African languages, especially the click sounds appearing in Khoisan languages. However, the missionary officials were partly responsible, as they had influence on the curriculum of the seminars in Barmen. Considering the grammatical and lexicographical lifework of the missionaries Hahn and Kleinschmidt, it definitely has to be judged in a different way. Some of the Rhenish missionaries developed own strategies to overcome communicative obstacles in South-West Africa. Apart from the assistance of African women and men who joined the work of the missionaries, and got a private education, or if they were children, even got adopted, women in the associated field of the missionaries played a central role concerning the mission’s effectiveness, and especially for challenges in language policy. Heinrich Kleinschmidt, for instance, got married to a Colored and could count on her abilities regarding school lessons, interpreting and codification of the African languages.

6 Summary and prospects The Rhenish Mission’s instructions on the departure of the first emissaries to South Africa prove that the mission administration was informed of the linguistic conditions in the Cape Colony. Therefore seminarists, attending the mission seminars in Barmen, were taught English and Dutch. The instruction to acquire the indigenous languages of the so called pagan peoples, without any non|| 25 [Kleinschmidt, who already has been living among Namaqua people for years, but still speaks their language so inadequately that he only can communicate with the help of translators, is a strong reminder to look for people, who are gifted enough to learn the language. A missionary, who can’t communicate without a translator, is not even half a missionary.]

150 | Stefan Castelli material or material support on the part of the deputation, shows the dilemma of expanding European and Christian missionary movement: South African Khoisan and Bantu languages, like many others, were widely unexplored, not written down or even totally unknown in Europe. Therefore, Rhenish missionaries, usually coming from a modest background, only technically – not academically – qualified, left without enough knowledge to learn and describe autochthonous languages. The first attempts were started in Komaggas, supported by Heinrich Schmelen and his family. That this attempt remained largely unsuccessful proves Kleinschmidt’s inability to communicate with the Orlam in Bethany in 1845. Further investigation is required concerning the importance of male and female Africans, supporting the missionaries to progress in language learning, codification and standardization of orthography and grammar of Khoekhoegowab varieties and Herero. Possibly, the mission administration had underestimated the process of African language acquisition assuming to be culturally superior. That missionaries nevertheless succeeded in developing indigenous languages into the language of the Gospel under difficult circumstances, instead of the expansion of Cape Dutch and English, may have strengthened Gustav Warneck in his assumption that “every language is learnable”, which already was a New Testament message (Miracle of Pentecost). Maybe he thought about the diary entries of Heinrich Kleinschmidt and Carl Hugo Hahn and their activities in Great-Namaqualand and Damaraland when he asked the question [V]erlohnt sich’s der Mühe, Sprachen zu erlernen von so geringer Ausdehnung, zumal wenn dieselben auf den Aussterbeetat gesetzt sind, weil sie von der Sprache der europäischen Ansiedler (Engländer oder Holländer) aufgesaugt zu werden im Begriff sind? Nun wäre es […] ein Mangel an evangelischem Sinn, wollte man über der Sendung an die kompakten Völkermassen mit großen Sprachgebieten die Christianisierung der kleinen Volkssbestände ganz und gar unterlassen. Auf dem Standpunkte des Evangelii hat nicht bloß das Große, sondern auch das Kleine Himmelsreichswert. (Warneck 1897: 19)26

|| 26 [Is it worthwhile learning languages with such a small extent, particularly when they are threatened by extinction due to the language influence of European settlers (English and Dutch people)? It would be a lack of Protestant understanding, if mission only happened in big nations with huge language territory, while Christianizing of smaller nations is completely omitted. According to the Gospel’s point of view not only the Great is worth the Kingdom of heaven but also the Small.]

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References Archive sources Schriftarchiv der Vereinten Evangelischen Mission, Wuppertal RMG 1: Protokolle der Deputationssitzungen 1828–1833. RMG 1.572: Schmelen, Johann Heinrich. RMG 1.573: Kleinschmidt, Franz Heinrich (1844–1854). RMG 1.574a: Kleinschmidt, Franz Heinrich (1854–1864). RMG 1.575: Hahn, Carl Hugo (1818–1898). Briefe und Tagebücher (1846–1851). RMG 2.381a: Gustav Adolf Zahn (1808–1890). RMG 2.598: Anfänge der Mission im Namaqualand 1840–1843. Lexica, monographs, articles and anthologies Altena, Thorsten. 2003. “Ein Häuflein Christen mitten in der Heidenwelt des dunklen Erdteils.” Zum Selbst- und Fremdverständnis protestantischer Missionare im kolonialen Afrika 1884 – 1918. Münster: Waxmann. Altena, Thorsten. 2005. “… ein Spiegelbild der aussendenden Kirche”. Betrachtungen zum Verhältnis von ‘Heimat’ und Missionsfeld am Beispiel der Rheinischen Owambo-Mission in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Monatshefte für Evangelische Kirchengeschichte des Rheinlandes 54. 39–62. Berichte der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft 1853. Berichte der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft 1856. Bilbe, Mark Charles. 2009. Wupperthal. The formation of a community in South Africa 1830 – 1965. Köln: Köppe. Bowie, Fiona. 1993. Introduction: Reclaiming women‘s presence. In Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood & Shirley Ardener (eds.), Women and missions: Past and presence. Anthropological and historical perceptions, 1–23. Providence/Oxford: Berg. Brenzinger, Matthias. 2009. Sprachenvielfalt auf dem Kontinent. Informationen zur politischen Bildung 303. 32–34. Bußmann, Hadumod (ed.) 32002. Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Kröner. Buys, Gerhard & Shekutaamba Nambala. 2003. History of the Church in Namibia 1805–1990. An introduction. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan. Dedering, Tilman. 1997. Hate the old and follow the new. Khoekhoe and missionaries in early nineteenth-century Nambia. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. in 32 Teilbänden, Teilband 30, Leipzig: Hirzel. Elbourne, Elizabeth & Robert Ross. 1997. Combating spiritual and social bondage: Early missions in the Cape colony. In Richard Elphick & Rodney Davenport (eds.), Christianity in South Africa. A political, social and cultural history, 31–50. Oxford/Kapstadt: James Currey/David Philip. Erster Jahresberichte der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft 1830. Gaomas, Nokokure Rogate. 2008. Namibian women in early days of the Rhenish Mission Society. In Julia Besten, Gesine von Kloeden-Freudenberg, Sonia Parera-Hummel & Angelika Söhne (eds.), Sisters from two worlds, 25–34. Köln: Köppe.

152 | Stefan Castelli Gründer, Horst. 1982. Christliche Mission und deutscher Imperialismus. Eine politische Geschichte ihrer Beziehungen während der deutschen Kolonialzeit (1884 – 1914) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Afrikas und Chinas. Paderborn: Schöningh. Haacke, Wilfrid H. G. 1989. Nama: Survival through standardization? In István Fodor & Claude Hagège (eds.), Language reform – history and future. Vol. IV, 397–429. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Hahn, Carl Hugo. 1857. Grundzüge einer Grammatik des Hereró (im westlichen Afrika) nebst einem Wörterbuche. Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz. Hastings, Adrian. 1993. Were women a special case? In Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood & Shirley Ardenner (eds.), Women and missions. Past and present. Anthropological and historical perceptions, 109–125. Providence/Oxford: Berg. Jacob, Joachim. 2007. Pietismus. In Klaus Weimar (ed.), Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Bd. 3, 85–87. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Kaulich, Udo. 22003. Die Geschichte der ehemaligen Kolonie Deutsch-Südwestafrika (1884– 1914). Eine Gesamtdarstellung. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang. Kienetz, Alvin. 1977. The key role of the Orlam migrations in the early Europeanization of South-West Africa (Namibia). The International Journal of African Historical Studies 10. 553–572. Lau, Brigitte (ed.) 1985. Carl Hugo Hahn: Tagebücher/Diaries 1837–1860. A missionary in Nama- and Damaraland, 5 vols. Windhoek: Windhoek Archives Source Publication Series. Lau, Brigitte. 1986. Johanna Urieta Gertze and Emma Hahn: Some thoughts on the silence of historical records, with reference to Carl Hugo Hahn. Logos 6. 62–71. Menzel, Gustav. 1978. Die Rheinische Mission. Wuppertal: Verlag der Vereinigten Evangelischen Mission. Nipperdey, Thomas. 1983. Deutsche Geschichte. Bürgerwelt und starker Staat. München: C. H. Beck. Orman, Jon. 2009. Language policy and nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa. Dordrecht: Spinger. Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft. 21891. Rheinischer Missionsatlas. Neun Karten nebst Text. Barmen: Verlag des Missionshauses. Scriba, Georg & Gunnar Lislerud. 1997. Lutheran missions and churches in South Africa. In Richard Elphick & Rodney Davenport (eds.), Christianity in South Africa. A political, social and cultural history, 173–194. Oxford/Kapstadt: James Currey/David Philip. Trüper, Ursula. 2000a. Die Hottentottin. Das kurze Leben der Zara Schmelen (ca. 1793–1831), Missionsgehilfin und Sprachpionierin in Südafrika. Köln: Köppe. Trüper, Ursula. 2000b. Sprach-Gewalt. Zara Schmelen und die Verschriftung der NamaSprache. In Ulrich van der Heyden & Jürgen Becher (eds.), Mission und Gewalt: der Umgang christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt und die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien in der Zeit von 1792 bis 1918/19, 357–370. Stuttgart: Steiner. Vedder, Heinrich. 31981. Das alte Südwestafrika. Südwestafrikas Geschichte bis zum Tod Mahareros 1890. Nach den besten mündlichen und schriftlichen Quellen erzählt. Windhoek: Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Windhoek. Vierzehnter Jahresbericht der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft 1843. Warneck, Gustav. 1897. Evangelische Missionslehre. Ein missionstheoretischer Versuch. Dritte Abteilung, Der Betrieb der Sendung. Erste Hälfte. Gotha: Perthes. Warneck, Gustav. 1900. Evangelische Missionslehre. Ein missionstheoretischer Versuch. Dritte Abteilung: Der Betrieb der Sendung. Zweite Hälfte: Die Missionsmittel. Gotha: Perthes.

Pre-colonial language policy of the Rhenish Mission Society | 153 Wellenreuther, Hermann. 2004. Pietismus und Mission. Vom 17. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. In Martin Brecht, Klaus Deppermann, Ulrich Gäbler & Hartmut Lehmann (eds.), Geschichte des Pietismus. Band 4. Glaubenswelt und Lebenswelten, 166–193. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Cécile Van den Avenne

Reducing languages to writing The politics of transcription in early colonial French Bamanan handbooks Abstract: Before the French colonial conquest of West Africa, Bamanan, a Western African language known in the French corpus as bambara, was used as a vehicular language by local trader and travelers from the Manding area. And very early on, Bamanan was used as a vehicular language for the colonial conquest. In my paper, I will analyze some Bamanan handbooks written at the end of the 19th century and beginning of 20th century by French missionaries and military. Looking at those handbooks, I will focus on one particular point: the choices made for transcription, and the translinguistic process they imply. Those choices can be explained by the training, the cultural background and the biographical trajectory of the authors, but also by their role in the French colonial enterprise. Keywords: transcription, graphization, Africanist linguistics, Bamanan, Spiritans, White Fathers || Cécile Van den Avenne: Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 15 parvis René Descartes, BP 7000, 69342 Lyon cedex, FRANCE, [email protected]

1 Introduction Finding a reliable and unambiguous transcription system, available for all languages in the world has been a recurrent question throughout nineteenth century (Galazzi 2000). In 1822 and 1827, the theme is proposed for the Prix Volney1 (first for the Asian languages and then for all the languages of the world). In 1814, Samuel Lee from the Church Missionary Society2 published some Rules for || 1 The Prix Volney (Volney Prize) was founded in 1803 and is awarded by the Institute of France after proposition by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for a work of comparative philology. 2 The CMS is a group of evangelistic societies founded in 1799, working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world.

156 | Cécile Van den Avenne the guidance of persons who have to fix a language. This book is completed in 1848 by the publication of the Rules for reducing unwritten languages to alphabetical writing. Around 1850, the German Egyptologist K. R. Lepsius (1810–1884) first created what aimed to be an international phonetic alphabet. The phonetic alphabets that followed until the IPA elaborated in 1888 and revised in 1932 were all inspired by this initiative. Conceived to promote mutual understanding among linguists around the world, the IPA was also considered by its designers as a tool for missionaries or any amateur who would venture to describe languages still unknown and a way to regulate heterogeneous practices in order to make those kinds of descriptions useful for professional linguists. For example, the British phonetician Daniel Jones (1881–1967) gave advices to the transcribers of African languages under the title A few maxims for the transcriber of African languages (Jones 1916: xxxv) such as “Don’t start with the idea that most of the sounds of the foreign languages are identical or almost identical with sounds of mother-tongue” or “Don’t put […] such statements as: ‘the e in this language is pronounced like the English ay in day”. And this advice gave a clear counter-description of what was commonly done in matter of transcription by amateur linguists throughout the nineteenth century. Many linguists assume the fact that the IPA, based on the Roman alphabet and on European orthographic conventions, is not a neutral notional system. Moreover, we may assume that any system of transcription supposes a translinguistic process3, i.e. a way to listen to the sounds of the foreign language and to write them down induced by one’s own cultural habits of literacy practices.4 And also, looking at transcription systems elaborated and used by nonprofessional linguists (missionaries, military, civil servants) may tell us a lot about their training, their cultural background but also their linguistic ideology. || 3 Bernard Colombat, in his approach to Latin pedagogy, from the Renaissance to the Classical Age, uses the expression “translinguistic method” for a type of “method that examines the structures of Latin starting from equivalent structures in French” (Colombat 1999: 89, my translation). 4 It was obvious at the end of nineteenth century for the anthropologist Franz Boas, who wrote in a famous article, “On alternating sounds” about “field-notes of philologists, who reduce to writing a language which they hear for the first time and of the structure of which they have no knowledge whatever.” One can be struck, he says, by the phenomenon “that the nationality even of well-trained observers may readily be recognized. […] It is found that the vocabularies of collectors, although they may apply diacritical marks or special alphabets, bear evidence of the phonetics of their own languages. This can be explained only by the fact that each apperceives the unknown sounds by the means of the sounds of his own language.” (Boas 1889: 51).

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In this paper, I will focus on some French Bamanan handbooks written down by missionaries and military at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Looking at those handbooks, I will focus on one particular point: the choices made for transcription, and the translinguistic process they imply. This essay is part of a research project whose aim is to document and analyze the beginnings of the graphization and the grammatization (Auroux 1992) of the Bamanan language by actors having different roles and functions within the French Colonial enterprise: missionaries, civil servants, soldiers, individuals from mainland France or indigenous Africans. This research accounts for what Johannes Fabian (1986) has called the “descriptive appropriation” of African languages during the colonial period, following an approach which intersects history, sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics. It hopes to contribute to the historiography of African linguistics. Specific attention is directed to the different actors involved in the description of Bamanan, in order to contextualize the texts but also to anchor the production of knowledge in material and interactional practices. Extending the history of linguistic analysis, my approach also takes an interest in the history of communicational practices during colonial times (those of the military, of civil servants, of travelers, the use of interpreters, learning the basics of local languages, etc.), and of the linguistic resources employed.

2 Historical context and historiographical framework 2.1 A brief history of Africanist linguistics Bonvini (1996) defines four periods of discovery and description of African languages: “the catholic and Portuguese phase, from the 16th to the 18th century, the protestant and Anglo-German phase of the 19th century, the colonial phase from 1880 to 1960 and the post-colonial phase from that date through to the present” (Bonvini 1996: 129, my translation).5 Doneux (2003) puts forward that Africanist linguistics really made its appearance during 19th century, “estab|| 5 In his article, Bonvini describes very accurately the oldest sources (from the 16th to the 18th century), corresponding to the first period of linguistic description, carried out by catholic missionaries, more specifically Jesuits and Capuchins. Cole (1971) summarizes known sources and surveys the field up to 1945.

158 | Cécile Van den Avenne lishing itself as a modern science where methodological tools belonging to European Comparative linguistics were applied to languages of Africa” (Doneux 2003: 20, my translation). But as Zimmermann (2004) states, missionary linguistics was in no way “pre-scientific” but was what could be described as applied linguistics. The work of missionary linguistics is the largest body of linguistic work on a global scale (Errington 2008), and the one that has most contributed to our understanding of linguistic diversity. Compared with other parts of the world (especially America and Asia), research on missionary linguistics in Africa is not yet well developed, though it is necessary to point out the pioneering and important work of Johannes Fabian (1983) on Swahili, and more recently the works of Michael Meeuwis (1999) on Luganda, i.e. on central and eastern Africa. Missionary linguistic work in southern Africa is also well documented. 6 But no specific study on missionary linguistic works has been carried out about West Africa, although one can find good analyses of the description of Senegalese languages in Irvine (1993).7 Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, few grammars were actually written. While the construction of lexicons or dictionaries implies an initial graphization (not necessarily but actually in the Latin alphabet), of under- or non-described languages, the development of grammars presents a whole range of other problems. According to Doneux, “in thumbing through [the first grammars], one realizes that their authors are very much aware of the impossibility of dealing with grammatical phenomena in the languages they are describing using categories originating from Latin or Greek” but one also recognizes that “the approach of the forerunners to the 19th century at times makes way for characterizations external to the system of the language” (Doneux 2003: 44, my translation). The first works in Africanist linguistics, after the dictionaries, are handbooks; that is, a genre of works with a fairly specific status, given that their purpose is not just to describe, but also to propose a learning method. As Houis (1971: 31) wrote: “there is indisputably a school tradition in Africanist linguistics”, that is to say that Africanist linguistics established itself firstly as a kind of Applied Linguistics. The concerns of the first describers were practical ones, materialized in the production of dictionaries and handbooks. Thus, continues Houis, these language describers “remained doubly outside of the grand current of thought and renovation that was linguistics in the 19th century, firstly as individuals isolated from intellectual and

|| 6 See for example Chimundu (1992), Gilmour (2006). 7 Bonvini (2008) highlights how much Africa has been neglected in the works of missionary linguistics.

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scientific life, and secondly as users, teachers and administrators, whose immediate needs found no response from a comparative linguistics dismissive of the common handbook.” (Houis 1971: 31). Starting in the second half of the 19th century, two traditions for writing handbooks of African languages can be described, the first started by ecclesiastical missionaries, whose goal was to describe the languages in order to translate the gospels. Their handbooks were destined principally for their European missionary colleagues, but also, potentially, for recent indigenous converts. The other tradition was initiated by members of the military and civil administrators; engaged in the colonial conquest, their handbooks were destined for the military, traders, and European administrators. These two kinds of description of African languages, military/missionary, were, at least initially, parallel undertakings, which operated relatively independently and whose influence on each other was minimal. In addition, they were not taken up by the colonial French administration, even if some administrators were also linguists (here we only cite the well known case of Maurice Delafosse8). Indeed, the French colonial power, contrary to what occurred in territories under Belgian or German control, never took the decision to use one of the African languages in the administration and/or for education (despite isolated initiatives that were never followed up, such as Jean Dard’s, for example9), reproducing throughout the empire the linguistic policy choices made in mainland France. Dard’s Dictionnaire français-wolof et français-bambara, suivi du dictionnaire français-wolof, published in 1825 at the Royal Printers, is considered the first French work on Western African languages. By describing those two languages: Wolof and Bamanan, Dard inaugurated a choice in language description which privileged, firstly, the “big” languages that are languages with a recognized or supposed vehicular function. This choice is not one of a structural linguist, but rather a political and pragmatic one: faced with the large linguistic diversity of Africa, individuals concerned with practical questions of transmission and communication are more likely to be interested in describing languages with a large number of speakers. Therefore, one can consider that two types of descriptive linguistic studies were put into place; studies with a scientific purpose, that were just as interested in the “small” languages as in the “big” ones, and studies privileging the vehicular languages, with a strong emphasis on communicative utility. || 8 On Delafosse, see Amselle & Sibeud (1998). 9 Who used Wolof to teach in a primary school in Senegal in the early nineteenth century. See Irvine (1993) and Bonvini (2001).

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2.2 Bamanan, a language to penetrate into the interior of Africa Bamanan is a Western African language, known in the French corpus as bambara, a Wolof term used by the military auxiliaries recruited in Senegal (where Wolof is the main language) for the military conquest of the interior territories. Bamanan belongs to the Manding dialect cluster (like Maninka or Jiula), included in the Northern branch of the Mande language family. In the different sources available, Manding/Mandingo/Bambara/Malinké/Maninka/Mandinka can be used as interchangeable terms even if dialectologists consider them now as separate varieties. Before the French colonial conquest of West Africa, Bamanan or Manding was used as a vehicular language by local trader and travelers from the Manding area10 but also by European explorers and merchants during the eighteenth century.11 And very early on, Bamanan was used as a vehicular language for the French colonial conquest. This fact gave to Bamanan a status not shared by other languages of Western Africa, and this was accompanied by the production of linguistic written works, some of which we can postulate worked towards reinforcing the vehicular status of the language. If we look at the early descriptions of the Bamanan language, we can define two distinct periods, clearly linked to a chronology of the colonial conquest and of the setting up of the French colonial apparatus. The first descriptions of the Bamanan language were done in the old coastal towns of Senegal (and more precisely in Saint Louis, which has been an old trading post since the 17th century and which became the first capital of the Afrique Occidentale Française in 1895), very far away from the area where Bamanan was actually spoken as a first language. The informants used for those early descriptions were speakers of the language settled there, such as freed slaves for example, or recruited there for the need of the conquest (such as interpreters and domestic servants for the military). Those early descriptions correspond to a time before the conquest of the interior or are concomitant to that conquest. And indeed, the publication of Bamanan grammar was thought to go with and facilitate the penetration into the heart of the African continent. As Father Montel wrote it in the preface of one of the very first Bamanan grammars published, at the end of the 19th century: “All eyes are set on the Senegal and Sudan. Rulers, colonizers, traders, explorers, seek to penetrate into the mysterious continent, and to settle on the || 10 Southern Mali, Gambia, Northern Guinea, Western Burkina Faso, Northern Ivory Coast. 11 See for instance travelogues written by Francis Moore (1738) or Mungo Park (1816).

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Figure 1: Map extracted from Binger (1886) Essai sur la langue bambara. Describing the language and mapping it was usually done together. This map shows the extension of Bamanan and Fula, which were considered the two main languages of Western Africa at that time

banks of the great Niger river, each with a special purpose, but certainly a civilizing one” (Montel 1887: I, my translation). It was a shared goal for military and missionaries: the publication of a Bamanan handbook should facilitate the colonial penetration eastward. As Aylward Shorter wrote “the cross […] followed, or accompanied, the flag” (Shorter 2006: 24). And the first settlements of French missionaries followed the military conquest of the interior: in 1888, a contingent of six fathers and brothers from the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (see infra) set out for French Sudan and established a mission station in Kita. Subsequently, corresponding to the installation of religious missions and military and administrative posts in the Manding area, linguistic descriptions were produced which can be considered as from the linguistic milieu.

3 Choices of transcription as a translinguistic process in early Bamanan handbooks In this paper, I focus on some French Bamanan handbooks written down by missionaries and military at the end of the 19th century and beginning of 20th century. I do analyze together military and missionary handbooks, as an at-

162 | Cécile Van den Avenne tempt to include the missionary linguistic production in a global context, both political and intellectual, and to understand the beginnings of Africanist linguistics as a whole, that involved a wide variety of actors. Looking at those handbooks, three major types of choice for transcription can be described:  an “orientalist” choice, which displays a transfer of linguistic knowledge and linguistic competence from the way to describe and transcribe Arabic sounds;  a “franco-targeted” choice, which proposes a way to write Bamanan as French, and implies a French audience;  an “universalist” choice, which manifests an attempt to propose a system of transcription which can be used for any African language. But when we analyze precisely each system of transcription, it becomes soon obvious that they are far from being homogeneous and coherent and show in fact a kind of “bricolage” of the three types. The making of these transcription systems can be explained by the training, the cultural background and the biographical trajectory of the authors, but also by their role in the French colonial enterprise and the practical purpose of their linguistic description.

3.1 Military-expeditionary handbooks in Western Africa. Through the lens of Arabic The Essai sur la langue bambara by Louis-Gustave Binger (1856–1936) appears to be the first description of the Bamanan language. Binger, who was a military and an explorator, later became Governor of Ivory Coast. His Essai (possibly translated by “Sketchbook”) was written under the auspices of the Department of Marine and Colonies and encouraged by General Louis Faidherbe (1818–1889) who has been Governor of Senegal. The target audience of this book was the French military and also the travelers and traders. In his dedication to Faidherbe, Binger wrote: “My goal will be fully achieved if by this modest work I can facilitate, for my companions, the merchants and the travelers, relations with the countries whose future you devoted yourself to for many years” (Binger 1886, my translation) The organization of the sketchbook is exactly the same than the Essai sur la langue poul by Général Faidherbe, first published in 1875. It opens with 15 pages about the “Bamanan race”, followed by the grammatical section, which is no longer than 14 pages. It is followed by 24 pages of quite disparate translated

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sentences, which seem transcribed on the spot and may as well have been given as linguistic examples than as phrases for communicative daily use. Some of them are identical to the sentences translated in Fula in the book by Faidherbe. It closed with an alphabetic glossary organized by categories (nouns, adjectives, numerals, verbs, locutions) and a list of the names of days and seasons. As the grammatical description is much too succinct even to understand the syntax of the translated examples, we can say that this Essai corresponds to a genre characterized by “an orientation towards using words rather than speaking”, to quote the anthropologist Johannes Fabian (1986: 19). We don’t know much about the way Binger acquired his knowledge of Bamanan neither about those who may have been used by Binger as informants. In the preface, Binger mentioned the name of three people who may have been soldiers or domestic servants. Following the mention of the informants, Binger specifies: “I verified my notes in each station with the help of Natives understanding the French language” and “When relations with the Bamanan people are more established and when Natives are more familiarized with our language, this essay could be completed.” (Binger 1886) Those statements give information about this linguistic practice “on the road” to quote again Johannes Fabian. It is typical of what Fabian calls the military-expeditionary genre (Fabian 1986: 18): vocabularies destined to ensure minimal communication with the populations encountered along the roads. Binger uses the same choice of transcription than Faidherbe, who criticizes for example the contemporary choices made by missionaries (see below), which he found too complicated, using signs that didn’t exist in the French orthography (Faidherbe 1887: 6). There is no global explanation of the principles of transcription and the whole phonographic remarks take a few lines. Some peculiarities are signaled, in contrast with the pronunciation of the French language, or other European languages such as Spanish, Italian or German. Interesting is what we could call the “orientalist” choice to note the voiceless velar fricative consonant [x] by kh. This is a common choice of transcription in the linguistic description of African languages of that period influenced by Arabist linguists, as kh is the common transliteration for the Arabic corresponding sound . We find this particular transcription in all the descriptions made by military: Faidherbe (1875) for Fula, Peroz (1891) and Rambaud (1896) for

164 | Cécile Van den Avenne Bamanan.12 It was certainly initiated by Faidherbe himself who began his carreer in Algeria (from 1844 to 1847, then from 1850 to 1851) and learnt Arabic. This is not the only clue that may let us assert that those authors look at sub-Saharan languages starting from their competence in Arabic. Indeed, in his sketchbook on Fula language, Faidherbe pays a special attention to Fula borrowings from Arabic, and in his sketchbook on Bamanan (see Figure 3), Binger gives some examples of use of Arabic script to write numbers and texts in Bamanan (see Figure 2). Underlying those linguistic descriptions appears a chronology of French colonial conquests. Besides, mobilizing Arabist competences in this case is a way to conduct a transfer of knowledge in order to approach Otherness. It is also a way to integrate sub-Saharan languages in a large African corpus dominated by the Arab language (a language that can be placed on an equal footing with European languages).

Figure 2: Extract from Binger (1886), written numeration using Arabic script

3.2 “La grammaire de vive voix”. Spiritans at Saint Joseph de Ngasobil (Senegal). An unknown “linguistic laboratory” Pour apprendre une langue non écrite ou pour enseigner la grammaire de vive voix, il faut commencer par la prononciation, l’étudier, se l’approprier, telle qu’on l’entend sortir de la bouche des naturels, en analyser les sons et les articulations, et puis représenter ces sons et ces articulations par des signes ou lettres.

|| 12 Rambaud justifies the choice of kh this way: “The notation kh represents a hard sound similar to the German ch (bach). We adopted this group of letters kh to represent this sound because it was already used by Orientalists.” (Rambaud 1896: 13, my translation).

Reducing languages to writing | 165 [To learn a non-written language or to teach grammar verbally, one must begin by studying pronunciation, as it can be heard from the mouth of the natives, and then represent the sounds and articulations by signs or letters.] (Kobès 1869: 7–8, my translation)

Figure 3: Extract from Faidherbe (1875), Essai sur la langue poul. Borrowings from Arabic are noted with a letter A following the word in Fula

166 | Cécile Van den Avenne In the above quotation from Aloys Kobès (1820–1872), the French expression de vive voix (which I translated as ‘verbally’) insists on the direct verbal contact without intermediary. The word “voix” may also stress a link between speech and preach. It can make us understand what the purpose of the missionary handbooks was: learning to speak in order to be able to preach. It also stresses the importance of accurate transcription. Aloys Kobès was an Alsatian missionary from the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (known as Spiritans), one of those new congregations that flourished in France during the nineteenth century, re-funded in 1848 by François Libermann.13 The goal of the congregation was to evangelize African people and freed slaves. Aloys Kobès founded the mission of Saint Joseph de Ngasobil, south of Dakar in 1850. The implantation was quite difficult but succeeded to stabilize within ten years and became a very dynamic small catholic center, with a school, workshops, print (which printed catechism, dictionaries, grammars) and more than thousand hectares of land where were cultivated cotton and local crops. As soon as he arrived in Senegambia (as that part of Western Africa was called at that time), Father Kobès began to learn the dominant local language, Wolof. In 1855, he published a first description of the Wolof language, in 1856 he published a dictionary14 and in 1869 a very complete grammar, Grammaire de la langue wolofe, of 360 pages, printed in the mission of Ngasobil. Learning the language to be able to translate catechisms was one of the first preoccupation of the missionaries and the linguistic work done from the very beginning of the installation of the mission was quite prolific as one can see it by the list of publications. In Ngasobil eight books were published on Wolof from 1867 until 1907, among them a quadrilingual conversation method French-Wolof-EnglishSerer (1880), more than ten books in Wolof (catechisms, songbooks) from 1864 till 1886㩷and two translations of the gospels and the Bible in Wolof (1871, 1878); three books in and about Serer; two books in and about Bamanan. In some other Spiritain missionary posts, printing presses are also set: in 1896, Father Olivier-Marie Abiven (1856–1934), in Soudan (now Mali), published a grammar of Malinké, following Kobès’ transcription system. After the publication in 1905 of || 13 The Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Congrégation du Saint Esprit) was founded in 1703 par Claude Poullart des Places and re-vivificated in 1848 by a fusion with the Société du Cœur de Marie, founded by François Libermann. 14 Those two first books are anonymous and may be collective. The mention of the author sates: “a missionary from the Congregation of the Holy Spirit.” At that time, it was necessary to quickly publish a first description of the language and make it available for other missionaries to work with.

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the Essai de phonétique avec son application à l'étude des idiomes Africains by Father Charles Sacleux, precursor of Swahili studies and an academically recognized linguist, Spiritain missionaries only refered to this system, as Sacleux’ linguistic expertise definitely take precedence over Kobès’ competence. The major innovation made by Kobès was to develop a system of transcription whose vocation was to be used to “reduce to writing” any African languages described by the Fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. It was used after him by Father Lamoise (1873) in his grammar of Serer, and then by Father Montel in his grammar of Bamanan. In Kobès’ system, the Latin alphabet is used according to a strict phonographic principle (one sound-one letter). It prefigures the invention of the International Phonetic Alphabet (first published in 1888, see supra). The targeted audience is still an European one as Kobès wrote: “each already known letter keeps the value it has in our European languages” and “the foreign sounds unknown in our European languages are represented by ordinary letters modified by a conventional accentuation” (Kobès 1869: 9). Therefore, no creation of new letters was envisaged but some diacritic signs, such as accents, underscript double points, swung dash used as in Spanish to note the sound represented by the letter , etc. were to be used. In his grammar, Kobès wrote no less than 35 pages to explain his choices and describe the pronunciation of the Wolof language. Further Montel (1887) states: Through this process, everyone who wishes to write a word he has never seen written anywhere, will use exactly the same way, and everyone who reads and writes the word, will reproduce the sounds, without having heard them before, fairly as the first writer has collected them from the lips of the native. (Montel 1887: 2, my translation).

Spiritain missionaries shared this concern for accurate transcription with the missionaries from the Church Missionary Society (see supra) who played a major role in the description of African languages especially with the work of missionaries working at the Fourah Bay College founded in1827 at Freetown, Sierra Leone.15 Whereas the linguistic works done for example by the protestant missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in Freetown, Sierra Leone, has been recognized by academic circles, this was not the case for the Spiritans whose linguistic works remain quite unknown. The reason gives Judith Irvine:

|| 15 For a study of the Fourah Bay Institute, see Hair (1963).

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Figure 4: Letters of the alphabet, Kobès (1869 : 12): Grammaire de la langue volofe

“Despite their considerable depth and detail as documents of linguistic structure, these missionary publications had little impact in European scholarly circles.” And she adds: “As Catholics, [those missionaries] did not participate in the network of Protestant missionaries, more often based in Britain and Germany and having strong ties to the academic world in those countries” (Irvine 1993: 38). Nevertheless, despite their isolation, Spiritans missionaries produced linguistic works that resonates with the academic concerns of their century.

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The Elements de la grammaire bambara published in 1887 by Father Montel were published in Senegal, where this language was not spoken as a first language but was only spoken by freed slaves settled here. And indeed, the archives of the congregation tell us that Father Montel was in charge of the evangelization of Bamanan freed slaves living in Saint Louis of Senegal. As I explained it in my introduction, this work was undertaken in anticipation of a later installation of mission stations in the Manding area. In fact, the establishment of Spiritans missionaries in Bamanan area didn’t last and they were actually not able to use their competence in Bamanan language very long. Indeed, Spiritans and White Fathers were in competition with each other for the evangelization of this part of Africa and in 1901, the Spiritans left their three mission posts in Sudan to the White Fathers on the occasion of an exchange of territory between Guinea and Sudan. The Senegambian territory was attributed to the Spiritans and the Sahara-Sudan territory to the White Fathers (Benoist 2008: 263).

3.3 White Fathers and Bamanan: establishing French influence The Société des Missionnaires de Notre-Dame d’Afrique, whose members are better known as “The White Fathers”, was founded in 1868 by the French Cardinal Charles Lavigerie. He established the congregation’s seat in Algiers, and the first missionary activities were put to the service of the population in the North-African desert. The orientation towards sub-Saharan Africa came later. The White Fathers entered French Sudan before the conquest was complete, and they were dependent on the French military authorities for the security of their movement and of their mission stations. In 1895, Father Hacquard, previously superior of the Armed Brothers of the Sahara16, and fluent speaker of Arabic, arrived with a caravan at Segu, where he established a mission among the Bambara. Lavigerie wrote guidelines for the missionaries: “the Fathers are expected to help one another in their studies, and in every mission where no text-book of the language yet exists, they spend at least two hours a day in compiling a vo-

|| 16 The Armed Brothers of Sahara was a religious military order initiated by Lavigerie. The Brothers were laymen, their vocation was to host freed slaves, and lead a life divided between prayer, work (including agriculture and hunting), and weapons training. French authorities expected the Brothers to help to pacify southern Sahara. Under international pressure, the order lasted very little (about two years) and was disestablished in 1892.

170 | Cécile Van den Avenne cabulary and grammar. As soon as possible they translate the Gospels and a short catechism” (Bouniol 1929: 84). The first White Father’s Bamanan grammar was a very succinct and anonymous one, published in Segou in 1897, two years after the establishment of the mission. The same year a catechism was published. By that time, White Fathers didn’t seem to have known and used the very more substantial work by Father Montel analyzed above. This reveals the disconnections between the different missionary congregations and in that case maybe a kind of competition between Spiritans and White Fathers, as described above. In 1905, Father Emile Sauvant (1869–1939) published the first version of his Bamanan handbook (there will be several revised editions of that handbook), which is equivalent to the Bamanan handbook of Montel and organized in the same way in progressive lessons but much more “franco-targeted”, in the choice of transcription and also in the way to present the grammar of the language through the lenses of the source-language. He described his choices of transcription as close as possible to the French alphabet: “As much as possible, we used the characters of the French alphabet to render the sounds of the Bamanan language” (Sauvant (1905): 1, my translation). In the preface of his FrenchBamanan dictionary, published in 1906, Father Hippolyte Bazin, justified the same choices by the targeted readership: “As our work is destined principally for French people, we make a law to use only the French alphabet for the transcription of Bamanan words, carefully keeping, as far as possible, the value of the letter in our language” (Bazin 1906, my translation. And this is a clear colonial matter). Indeed, the White Fathers were much closer to the practical choices of the military handbooks by Faidherbe or Binger, and much more “franco-targeted”, using letters with the same phonographic value as in French, preferring digraphs instead of using unusual diacritic signs. For instance, they used the typically French digraph for the sound [u]. And for the sound [ɳ] they used the digraph. Those colonial-practical concerns, clearly franco-targeted, are particularly obvious in one peculiar little pocket-sized handbook, written by Marius Ferrage, and intended for the Senegalese colonial infantry, which title is Petit manuel français-bambara à l‘usage de Troupes Noires. Father Ferrage was Superior of the mission post of Kita (Soudan, now Mali) from 1906 until 1927 and then in Bobo Dioulasso (Haute Volta, now Burkina Faso). During World War I, Father Ferrage, like other White Fathers, was recruited as an interpreter in a battalion of the Senegalese Colonial Infantry (Tirailleurs Sénégalais). His handbook is published firstly in 1917 in Algiers and re-published in 1918 in Paris by a military press.

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Used by French officers to be able to communicate orders in a war context, this handbook has no scientific pretensions and the choice of a rigorous phonographic code for transcription is not an important issue at stake. It only had to be an easy tool for French speakers for purposes within the colonial context. And indeed, Bamanan was written using French phonographic conventions. White Fathers were often considered helping to establish French influence into the colonies (see Shorter 2006). In a way, the choices of transcription reflect this franco-centric point of view when other missionaries (as Spiritans for example) had a much more universalistic (or at least European, as “universal” is often a European way of thinking) perspective.

4 Conclusion I borrowed part of the title of this paper from an article by Mary Bucholtz “The politics of transcription” (Bucholtz 2000). She argued that transcription is “a practice inherently embedded in relations of power” (Bucholtz 2000: 1439). Even if she doesn’t deal with graphization but with the way to represent and write oral discourses, her perspective can be broaden to include the reduction to writing of languages without written corpora. Indeed, in those early colonial grammars, whatever be the transcription system finally selected, it first had to be practical and convenient for any kind of European users (and not the natives) and therefore match with European literacy habits. Alternative local way of writing might have existed and be known (as the use of Arabic script mentioned by Faidherbe or Binger) but they were not borrowed from the “natives”. And “subtleties” (such as tones, which do exist in Bamanan) difficult to be perceived for a French ear are not transcribed. Therefore Bamanan was appropriated for French use within the colonial enterprise and became an easy tool (facile, easy, is a recurrent word in the corpus about the phonetics of Bamanan). In contrast to some other colonial territories in Africa, where a local African language could have been used by the colonial power as a lingua franca, and afterwards as a language of administration, French colonial policy did not give any status at all to African languages. The importance given to the use, and therefore to the description, of Bamanan in the early days of colonial conquest declined as the administrative apparatus was set up and used exclusively the French language, in accordance with the ordinary French language ideology. However, the first generation of Bamanan handbooks was followed by a second one, of pocket-size French Bamanan Handbooks, written in the 1910’s– 1920’s (see Van den Avenne 2012). These books presented as works for the gen-

172 | Cécile Van den Avenne eral public were very much simplified, a little paradoxical if we consider the fact that, at the time of their publication, the description and graphization of Bamanan were still far from being stabilized. And furthermore, even the delimitation of what should be labeled as “Bamanan” in a Manding dialectal continuum (Bamanan-Maninka-Diula) was still problematic. Historic investigations have been given ample evidence of what has been called “the invention of ethnicity” in Africa17 during colonial period. Less known is the fact that this invention, more precisely the fixation of ethnic boundaries, has been accompanied by the delimitation and fixation of linguistic boundaries. As Jean Bazin (1985) pointed it out, in his seminal article “A chacun son bambara”, the invention of a Bambara ethnic group can be dated back to 1912 and the publication of HautSénégal-Niger by Maurice Delafosse, who convokes this apparently simple equation: the Bambara are the people who speak Bambara. Identifying simultaneously ethnic groups and languages is problematic for two reasons: first, it is due to the projection of a Western ideology of the nation as defined by a territory; second, it is also a projection of a European ideology of languages defined as standard languages whose boundaries are clearly fixed. In a way, those early graphizations of Bamanan can be considered as a first step toward standardization, which is another consequence of their European appropriation. It is to say that colonial European appropriation is a process influencing various domains of language practices and decisions (politically and linguistically) with regard to native languages, one domain of which is the exo-writing system.

References Abiven, Olivier. 1906. Dictionnaire français-malinké et malinké-français. Conakry: Mission des P.P. du Saint Esprit. Amselle, Jean-Loup & Emanuelle Sibeud. 1998. Maurice Delafosse. Entre orientalisme et ethnographie: l’itinéraire d’un africaniste (1870–1926). Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Anonym. 1855. Principes de la langue volofe. Dakar: Imprimerie de la mission. Anonym. 1856. Dictionnaire français-wolof et wolof-français, avec un essai de grammaire. Dakar: Imprimerie de la mission. Anonym. 1897. Essai de grammaire bambara (idiome de Ségou), par un missionnaire de la Soc. des Pères Blanc. Paris: Librairie Africaine et Coloniale Jospeh André & Cie. Auroux, Sylvain. 1992. Histoire des théories linguistiques, tome 2. Paris: Mardaga. Bazin, Hippolyte. 1906. Dictionnaire français-bambara, précédé d'un abrégé de grammaire bambara. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.

|| 17 See for instance Chrétien & Prunier (2003).

Reducing languages to writing | 173 Bazin, Jean. 1985. A chacun son bambara. In Jean-Loup Amselle & Elikia Mbokolo (eds.), Au coeur de l’ethnie, 87–126. Paris: La Découverte. Benoist, Joseph-Roger (de). 2008. Histoire de l’Eglise catholique au Sénégal. Paris: Karthala. Binger, Louis-Gustave. 1886. Essai sur la langue bambara parlée dans le Kaarta et dans le Bélédougou; suivi d’un vocabulaire, avec une carte indiquant les contrées où se parle cette langue. Paris: Maisonneuve frères et C. Leclerc. Blommaert, Jan. 2008. Artefactual ideologies and the textual production of African languages. Language and communication 28. 291–307. Boas, Franz. 1889. On alternating sounds. American Anthropologist 2(1). 47–53. Bonvini, Emilio. 1996. Repères pour une histoire des connaissances linguistiques des langues africaines 1. Du XVIe siècle au XVIIIe siècle: dans le sillage des explorations. Histoire Epistémologie Langage 18(2). 127–148. Bonvini, Emilio. 2001. Les deux premières grammaires françaises du wolof (Sénégal). Une systématisation contrastée. Histoire Epistémologie Langage 23(2). 101–116. Bonvini, Emilio. 2008. Review of Otto Zwartjes & Even Hovdhaugen (eds.), Missionary linguistics/Lingüística misionera [I]. Selected Papers from the First International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Oslo, March, 13th–16th, 2003. Amsterdam & Phildadelphia: John Benjamins, Histoire Espistémologie Language, 30(2). 213–217. Bouniol, Joseph. 1929. The White Fathers and their missions. Londres: Sands & Co. Bucholtz, Mary. 2000. The politics of transcription. Journal of Pragmatics 32. 1439–1465. Chimundu, Herbert. 1992. Early missionaries and the ethnolinguistic factor during the ‘invention of tribalism’ in Zimbabwe. Journal of African History 33. 87–109. Chrétien, Jean Pierre & Gérard Prunier. 2003 [1989]. Les ethnies ont une histoire. Paris: Karthala. Cole, Desmond T. 1971. The history of African linguistics to 1945. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Currents trends in linguistics 7, Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1–29. The Hague: Mouton. Colombat, Bernard. 1999. La grammaire latine en France à la Renaissance et à l’Age classique. Grenoble: ellug. Dard, Jean. 1825. Dictionnaire français-wolof et français-bambara, suivi du dictionnaire français-wolof. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Doneux, Jean Léonce. 2003. Histoire de la linguistique africaine. Des précurseurs aux années 70. Aix en Provence: Presses de l’Université de Provence. Errington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a colonial world. A story of language, meaning, and power. Malden: Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Missions and the colonization of African languages: Developments in the former Belgian Congo. Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines 17(2). 165–187. Fabian, Johannes. 1986. Language and colonial power. The appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo 1880–1938. Berkeley: University of California Press. Faidherbe, Louis. 1875. Essai sur la langue poul, grammaire et vocabulaire. Paris: Maisonneuve. Faidherbe, Louis. 1887. Langues sénégalaises. Wolof, arabe-hassania, soninké, sérère. Notions grammaticales, vocabulaires et phrases. Paris: Ernest Leroux. Ferrage, Marius. 1918. Petit manuel français-bambara à l’usage de Troupes Noires. Paris: Imprimerie-librairie militaire L. Fournier. Galazzi, Enrica. 2000. L’association phonétique internationale. In Sylvain Auroux (ed.), Histoire des théories linguistiques, tome 3, 499–516. Paris: Mardaga. Gilmour, Rachael. 2006. Grammars of colonialism. Representing languages in Colonial South Africa. Palgrave: Macmillian.

174 | Cécile Van den Avenne Hair, Paul E. H. 1963. Fourah Bay College, The University College of Sierra Leone, preface to: Koelle, Sigismund: Polyglotta Africana, Reproduction of the original edition. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Houis, Maurice. 1971. Anthropologie de l’Afrique Noire. Paris: PUF. Irvine, Judith. 1993. Mastering African languages: The politics of linguistics in nineteenthcentury Senegal. Social Analysis 33. 27–46. Irvine, Judith. 2001. Genres of conquest: From literature to science in colonial African linguistics. In Hubert Knoblauch & Helga Kotthoff (eds.), Verbal art across cultures, 63–89. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Irvine, Judith. 2008. Subjected words: African linguistics and the colonial encounter. Language and communication 28(4). 323–343. Jones, Daniel. 1916. A few maxims for the transcriber of African languages. In Daniel Jones & Solomon T. Plaatje (eds.), A Sechuana reader. London: University of London Press. Kobès, Aloys. 1869. Grammaire de la langue volofe. Saint Joseph de Ngasobil: Imprimerie de la Mission. Lamoise, Paul. 1873. Grammaire de la langue sérère avec des exemples et des exercices renfermant des documents très utiles. Ngazobil: Imprimerie de la Mission Saint-Joseph. Meeuwis, Michael. 1999. The white fathers and Luganda: To the origins of French missionary linguistics in the Lake Victoria region. Annales aequatoria 20. 413–443. Montel, Etienne. 1887. Eléments de la grammaire bambara avec exercices appropriés, suivis d’un dictionnaire bambara-français. Saint-Joseph de Ngasobil: Imprimerie de la mission. Moore, Francis. 1738. Travels into the Inland parts of Africa. London: Printed by Edward Cave, at St. John’s Gate, for the author. Park, Mungo. 1816. Travels in the interior districts of Africa: Performed in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797. London: John Murray. Peroz, Etienne. 1891. Dictionnaire français-mandingue. Paris: Imprimerie Moderne J.D. Maillard. Rambaud, Jean-Baptiste. 1896. La langue mandé. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Sacleux, Charles. 1905. Essai de phonétique avec son application à l’étude des idiomes Africains. Paris: H. Welter. Sauvant, Emile. 1905. Manuel de la langue bambara. Maison Carrée, Alger: Mission d’Afrique des Pères Blancs. Shorter, Aylward. 2006. Cross & flag in Africa. The “White Fathers” during the Colonial Scramble (1892–1914). Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Travélé, Moussa. 1910. Petit manuel français-bambara. Paris: P. Geuthner. Van den Avenne, Cécile. 2012. Le petit manuel français-bambara à l’époque coloniale, entre description et appropriation pratique. Canadian Journal of African Studies/Journal canadien des études africaines 46(2). 251–270. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2004. La construcción del objeto de la historiografía de la lingüística misionera. In Otto Zwartjes & Even Hovdhaugen (eds.), Missionary linguistics – Lingüística Misionera: Selected papers from the first international conference on Missionary Linguistics, Oslo, 13–16 march 2003, 7–32. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Part 3: America

Catherine Fountain

Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation in the missionary representation of Nahuatl Abstract: This article examines the associations between missionary linguists in New Spain and the indigenous languages they described. The missionaries’ writing of grammars in particular has been viewed as a process of linguistic colonization, in which American indigenous languages are appropriated and manipulated by colonizing forces. The present work argues that the production of missionary linguistic work is more complex than is admitted in this narrow view, and that it is important to recognize the ways in which studying and writing about indigenous languages affected missionary linguists themselves. This broader view brings in questions of language attitudes, identity and transculturation, and demonstrates that “assimilation” may not be the one-way process that earlier works have deemed it. Keywords: Nahuatl, Mexico, language attitudes, language ideologies, transculturation || Catherine Fountain: Dept. of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Appalachian State University Box 32063, Boone, North Carolina, 28608-2063 USA, [email protected]

1 Introduction The description of indigenous languages of the Americas during the colonial period, principally carried out by missionaries, has been both well recognized and well studied since the 1990s. The work of Catholic missionaries in colonial Mexico or New Spain, as the territory was known at the time, has received perhaps more attention than any other body of missionary linguistic work; see Suárez Roca (1992), Fountain (2006), and the papers collected in Zimmermann (1997) and Zwartjes (2000) for more detailed descriptions of missionary linguistics in New Spain and other areas of Latin America. In this paper, I explore an aspect of the missionary linguistic endeavor that has been examined from the fields of anthropology and literary criticism, but that has received less attention within the field of missionary linguistics; namely, the cultural and sociolinguis-

178 | Catherine Fountain tic relationships between the languages studied by missionaries, the studies and descriptions they produced, and the missionaries themselves. By situating the views of missionary linguists within the larger question of linguistic identity and linguistic appropriation, this work seeks to give a more nuanced view of the linguistic attitudes and cultural identities of the missionary linguists working in New Spain.

2 Language attitudes and missionary linguists 2.1 Language attitudes and language policy in New Spain Though this paper examines the language attitudes of Europeans towards indigenous languages during the colonial period in New Spain, it is important to note that any picture we may gain of these attitudes is necessarily incomplete, as we cannot study them using the measures a sociolinguist would employ today, such as broad surveys or spoken corpora. This caveat notwithstanding, there are ways in which we can gain at least some sense of the attitudes of certain groups towards certain languages. One way to do this is to examine language policy, which we can speak about with a good deal of clarity because there is a written record of official decrees from the Spanish Crown and reactions to these decrees from within New Spain. These are discussed in greater detail in Heath (1972) and Hernández de León Portilla (1988) but I will summarize them here. The first decree, issued by Charles I in 1550, mandated that the native peoples of New Spain learn Spanish. The response of Fray Rodrigo de la Cruz in a letter from the same year, as quoted in translation in Heath (1972), questions whether this can realistically be achieved: “…how are these people whose language is so different from ours and who have such elaborate ways of speaking ever to learn Castilian?” (Heath 1972: 19). Some 28 years later, in 1578, Charles’ successor Phillip II decreed that Nahuatl should be the lengua general or common language of the native peoples of New Spain, and that its use should be promoted among the indigenous population. This recognition should not be understood as an acceptance by the crown of Nahuatl as a language on par with Spanish, but until the mid 1600s promotion of Nahuatl as a common tongue remained a part of official language policy. This changed in 1634, when Phillip IV returned to a policy of Castilianization, and from then until the end of the colonial period the official policy of the Spanish Crown strongly favored the use of Spanish in all contexts.

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According to Heath, the general pattern that emerges from this series of decrees and the reactions to them is that of a push for Castilianization from the King and government in Spain, and push back, either explicit or tacit, from the missionaries in New Spain who lived with the difficulties of this strategy (Heath 1972: 39–41). The missionaries, who learned and used native languages and interacted on a daily basis with their speakers, were inclined to understand that for one Spaniard to learn an indigenous language was an easier task than to attempt to force entire communities to learn Spanish. Indeed, Hidalgo notes that by the end of the colonial period “35 percent of the population knew how to speak Spanish, and just 0.5 percent knew how to read and write the language of the ‘mother country.’” (Hidalgo 2001: 59), reflecting the reality in which missionaries found themselves. While the Spanish government, far removed from the situation in New Spain, seemed to doubt that Christian doctrine could be fully expressed in any indigenous language, even Nahuatl, missionary linguists used a range of linguistic strategies to translate Christian doctrine into indigenous languages, and deemed their translations adequate. These strategies of translation have been studied quite extensively; see Tavárez (2000), Zimmermann (2005) and Pharo (2009) for further discussion.

2.2 Insights from missionary grammars Official policy and the reactions to it show but one side of the sociolinguistic climate in New Spain. Another source for information about language attitudes is the body of work produced by missionary linguists. These men, for whom learning, studying and analyzing indigenous languages was a primary task, were unsurprisingly also inclined to meditate on the qualities that distinguished one language from another, and on the relative merits of different languages and structures. One finds comments about indigenous and other languages in many colonial grammars, and these can be used to complement what we know about language policy and present a broader picture of language attitudes in the colonial period. It is worth noting that not all missionary linguistic works contain evaluative comments. They are principally found in grammars, perhaps because these works focus on the analysis of the structures of a language, and in the case of Nahuatl at least, they are more common in published works; the manuscripts examined tend to focus on description of the structures of the language, with less room for personal commentaries. I have chosen to focus in this paper on grammars of Nahuatl and on the missionary grammarians who studied this language. This by no means implies, however, that comments of the type analyzed here are found only in works on

180 | Catherine Fountain Nahuatl. Indeed, one finds comments in works on other indigenous languages that reveal a range of attitudes towards those languages. To give but two examples, Juan Baptista de Lagunas makes this parallel between Spanish, Nahuatl, and Purépecha in his grammar of 1574: Y adviertan, que en todas las lenguas vulgares, hay pronunciación política, curiosa y bien pronunciada. Y también hay otra tosca, plebeya, imperfecta y mal pronunciada. Y puesto que ambas sean maternas y vulgares, es cosa ilustre y de advertir, que la política cortesana sea universal, y muy perceceptible [sic] a todos, como la Toledana a los Castellanos, y la Tezcucana en los Mexicanos, y a los de Michuacan la de Pazquaro, y Cintzuntza. (Lagunas [1574] 2002: 149)1

while Córdova has this to say about Zapotec in the second Aviso [Notice] in the preliminary pages of his vocabulary from 1578: Porque la latinidad parece sciencia mas subida (si sciencia se puede llamar) que no estas lenguas barbaras y de poco tomo. Pero si se considera con atencion, y se entra en el fondo y meollo del negocio, hallara ser al reves. Porque aquellos autores toda su solicitud, cuydado y trabajo, se fenecio en rebolver libros, y cotejar autores, y sacar vocablos y ponerlos en orden. Lo qual no podemos dexar de conceder, sino que aya sido gran trabajo. Pero el nuestro (aliende del andar buscando y inquiriendo, y desenterrando los vocablos de entre el polvo del olvido, negligencia y inadvertencia y poco uso, y entre tan bronca y no muy despierta gente) ha sido dias y noches desvelarnos en desentrañar sus meros significados…” (Córdova [1578] 1987: Aviso II, para. 2)2

A comparison of the language attitudes revealed in all missionary linguistic works produced in New Spain would paint a richer picture of the relative status of different indigenous languages but is beyond the scope of the present work. I have chosen to concentrate on Nahuatl both because it was the subject of more study || 1 [And be advised, that in all vernaculars, there is a pronunciation that is correct, orderly, and well pronounced. And there is another that is coarse, plebian, imperfect, and poorly pronounced. And given that both are maternal and vernacular, it is something worthy of note that courtly correctness is universal, and perceived by all, as is the Toledan [way of speaking] to the Castilians, the Texcocan to the Mexica, and to those from Michoacán, that of Pátzcuaro and Tzintzuntzan]. 2 [Because Latinity seems a higher science (if it can be called a science) than these barbarous languages of little relevance. But if one considers this carefully, and gets to the depth and essence of the matter, he will find the opposite is true. Because the care and work of those authors ended up as looking through books, and consulting authors, and choosing words and putting them in order. Which we must concede, has been great work. But ours (beyond going around seeking and inquiring, and unearthing vocabulary from the dust of obscurity, negligence and ignorance and disuse, and among people who are coarse and not too bright) has meant days and nights of no sleep from untangling their very meanings].

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than any other language in New Spain and because, as mentioned above, it was given a special status among indigenous languages even in official policy. Before describing the linguistic commentary we find in missionary grammars of Nahuatl, I will provide a brief overview of the study of Nahuatl during the colonial period and of the extant grammars of Nahuatl that were published during the colonial period. There was almost certainly some work done on Nahuatl in the years immediately following the arrival of the Spaniards; Mendieta (1870: 550) mentions two Nahuatl grammars written in the 1530s by the Franciscans Francisco Jiménez and Alonso Rengel, but this is the only record of these works. The extensive manuscript grammar written by Andrés de Olmos in 1547 is the first Nahuatl grammar to have survived to modern times. In the latter part of the 16th century we have two other grammars, Alonso de Molina’s Arte de la Lengua Castellana y Mexicana (1571) and Antonio del Rincón’s Arte mexicana (1595). The first half of the 17th century saw the publication of two more grammars: Diego de Galdo Guzmán’s Arte Mexicano (1642) and Horacio Carochi’s Arte de la Lengua Mexicana con la declaración de los adverbios della (1645), widely considered the best description of the language from the colonial period. Three more grammars were published later in the same century: Agustín de Vetancurt’s Arte de lengua mexicana. (1673), Antonio de Vázquez Gastelu’s grammar of the same title from 1689, and Juan Guerra’s Arte de la lengua mexicana from 1692, which describes the variety of Nahuatl spoken in Jalisco. From the 18th century we have a series of grammars that are on the whole shorter than some of the compendious early grammars such as those of Molina, Rincón or Carochi: Manuel Pérez’s Arte del idioma mexicano (1713), Francisco de Avila’s Arte de la lengua mexicana (1717), Carlos de Tapia Zenteno’s Arte novissima de lengua mexicana (1753), José Agustín Aldama y Guevara’s Arte de la lengua mexicana (1754), and Jerónimo Tomás de Aquino Cortés y Zedeño’s Arte, Vocabulario y Confessionario en el Idioma Mexicano como se usa en el Obispado de Guadalajara (1765). This last work, as the title indicates, describes a variety of Nahuatl spoken in Guadalajara. A revised edition of Carochi’s grammar was also published in 1759 by Ignacio de Paredes, under the title Compendio del arte de la lengua mexicana. Rafael Sandoval’s Arte de la lengua mexicana of 1810 is considered the last of the colonial grammars, having been written before the struggle for Mexican independence began in that same year. Besides Olmos’ work there were other Nahuatl grammars that remained unpublished during the colonial period, including the Reglas de la Lengua Mexicana of the Jesuit Francisco Xavier Clavigero, written in the late 18th century, and José Carranza’s Arte donde se contienen todos aquellos rudimentos y principios preceptivos que conducen a la lengua mexicana, written at the beginning of the 19th century. The first was transcribed, translated into English and published by Arthur J. O. An-

182 | Catherine Fountain derson in 1973, and the second was published by the Imprenta del Museo Nacional in 1900, though that edition is incomplete. One note of interest to those familiar with the early grammars of Nahuatl is that the colonial works generally considered to be excellent in terms of their linguistic analysis (see Canger 1995 and 1997 for discussion) are not necessarily those that provide us with the best indicators of their authors’ thoughts or attitudes towards the language. Though nearly all Nahuatl grammars use words such as elegante (‘elegant’) to describe certain structures and turns of phrase, and speak of mexicanismos (‘Mexicanisms’) as unique and admirable features of the language, many make no explicit judgments regarding Nahuatl’s merits or defects. For instance, Horacio Carochi, as noted the author of perhaps the bestregarded colonial grammar, offers no explicit statements that show his own feelings towards the language. However, the missionary linguists who express their own opinions about Nahuatl generally do so to praise the language. Alonso de Molina speaks of “...esta lengua mexicana: la qual no es menos curiosa y delicada que qualquiera de las otras” (Molina [1571] 1998: 35r)3 and Antonio de Rincón, though he groups Nahuatl in with other “barbarous” languages, notes that it is “como madre de las demas lenguas barbaras que en estos reynos se hallan”, specifying that this is “...por los exquisitos primores y elegancias que tiene.” (Rincón [1595] 1998: Al Ilmo. y Rvdmo. Señor don Diego Romano, Obispo de Tlaxcallan).4 At times we find others praising the language in the preliminary materials that often precede the main text of missionary works. For instance, in his Parecer [Judgement] at the beginning of Aldama y Guevara’s grammar of 1754, Juan Francisco de Torres Cano, an ecclesiastical judge, calls Nahuatl “el no menos opulento, que elegante Idioma Mexicano” (Aldama y Guevara 1754: Parecer de el Dr. D. Juan Francisco de Torres Cano).5 In other cases, the comments of missionary linguists serve to put Nahuatl on a level with Spanish, sometimes with Hebrew, and even Latin, at that time the most highly regarded language in Europe. Thus in the grammar of Agustín de Vetancurt, not only does he speak of “adverbios elegantes, unos de lugar, otros de tiempo, y otros que modifican, ya ampliando, ya restringiendo la significacion del Verbo” (Vetancurt [1673] 1998: 25v),6 he clarifies that the syntax of Nahuatl is comparable to that of Latin: || 3 [… this Mexican language, which is no less orderly or delicate than any other]. 4 [like the mother of the rest of the barbarous languages that are found in this land […] because of the exquisite delicacies and elegancies that it has]. 5 [the no less opulent, than elegant Mexican Language]. 6 [elegant adverbs, some of place, others of time, and others that modify, either by expanding or restricting, the meaning of the verb].

Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation | 183 Todos los autores del Arte, el syntaxis, y construccion, que tiene la lengua latina niegan al Idioma Mexicano por ser indeclinables los nombres, y no tener variacion de casos por donde conocer la construccion. Pero con licencias de varones tan doctos, soy de parecer, que el Idioma Mexicano tiene Syntaxis, y construccion como la latina... (Vetancurt [1673] 1998: 41r)7

Earlier in the same section, he compares Nahuatl and Hebrew in respect to syntax: Esta [syntaxis] no hay Idioma que no le tenga, ni lengua que carezca de construccion. Unas por la variacion de casos, como la Latina. Otras por composicion, y frases singulares, como la Hebrea, y la Mexicana, de que se tratará en sus reglas, y se declarará en las notas. (Vetancurt [1673] 1998: 38r)8

and finally, he makes an explicit connection between Nahuatl and Hebrew: “...basten aquestas por exemplo, y prueva de la coneccion de la Mexicana con la Hebrea...” (Vetancurt [1673] 1998: 44v)9 A similar defense of Nahuatl, this time vis-à-vis Spanish, is found in Tapia Zenteno’s grammar, referring to patterns of accentuation: Y esto no me parece imperfeccion en la Lengua Mexicana, como no lo es en nuestro Castellano, la multitud de univocos, equivocos, y analogos, que conocemos, y decimos, que solo en la pronunciacion se diferencian [...] y esto mismo sucede en el latin, de que no quiero traer exemplos, por no hacer difusa esta explicacion ... Y si por esto no podemos llamar á aquellas otras lenguas barbaras, assi tampoco al Mexicano Dialecto, Principe de toda esta America Septentrional. (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: 4)10

Another point made obvious in the above quote is that Tapia Zenteno rejects any argument that Nahuatl could be called a “barbarous” language. Indeed, the || 7 [All the authors of grammars deny the Mexican Language the syntax and structure that the Latin language has, because the nouns are indeclinable, and do not vary by cases through which we can understand its structure. But with the permission of such learned men, it is my view, that the Mexican Language has Syntax, and structure, just like Latin]. 8 [This (syntax) there is no language that doesn’t have it, nor any language that lacks structure. Some (have syntax) through the system of cases, as does Latin. Others through composition, and unique phrases, like Hebrew, and Mexican, which will be treated in its rules, and laid out in the notes]. 9 [...these should be enough examples, and proof of the connection between the Mexican (language) and Hebrew]. 10 [And this does not seem to me an imperfection in the Mexican language, as it is not in our Castilian, the multitude of equivalent terms, ambiguities, and analogies, that we know and say, that only differ in their pronunciation […] and the same thing happens in Latin, for which I will not give examples, so as not make this explanation too broad … And if for this reason we cannot call these other languages barbarous, thus we also cannot with the Mexican Dialect, Prince [the most important] of all this Northern America].

184 | Catherine Fountain earlier quote from Córdova’s Zapotec dictionary calling indigenous languages “barbaras y de poco tomo” (Córdova [1578] 1998: Aviso II, para. 2) finds few echoes in works on Nahuatl. Passages disparaging the language itself, such as Rincón’s comment grouping Nahuatl with “lenguas barbaras” (Rincón [1595] 1998: al Ilmo. y Rvdmo. Señor don Diego Romano, Obispo de Tlaxcallan) are rare; as noted above, even in the case of Rincón’s use of the word it is followed by a passage praising Nahuatl as elegant. One does find some comments that reveal prejudices towards the speakers of these languages; Agustín de Vetancurt, in his preliminary note Al lector [To the reader], speaks of “la administracion a los Naturales, que por su naturaleza son mas incapaces, que los Españoles...” (Vetancurt [1673] 1998: Al lector).11 Generally when the authors describe wrong or mistaken ways of speaking, it is in reference to specific regional varieties of Nahuatl. Tapia Zenteno makes several references to the speech of the serranos, referring generally to speakers living in more isolated mountainous areas, and perhaps more specifically to those from the Huasteca region where he seems to have spent time and where varieties of Nahuatl were and are spoken. Referring to the reverential forms, he notes that the usage he describes is “...entre los Indios politicos, que entre los Serranos, y de toda tierra caliente, es tanta su rudeza, que todos lo reverenciales se los aplican a si, y hablan sin cortesia, con las personas a quienes se les debe...” (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: 15).12 By “tierra caliente” he is referring to parts of the modern-day state of Guerrero, where again we find varieties of Nahuatl spoken. Later he speaks of another structure found “entre los Serranos, y los que hablan barbaramente...” (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: 22).13 The prejudice against regional varieties of Nahuatl is also clear in Tomás de Aquino Cortés y Zedeño’s grammar of 1756, which describes the Nahuatl spoken in the area around Guadalajara. In his preliminary remarks he notes that Aqui pues, ô en este Obispado de Guadalaxara, en donde escribo, está el Idioma Mexicano muy viciado, y no con aquella puridad, que conserva aun en algunos lugares vecinos á Mexico: y como mi fin no es, que los Indios lo hablen culto, que esse fuera un asumpto exotico; sino que los Ministros, que los han de tratar, los entiendan, y hablen lo que ellos

|| 11 [the management of the Natives, who by their nature, are less capable than the Spaniards]. 12 [... among the civilized Indians, because among the Serranos (highlanders), and in all of tierra caliente, such is their coarseness, that they apply all the reverential forms to themselves, and they speak without courtesy, to the people who deserve it]. 13 [among the Serranos, and those that speak barbarously].

Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation | 185 puedan entender; por esso todo lo escribo en el modo, y estylo que aqui es corriente. (Aquino Cortés y Zedeño [1756] 1998: Prólogo)14

While quotes like these may seem to contradict my assertion that the comments found in missionary grammars are generally favorable towards Nahuatl, I would argue that in fact the opposite is true. These comments serve to confirm that Nahuatl is a language with a standard form, one that is recognized as “correct” and is emblematic of upper-class speech, and the negative judgment here is directed towards non-standard forms. Vázquez Gastelu says as much in the closing pages of his grammar: Es de advertir, que assi como todas las lenguas vulgares, ay dos maneras de hablar, la una perfecta, y verdadera; la otra imperfecta, y rustica: que es lo mismo en esta lengua Mexicana, lo qual se prueba; porque en las Cortes de los Reyes, y Principes, y entre personas Illustres, se habla la lengua materna, con mas curiosidad, y politica, que entre gente labradora, y de baxa suerte, de manera, que estos hablan la misma lengua vulgar, y materna, tan imperfectamente, y con tantas incongruidades, que las mas vezes no se dexan entender de todos, y con la dicha Arte todos la hablan perfectamente, y assi, no con poco trabajo, e compuesto esta Arte sujetandome a las reglas, en que los mas sabios en esta lengua la hablan, y pronuncian... (Vázquez Gastelu [1689] 1998: 32r) 15

Aldama y Guevara not only speaks of regional variation in Nahuatl, including the variety he chooses to represent in his grammar, he also makes the parallel between Spanish and Nahuatl in this area quite clear in the third section of his prologue: En esta lengua (como en todas) hay alguna variedad, segun la diversidad de Provincias, ô Lugares. Las reglas de este Arte estan conformes al estylo de los Indios de Mexico, y sus contornos; pero echo cargo de este estylo, tendrás muy poco que hacer para enterarte de || 14 [Here, or in this Bishopric of Guadalajara, where I write, the Mexican Language is full of vices, and lacks the purity that it maintains still in some places near Mexico [City]: and since my goal is not that the Indians might speak it elegantly, as that would be an exotic matter; but rather that the Ministers, who will work with them, understand them, and speak so that they can understand; for that reason I write everything in the manner and style that is common here]. 15 [It is worth noting, that as with all vernaculars, there are two ways of speaking, one perfect, and true; the other imperfect, and rustic: and it is the same with this Mexican language, which is proven because in the Courts of the Kings, and Princes, and among Illustrious people, the mother tongue is spoken with more care and correctness, than among the working people, and the lower classes, thus these speak the same common mother tongue so imperfectly, and with so many incongruities, that in most cases they cannot make themselves understood by all others, and with the aforementioned [grammatical] Art all speak it perfectly, and so, with no little amount of work, I have composed this Art adhering to the rules, with which the wisest men in the language speak, and pronounce it…]

186 | Catherine Fountain lo que hallares distinto en otras partes [...] pero en esto es menester tambien que procedas con discrecion; porque no todos los Indios hablan bien su lengua, como no todos los Españoles hablamos bien la nuestra; y assi no te fies de lo que oyeres á cualquier Indios; sino de aquellos, que mejor hablaren en el Lugar en que estuvieres; y tales son regularmente, los que llaman Caziques, ô nobles. (Aldama y Guevara [1754] 1998: Prólogo, section III, paragraph 1)16

3 Missionary linguists and indigenous languages 3.1 Appropriation and assimilation of language There are various lenses through which we can view statements of the sort we have just considered. While at first glance they might seem benign, even positive, many scholars of colonialism would argue that these statements reveal an appropriation of native languages by European colonial agents. Vicente Rafael speaks of missionaries in the Philippines “seeking to appropriate the native language” and making efforts to “ventriloquize the Tagalog voice” (Rafael 1993: 52). For Walter Mignolo, perhaps the most widely known critic of colonial treatment of native languages, the act of writing a grammar of an indigenous language within the Latinate tradition caused that language to be “not only rearranged but also possessed and assimilated” (Mignolo 1992: 305). Indeed, Mignolo defines colonial linguistic work as “the actions taken and strategies employed by missionaries and men of letters to (re)organize Amerindian speech by writing grammars” (Mignolo 1992: 304). In other words, he views the use of European concepts and terminology – indeed, European writing systems – to describe Amerindian languages as both distorting and colonizing. Both Rafael (1993) and Mignolo & Schiwy (2003) also view the missionary linguistic undertaking as a process of translation. For Rafael it is a process parallel to that of conversion; he compares “on the one hand... articulating the linguistic machinery of Tagalog with reference to Latin grammar; on the other hand... converting

|| 16 [In this language (as in all languages) there is some variation depending on the diversity of Provinces, or Places. The rules of this [grammatical] Art adhere to the style of the Indians of Mexico [City], and its surroundings; but once this style is mastered, you will have very little to do in order to figure out the differences you may find in other places […] but in this it is necessary also that you proceed with discretion; because not all Indians speak their language well, as not all of us Spaniards speak our language well; thus don’t trust whatever you might hear from any Indians; but rather what you hear from those who speak it best in whatever place you might be; and these are generally those who are called Caziques, or nobles].

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(for this is the other meaning of traducir in Spanish: convertir) Tagalog signifiers, tying them to Castilian signifieds” (Rafael 1993: 29). Mignolo and Schiwy also connect the process of translation with the writing of grammars: The approximately fifty years (from 1528 to 1578) that the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun devoted to translating Nahuatl into Latin and Spanish and the time that many religious orders devoted to translating Spanish and Latin into Nahuatl for the purpose of conversion are dramatic and exemplary cases of translation for assimilation. [...] This translation machine entailed an enormous effort to write grammars of non-European languages and to adapt them to the Latin grammar, or to translate the concepts and ideas of other cosmologies to the Christian one that emerged in the New World (Mignolo & Schiwy 2003: 9)

It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a full analysis and critique of the examination of colonial linguistic endeavors through the lens of literary theory, and others have addressed specific claims made by Mignolo. Binotti (2000), for instance, offers a nuanced rebuttal to claims regarding Nebrija’s imperial intentions, which include statements such as “Nebrija knew that the power of a unified language, through its grammar, lay in teaching it to barbarians, as well as controlling their languages by writing their grammars” (Mignolo 1992: 307) and “...Nebrija was predicting the construction of a new [empire]” (Mignolo 1992: 309). Binotti notes that “No pocos críticos modernos... hacen hincapié en la conocida frase de Antonio de Nebrija, ‘la lengua compañera del Imperio’ como clave para la comprensión de las actitudes lingüísticas que guiaron la colonización de América” (Binotti 2000: 259)17 but cautions that this interpretation ignores the context in which Nebrija’s works were written. Indeed, she claims, a careful reading of Nebrija that places his work within the framework of Renaissance humanism shows that “contextualizada, entonces, la frase nebrissense no puede leerse como el comienzo de un colonialismo lingüístico, sino más bien como la primera de una larga serie de quejas sobre las faltas del castellano.” (Binotti 2000: 263)18 Returning to the concepts of appropriation and translation in regards to the writing of grammars, Mignolo’s claim that the mere act of writing a grammar of a language somehow re-arranges the language itself does not hold with modern || 17 [Quite a few modern critics… emphasize the well-known phrase of Antonio de Nebrija, ‘language accompanies Empire’ as a key for understanding the linguistic attitudes that guided the colonization of America]. 18 [contextualized, then, the phrase of Nebrija cannot be read as the beginning of a linguistic colonialism, but rather as the first in a long series of complaints about the deficiencies of Castilian].

188 | Catherine Fountain views of language change and linguistic knowledge, as the structure of a language is not changed by the grammatical metalanguage used to describe it. Indeed, those who study missionary grammars often find that, in a sense, the opposite is true: that when a Latinate term is used to describe a certain phenomenon in an indigenous language, the meaning of the term may be affected or modified to fit the structures of that language. In Fountain (2006), for example, I trace the development of grammatical terms such as conjugación gerundiva, which was used to describe verbs of purposive motion in Nahuatl rather than anything like the Latin gerund or gerundive (Fountain 2006: 176–181). While the writing of a grammar can help to establish a normative variety, and thereby re-arrange language in some sense, I would argue that this occurs only when it is part of a broader process of standardization of a language. As described by Zimmermann (2008), standardization must include a process by which norms are accepted by speakers: “un proceso de codificación y difusión entre los hablantes concernidos” (Zimmermann 2008: 202),19 and while he is careful to distinguish between full standardization and the establishment of norms, even the latter involves more than just the production of a grammar. Finally, I would argue that using a European grammatical framework to describe an indigenous language should not be conflated with the process of translation. While they may work in concert at times and may both have transcultural elements, translation and grammatical description are unique linguistic processes that should be described on their own terms. This said, we should not disregard claims of linguistic appropriation outright. It must be recognized that assigning a certain term or description to a linguistic structure, while it does not change the structure itself, can influence the perception of those who study the language. One could argue that a grammar’s power of re-arrangement and assimilation lies in its ability to establish, if not norms for the language itself, certainly norms for describing the language. While it is essential to recognize that writing a grammar does not necessarily change the structure of a language, then, it is also important to acknowledge that it can contribute to the establishment of norms and change the way in which a language is taught, as well as a learner’s and even a native speaker’s conscious perception of that language. Returning to the idea of “possession and assimilation” of indigenous languages, we can say this is true to the extent that describing any language for a certain purpose means that it is possessed and assimilated. Taking Mignolo’s arguments to their logical end, anyone who writes a grammar of a language is guilty of some degree of manipulation or || 19 [a process of codification and diffusion among the affected speakers].

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assimilation of some group’s conscious perception of that language; missionary grammarians can be singled out because their work coincided with the Spanish colonial undertaking and because the learning of indigenous languages by missionaries aided in the process of evangelization. The discussion of linguistic appropriation is not limited to the colonial context, however, and the question of who is authorized to describe a language is still a matter of debate. Disconnects between linguistic idealism and cultural and political reality can lead to conflict between linguists and native speakers. One modern day example concerns the Hopi Dictionary project, as described in Hill (2002). Kenneth Hill, along with other linguists, had worked for some ten years towards the production of a comprehensive Hopi dictionary. Although they had collaborated with native speakers in the Hopi community, the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (CPO) eventually asked that publication of the dictionary be halted. While the story of the project is complicated – again, see Hill (2002) for his views on its unfolding – the issue came down to the fact that were the Hopi dictionary published, it would be available to non-Hopis. According to Hill, there was a perception among many Hopis that their language was being “sold”. He also notes that many Hopi speakers felt that “Hopi is unique among the languages of the world – completely unlike English or other indigenous American languages. It belongs solely to the Hopis” (Hill 2002: 307). There was even a discussion about identifying the Hopi language as the intellectual property of the Tribe. A compromise was finally reached that provided free and discounted dictionaries to the Hopi Tribe and transferred copyright of the dictionary to the Tribe in 2008. Lest it seem that such issues arise only in the study of Amerindian languages, Frawley et al. (2002) note that similar issues arise in dictionaries of major European languages: Corporate attorneys, aides to elected officials, and other individuals of influence frequently contact the editorial offices of dictionaries to complain about trademark infringement – “You can’t put XX in the dictionary! We own that word!” – and to seek to have words and definitions modified or deleted because they offend the sensibilities of constituents. [...] the lesson is that intellectual-property wars are hardly the province of the American Indian lexicographic community. (Frawley et al. 2002: 14)

Indeed, because the use of language is a large part of so many aspects of everyday life – advertising and business, education, and politics being just a few – many groups and individuals have a stake in how language is represented. In this way, we can tie the modern day examples back in with the colonial works on Nahuatl; the missionary linguists clearly wanted to represent Nahuatl in a certain way in their works, to bring it in to the fold of Christendom. This is one reason that so

190 | Catherine Fountain many of their examples drew from the religious context, and that they translated or created words for certain religious concepts. In this way they did indeed attempt to “assimilate” Nahuatl into the realm of Christianity, to prove that it was a language capable of conveying Church doctrine. Again it is at this interface of language and society, this issue of representation and perception of Nahuatl, that some criticisms of historiographers of missionary linguistics gain validity. Introducing new words and concepts into a language, as missionary linguists clearly attempted to do, can affect cultural aspects of language use. It is unfortunate that the critics of missionary linguistic work have not made this crucial distinction between the grammatical structure of a language and its use and perceived status in society, for it is key to understanding the true impact of linguistic works such as grammars and dictionaries on a language.

3.2 Transculturation and identity Mignolo & Schiwy (2003: 8) claim that in the missionary linguistic endeavor, “Structured by the coloniality of power, translation and transculturation became unidirectional and hierarchical”. However, other scholars have recognized that the linguistic and cultural exchange between Nahuas and Spaniards worked in both directions, even though the relationship of power between the two groups was uneven. Lockhart (1992: 434–435) notes that “The Spaniards retained the basic settlement pattern the Nahuas had already established [...] they gradually adopted significant elements of indigenous diet and material culture, and their language too was affected”. Burkhart argues that in Nahuatl religious texts from the colonial period, “Christian doctrine was ‘Nahuatized’ in the process of its accommodation to native categories of language and thought” (Burkhart 1988: 235), a counterbalance to the idea that it was indigenous languages that were manipulated to accommodate Christian doctrine. Parodi (2009) examines processes of linguistic adaptation and transculturation at the lexical level, claiming that through the lens of what she calls cultural semantics one can see how the Spanish language was changed by encounters with indigenous languages, products and concepts. All of these lines of research point to the fact that while we would not want to claim that an equal balance existed in terms of power within the colonial system, it is mistaken to consider transculturation in the colonial context to be a unidirectional process in which only European norms were imposed and in which indigenous peoples had no agency. In the case of linguistic description there is no evidence that any preColumbian theories of language or approaches to its study were incorporated into missionary grammars, but as we saw in the previous section, the mission-

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ary’s ideas about and attitudes towards language were indeed affected by their study of Nahuatl. It also seems clear that at least in New Spain, the preColumbian social and linguistic hierarchies exerted a certain amount of influence on missionary linguistic work, as the colonial grammarians for the most part adopted the prestige variety of Nahuatl spoken in the altepetls or city-states of the dominant Triple Alliance – Texcoco, Tenochtitlan, and Tlacopan – as a standard. The quotes included in the first section of this paper point to mixed attitudes and conflicted identities; authors of Nahuatl grammars are laudatory of the language’s virtues yet distant from and at times derogatory towards its speakers. In some of the later grammars, however, there is a growing sense of personal identification with the language. This is clearest in Tapia Zenteno’s grammar from 1753. In his Proemium, written in Latin, he begins the third paragraph with the following phrase in italics: “Barbarus ego sum, cum non intelligor ulli” (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: Proemium). I believe this is an adaptation of a quote from Ovid, “barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intellegor ulli”, “I am a barbarian here, for no one understands me”.20 Here Tapia Zenteno turns the idea of bárbaro/barbarous on its head, implying that those who live among Nahuatl speakers but do not speak their language are in fact the “barbarians” or foreigners. Later in this same prologue he makes special mention of the fact that the Virgin of Guadalupe spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl when she appeared to him on the hill called Tepeyac. And in the grammar itself, when he speaks of Spaniards laughing at Indians’ ways of speaking Spanish, he quickly adds “como ellos de nosotros, quando faltamos a las propiedades de su dialecto” (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: 10).21 He is also the only Nahuatl grammarian to assert a personal sense of connection to Nahuatl by calling it “el nuestro Mexicano” [our Mexican (language)] (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: 30) Tapia Zenteno’s statements may be evidence of a growing sense of identification with Nahuatl on the part of at least some clergy towards the end of the colonial period. If we consider the social and political climate of the latter part of the 18th century and first years of the 19th century, we can discern a practical motive for this identification and sense of pride in knowing Nahuatl. Not only are these the years immediately preceding the fight for Mexican independence, they were also a time in which Mexican-born criollo priests were often at a disadvantage compared to their brethren who had been educated in Spain. As noted earlier, by this time official Spanish language policy was clearly one of || 20 The original quote is from Ovid’s Tristia, Book 5, 10.37 (Wheeler 1939: 248). 21 [just as they (laugh) at us, when we are lacking in the properties of their dialect].

192 | Catherine Fountain Castilianization, and if knowing Nahuatl or another indigenous language was no longer a requirement for missionary work, then the Mexican-born priests who had learned these languages lost an important advantage in obtaining such positions. Unsurprisingly, then, we also find arguments in some of the later grammars against the policy of Castilianization, which Tapia Zenteno claims, in an introductory letter, “ocasiona, no solo la dificultad de los Patricios, sino (y lo que es mas sensible) que la mayor parte del rebaño de V.S. Ilma. teniendo oydos no oye los clamores de su vigilante pastor.” (Tapia Zenteno [1753] 1998: Al Ilmo. S.D.D. Manuel Rubio Salinas).22 Rafael Sandoval, in the preliminary Dedicatoria [Dedication] of his 1810 grammar, makes an even longer and more impassioned case against the Castilianization policy; the following quote is but one portion of his argument: Es verdad que el enemigo de la salvacion ha sembrado la cizaña en el campo de esta santa Iglesia por medio de sugetos ó poco instruidos en la importancia de vuestro conocimiento, ó vencidos del trabajo de aprender idioma extraño, los quatros esparcen que ya el Rey ha quitado todos los idiomas, y así que solamente en castellano debe predicarse á los Indios, y aprender estos la doctrina, aunque nada entiendan de ella, fundados en la Real Cédula del año de 1770, en que Sr. D. Carlos III. de augusta memoria, permitió que se confieran los Curatos a hombres de mayores letras y virtud, aunque ignoren el idioma de los Indios. Pero voluntariamente cierran los ojos para no ver en la misma Cédula: que el dicatmen no era ni podia ser, que por ahora se dexasen sin Ministros del idioma á los pueblos::: antes con la obligacion de tener los Vicarios que fuesen necesarios. Se entiende para la predicacion y administracion de Sacramentos. Y precaviendo S. M. los daños, encarga repetidamente: Que en los parages en que se hallen inconvenientes en su práctica, deberán representárselos. ¿Y qué mayor inconveniente y desdicha que aprender los Indios la doctrina solamente de memoria con muchos barbarismos y solecismos sin entenderla? (Sandoval 1810: Dedicatoria, paragraphs 5–7)23

|| 22 [it not only causes difficulty among the Patricians, but also (and this is a more sensitive matter) that the majority of the flock of Your Illustrious Grace, having ears, does not hear the cries of its vigilant pastor]. 23 [It is true that the enemy of salvation has sown discord in the field of this holy Church by means of people either ignorant of the importance of your knowledge, or overcome by the work of learning another language, from the four winds we hear that the King has done away with all the languages, and that only in Spanish should we preach to the Indians, and that they should learn the doctrine, even if they don’t understand any of it, this based on the Royal Decree of the year 1770, in which King Charles III, of honorable memory, allowed that curacies be conferred to men of greater learning and virtue, even if they did not know the language of the Indians.

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He goes on to remind readers that the King continued to support the study of indigenous languages by priests in Mexico: “bastante manifesto lo contrario el mismo Sr. D. Carlos en el año posterior de 1777 dotando las Cátedras de idioma mexicano, y otomí en el Real colegio de Tepotzotlan.” (Sandoval 1810: Dedicatoria, paragraph 10).24 After all, he argues, if one claims that Spaniards cannot learn indigenous languages, how can we expect the Indians to learn Spanish? Esto es lo que insinúa la citada Cédula en aquellas palabras: Pues cuesta mucho trabajo y desvelo el aprender los Españoles (habla de Ministros aun graduados en facultades mayores) otro idioma quando no se han criado con los naturales, sin embargo de lograr todas proporciones; pues ¿como ha de aprender los Indios el castellano con solo oir en él la doctrina...? (Sandoval 1810: Dedicatoria, paragraph 12)25

4 Conclusion What I hope to have shown in this paper is that the relationship between missionary linguists and the languages they studied is a complex one, and should not be reduced to a simple narrative of European colonialists appropriating native languages for their own uses. While elements of this narrative certainly resonate, writing a grammar of a language does not always have implications for the language itself, and claims that grammar writing in and of itself affects a language’s structure represent too simplistic a view of the process and consequences of describing a language. Rather than making sweeping claims about missionary appropriation of native languages, we should examine with a more nuanced view which facets of linguistic awareness are affected by grammar

|| But voluntarily they close their eyes to not see in the same Decree: that the order was not nor could it be, that for now the people should be left without Ministers in their language ... but indeed with the obligation of having the necessary Curates. This means for the preaching and administering of Sacraments. And His Majesty, guarding against any harm, repeatedly orders: That in those places in which inconveniences are found in practice, they should be represented. And what bigger inconvenience and unhappy state [can occur] than the Indians learning the doctrine only through memorization with many barbarisms and mistakes, without understanding it?] 24 [quite the opposite did the same King Charles demonstrate in the later year of 1777, providing Chairs in both Mexican and Otomi in the Royal College of Tepotzotlan]. 25 [This is what the Decree insinuates in these words: Indeed it takes much work and long nights for Spaniards (he is speaking of Ministers already graduated from prestigious colleges) to learn another language when they have not been brought up with the Natives, achieving a balance notwithstanding; well, how are the Indians to learn Spanish just by hearing the doctrine?]

194 | Catherine Fountain writing, and it is principally in the areas of language attitudes and norms of description that we can look for the influence of missionary descriptions of Nahuatl on the language itself. Missionary grammars certainly set in place a metalanguage for linguistic explanation based on Latinate traditions, even as they adapted this metalanguage for more accurate description of indigenous languages. It is also possible that grammar writing affected the general perception of Nahuatl and its norms, principally among Europeans but perhaps in some cases among indigenous peoples as well. At the same time, those missionaries who carefully studied, taught and wrote grammars of Nahuatl, in some instances dedicating the bulk of their religious lives to this pursuit, were in many cases demonstrably affected in their own attitudes and perceptions by the study of the language and the describing of its structures. As Felix Hinz points out in an article about the Hispanization of the Nahua people, “Transformation of (collective) identity is never a one-way street.” (Hinz 2008: 32). Here too we see transculturation, assimilation and appropriation working both ways: as missionary linguists appropriated Nahuatl words to name Christian concepts, so they appropriated Latin grammatical terminology to name Nahuatl structures. As they attempted to transform and assimilate native cultures and languages into the fold of Christianity, so they found themselves changed and at times even assimilated by their intimate knowledge of indigenous languages. As colonial Mexico headed towards independence, this knowledge became a part of at least some criollo priests’ identity, previewing the important role that transculturation and cultural hybridity would play in shaping the identity of the new nation.

References Aldama y Guevara, Jose Agustin. [1754] 1998. Arte de la lengua mexicana. Mexico City: Imprenta Nueva de la Bibliotheca Mexicana. Puebla de los Angeles: Imprenta del Colegio Real de San Ignacio. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Anderson, Arthur J. O. 1973. Rules of the Aztec language. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Aquino Cortés y Zedeño, Jerónimo Tomas [1765] 1998. Arte, vocabulario, y confessionario en el idioma mexicano como se usa en el Obispado de Guadalajara. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Avila, Francisco de. [1717] 1998. Arte de la lengua mexicana. Mexico City: Herederos de la Viuda de Miguel de Ribera Calderon. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández

Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation | 195 de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Binotti, Lucia. 2000. “La lengua compañera del imperio”. Observaciones sobre el desarollo de un discurso de colonialismo lingüístico en el Renacimiento español. In Otto Zwartjes (ed.), Las gramáticas misioneras de tradición hispánica siglos XVI–XVII, 259–287. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Burkhart, Louise M. 1988. The Solar Christ in Nahuatl doctrinal texts of early colonial Mexico. Ethnohistory 35(3). 234–256. Canger, Una. 1995. Artes poco conocidos del náhuatl. Amerindia 19/20. 183–190. Canger, Una. 1997. El Arte de Horacio Carochi. In Klaus Zimmermann (ed.), La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial, 59–74. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Carochi, Horacio. 1645. Arte de la lengua mexicana con la declaracion de los adverbios della. Mexico City: Juan Ruyz. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de LeónPortilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis, 1998. Carranza, José de. 1900. Arte donde se contienen todos aquellos rudimentos y principios preceptivos que conducen a la lengua mexicana. Mexico City: Imprenta del Museo Nacional. Córdova, Juan de. [1578] 1987. Vocabulario en Lengua Çapoteca. Facsimile ed. Mexico City: Ediciones Toledo. Fountain, Catherine. 2006. Colonial linguistics in New Spain: The Nahuatl tradition. Los Angeles: University of California MA thesis. Frawley, William, Kenneth Hill & Pamela Munro (eds.) 2002. Making dictionaries: Preserving indigenous languages of the Americas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Galdo Guzmán, Diego de. [1642] 1998. Arte mexicano. Mexico City: Viuda de Bernardo Calderon. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Guerra, Juan. [1692] 1998. Arte de la lengua mexicana que fue usual entre los indios del Obispado de Guadalajara y de parte de los de Durango y Michoacan. Facsimile ed. on CDROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1972. Telling tongues: Language policy in Mexico, colony to nation. New York: Teachers College Press. Hernández de León-Portilla, Ascensión. 1988. Tepuztlahcuilolli: impresos en náhuatl. Mexico City: UNAM. Hidalgo, Margarita. 2001. Sociolinguistic stratification in New Spain. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 149. 55–78. Hill, Kenneth C. 2002. On publishing the Hopi dictionary. In William Frawley, Kenneth Hill & Pamela Munro (eds.), Making dictionaries: Preserving indigenous languages of the Americas, 299–311. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hinz, Felix. 2008. The process of Hispanization in early New Spain: Transformation of collective identities during and after the conquest of Mexico. Revista de Indias 68(243). 9–36. Lagunas, Juan Baptista de. [1574] 2002. Arte en lengua michuacana. Edited by Agustín Jacinto Zavala & Benedict Warren. Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán & Fideicomiso Teixidor.

196 | Catherine Fountain Lockhart, James. 1992. The Nahuas after the conquest. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mendieta, Geronimo de. 1870. Historia eclesiástica indiana: obra escrita a fines del siglo XVI. Ed. by Joaquín García Icazbalceta. Mexico City: Antigua Librería. Mignolo, Walter. 1992. On the colonization of Amerindian languages and memories: Renaissance theories of writing and the discontinuity of the classical tradition. Comparative Studies in Society and History 34(2). 301–330. Mignolo, Walter & Freya Schiwy. 2003. Double translation: Transculturation and the colonial difference. In Tullio Maranhão & Bernhard Streck (eds.), Translation and ethnography: The anthropological challenge of intercultural understanding, 3–29. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Molina, Alonso de. [1571] 1998. Arte de la lengua mexicana y castellana. Mexico City: Pedro Ocharte. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Olmos, Andrés de. [1547] 2002. Arte de la lengua mexicana. Edited by Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla & Miguel León-Portilla. Mexico City: UNAM. Paredes, Ignacio de. 1759. Compendio del arte de la lengua mexicana. Mexico City: Imprenta de la Bibliotheca Mexicana. Parodi, Claudia. 2009. La semántica cultural: un modelo de análisis del contacto de lenguas. In Karen Dakin, Mercedes Montes de Oca Vega & Claudia Parodi (eds.) Visiones del encuentro de dos mundos en América: Lengua, cultura, traducción y transculturación. Mexico City: UNAM. Perez, Manuel. [1713] 1998. Arte de el idioma mexicano. Mexico City: Francisco de Ribera Calderon. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Pharo, Lars Kirkhusmo. 2009. Translating non-denominational concepts in describing a religious system: A semantic analysis of colonial dictionaries in Nahuatl and Yucatec. Historiographia Linguistica 36(2/3). 345–360. Rafael, Vicente. 1993. Contracting colonialism. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Rincón, Antonio del. [1595] 1998. Arte mexicana. México: Pedro Balli. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Sandoval, Rafael. 1810. Arte de la lengua mexicana. Mexico City: Oficina de D. Manuel Antonio Valdés. Suárez Roca, José Luis. 1992. Lingüística misionera española. Oviedo: Pentalfa. Tapia Zenteno, Carlos de. [1753] 1998. Arte de lengua mexicana. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Tavárez, David Eduardo. 2000. Naming the trinity: From ideologies of translation to dialectics of reception in colonial Nahua texts, 1547–1771. Colonial Latin American Review 9(1). 21–47. Vázquez Gastelu, Antonio. [1689] 1998. Arte de lengua mexicana. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis.

Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation | 197 Vetancurt, Agustin de. [1673] 1998. Arte de lengua mexicana. Facsimile ed. on CD-ROM. In Ascensión Hernández de León-Portilla (comp.), Obras clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl (= Colección Clásicos Tavera Serie IX: Vol. 8, Number 16). Madrid: Fundación Histórica Tavera and Digibis. Wheeler, Arthur Leslie (ed.) 1939. Ovid with an English translation. Tristia - Ex Ponto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zimmermann, Klaus (ed.) 1997. La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2005. Traducción, préstamos y teoría del lenguaje: La práctica transcultural de los lingüistas misioneros en el México del siglo XVI. In Otto Zwartjes & Cristina Altman (eds.), Missionary linguistics II/ Lingüística Misionera II: Orthography and phonology, 107–136. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2008. La invención de la norma y del estándar para limitar la variación lingüística y su cuestionamiento actual en términos de pluricentrismo (mundo hispánico). In Jürgen Erfurt & Gabriele Budach (eds.), Standardisation et déstandardisation/ Estandarización y desestandarización, 187–207. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Zwartjes, Otto (ed.) 2000. Las gramáticas misioneras de tradición hispánica siglos XVI–XVII. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca

Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions in the surroundings of the Viceroyalty of New Granada Abstract: This chapter puts the focus on the frontier missions located in the most

intricate regions of central and southern present-day Colombia in the last decades of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Independent Indians lived in the strategic frontiers of the Spanish empire. Different religious orders exercised missions there and also practiced trade with other European nations. On the other hand, scientists were sent by the colonial government to these regions to gather knowledge about all domains: nature, people and their languages. But the missionaries were also engaged in this enterprise: they described not only languages for the purpose of evangelization but also natural aspects which were of economical and scientific interest for the government. Their descriptions were also received by the scientists so that an interaction occurred between these ones, the missionaries and the government for colonial economic and political purposes. The missionaries, often the only ones who spoke the indigenous languages, were engaged in this way in not religious fields. In the case of New Granada, the conversions to Christianity had become a challenge when the missionaries went beyond the center of the Viceroyalty to regions where numerous tribes spoke mutually unintelligible languages. Nevertheless, both the missionaries and the scientists were moved by the spirit of economic and social progress resulting from the Enlightenment. The knowledge produced by these persons had as a linguistic consequence the incorporation of loanwords from indigenous languages in Spanish as it can be detected in the texts written within this colonial scientific discourse.

Keywords: Spanish-American Bourbon policy, Viceroyalty of New Granada, frontier

missions, scientific discourse of the Enlightenment, Amerindian loanwords in Spanish

|| Micaela Carrera de la Red: Departamento de Lengua Española, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Valladolid, Plaza del Campus, s/n, 47011 Valladolid, SPAIN, [email protected] Francisco José Zamora Salamanca: Departamento de Lengua Española, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Valladolid, Plaza del Campus, s/n, 47011 Valladolid, SPAIN, [email protected] ||  This research is part of a broader research project on “Analysis of the Spanish language history in Colombia” (FFI2012-31205).

200 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca

1 Preliminary remarks The main purpose of this study is to make an approach to the missionary activity related to the ethnic groups and boundaries in the regions of central and southern present-day Colombia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the time of the Bourbons, in a context of weakening of the colonial order, some significant events happened in the Spanish colonial empire such as the expulsion of the Jesuits, the secularization of the missions and the shifting of the missionaries to new frontiers. The Viceroyalty of New Granada was then immersed in strong and contradictory ideological pressures. Different political and social trends in the treatment of the Indians co-existed in the colonial context of the transition years between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a period of crisis which meant the boiling point of the pre-independence years. At those moments, the decimation and destruction of indigenous societies, which was sudden and violent in some areas, was paralleled by the emergence of new forms of social and economic organization designed to meet the Spanish needs and aspirations (McFarlane 1993: 23–28). According to the new method of colonial society, a project arose based on the combination of what was called civilization and conversion. From this latter perspective, the missionaries appeared as one of the keys to scientific progress, especially for their knowledge of the land and the Amerindian linguistic reality. The Bourbon reformers asked the missionaries not only to convert the Indians to Christianity but to make them useful and sociable vassals. This point of view coincides with one of the aspects dealt by the “constructivist view”, in which the historiography of missionary linguistics moves.1 The conversion of the Indians had become an increasing challenge when the preachers moved to areas where the tribes spoke many languages or dialects that were mutually unintelligible. These languages proved to be for the missionaries not only barbaric but also difficult to learn. In the line of the studies of contact between Spanish and Amerindian languages, another purpose of the || 1 As Klaus Zimmermann (2006: 333) puts it: “Enfocar la posibilidad de la evangelización de los indígenas implica a nivel religioso una cierta dignidad humana del OTRO, es decir, su dignidad de ser miembro de la comunidad cristiana. [...] La aceptación como iguales en términos religiosos estaba matizada por la condición de que los indígenas estarían dispuestos a adoptar la religión de los conquistadores.” [To focus the possibility of the evangelization of indigenous people involves, on the religious level, a certain human dignity of the OTHER, that is, their dignity of being a member of the Christian community. The acceptance as equals in religious terms was qualified by the condition that indigenous people would be willing to adopt the religion of the conquerors.]

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present study aims to see the effects of the contact in the subsequent linguistic reorganization, as well as the semantic and social implications in the OTHER’s language (Zimmermann 2004, 2006). We will try to observe the effects of the indigenous languages in the Spanish of the Age of Enlightenment.2 This task will demand the analysis of historical sources such as chronicles, reports and bilingual vocabularies of indigenous languages prepared by scientists and missionaries. An important aspect which will be mentioned in sections 3 and 4 of this article is the task accomplished by the great Spanish botanist and scientist José Celestino Mutis (1732–1808) in collecting manuscripts on Amerindian languages (Larrucea de Tovar 1986). This episode was synthetically narrated by the historian David J. Weber as follows: Carlos III approved the appointment of a persistent and experienced physician-botanist from Madrid, José Celestino Mutis, to head a royal botanical expedition in 1783 in today’s Colombia. Following orders from Carlos III, who wished to fulfill a request from Catherine the Great, Mutis also searched for grammars and dictionaries in native languages (Weber 2005: 32).

2 An ethnographic framework In a previous study (Carrera 2007: 166–196) on texts written by civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the context of Spanish installation in the Popayán region during the sixteenth century and observed under the common denominator of the valuation of the Indians of these regions, marked by their character of “tributaries” of the crown, it was insisted on the lack of clarity and the frequent use of clichés in the interpretation of the interaction between Spaniards and Indians, as well as on everything related to the creation of policy rules or an ethics of social life. The idea promoted at that time was that a purely historical methodology was not enough to help discern the true from the false in the relationships between Spaniards and Indians and that we should delve into the systems of ideas and social practices through a discourse analysis of the same textual sources used from the historical point of view (Eisenhart & Johnstone 2008: 3–24). Friede (1953), himself a historian, pondered, in his study of the ethnicity of the Andakís, over the perspective commonly adopted regarding American Indi|| 2 For the analysis of the semantic aspects we rely on cognitive lexical semantics (e.g. Geeraerts 1988, 2006, 2010). We also consider the cultural semantics approach in the style proposed by Dakin et al. (2009)

202 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca ans during colonial times, and expressed himself in the following terms: “Colonial chronicles refer to indigenous life only as it relates to the European man, the social group to which their interest is directed” (Friede 1953: 7). He also spoke about the superiority complex of the writers who produced official reports, complaints or panegyrics, and the “sometimes unconscious” contempt of Indians as being “exotic, savage and barbaric” (Friede 1953: 8) and raised the need to reconsider the relations of Indians with their conqueror or encomendero, from which he did not exclude the relation of missionaries with the ‘other evangelized.’ More recently, Weber (2005: 3) stated that by 1790, the historical moment of the Enlightenment, throughout the length and breadth of the continent, many indigenous peoples of the Spanish America had been assimilated more than eliminated and most of the natives still living independently along the borders of Spanish Empire had somehow managed to adapt themselves to the Hispanic world and vice versa. In his own words: As they sought to promote progress through reason, enlightened Spanish officials debated the status of the crown’s impoverished Indian vassals. Were subjected Indians naturally degraded? Or degraded because Spaniards had exploited them? Were Indian vassals naturally inferior and resistant to progress? Or inferior and unprogressive because they lacked opportunities? The answers to those questions determined the answers to others. Should Spain’s Indian vassals be maintained as a separate class that would provide cheap labor and pay tribute? Or would Indians be more productive if they were integrated into Spanish society and enjoyed the same opportunities and incentives as Spaniards? Each path promised to lead to greater economic progress for Spanish America and Spain, and each path had influential supporters among enlightened bureaucrats. Neither proponent of integration nor supporters of segregation, however, could translate their principles into enduring policy. The crown had the authority to end the impasse but vacillated and left the question unresolved (Weber 2005: 3).

The content of this set of questions and reflections made by the author of the type that “to reconstruct the histories of native peoples has major flaws and has become a cliché” contributes to the idea that most of what we know today on Amerindian peoples of the colonial era has come across linguistic and cultural assumptions belonging to people who were not Indian (Weber 2005: 17). There is also a perception of the existence of a paradox between the relevance given to the Amerindian peoples and the reality observed that the closeness to the original inhabitants of the Americas was solely conceived as a service to the various European groups. And this is also, according to Friede (1953: 9), when attention is paid to the task of the missionaries, as these ones inevitably contribute to the European viewpoint as they report on geographical and ethnographic discoveries, cultural reality, beliefs and customs of Indians and become sharers of the knowledge of demographics and ethnography, or the natural resources of the

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different domains of the Americas. And, in turn, through the missionaries many times, “the Indians are a source of information for historians and writers of stories and reports” as instruments of the gradual economic and cultural penetration of the Europeans in the New World (Friede 1953: 10).” Eisenhart (2008) points out that, in order to succeed in the analysis of institutional discourse, one must enter into the logic of the institutional structures in whose discourse both the actors themselves and the audience are relevant. The power relations between the participants (characters created) in the events correspond to ideological structures embodied in linguistic choices. Institutional discourse that is contained in the colonial “diplomatic” texts, very diverse in nature, shows unambiguously that the Indians, with a voluntary partnership to varying degrees or with a decidedly hostile attitude, never leave the sphere created by the Spanish administration.3

3 The socio-historical and ethnographic context in New Granada During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – mainly in the second half of the latter century, including the first decades of the nineteenth century – the relationship between Europeans and Indians develops in the context of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, in which European and New World great personalities work side by side with the missionaries in the discoveries and trade tasks, as well as in achieving scientific advances for the Spanish American society, although in reality these discoveries will mainly benefit the European society.4 In this enlightened context, the performance of missionaries and explorers shows close proximity to the fieldwork method described by the anthropologist Philip K. Bock (1977: 478) and the tasks of an ethnographer or anthropologist “trained to observe and accurately report all types of phenomena that they encounter, from techniques for building houses to the religious ritual.” On many || 3 It is a fact that the machinery of the administrative bureaucracy creates some precise characters involved in the action in a given context (contextualization) and, by particular stylistic features, specifies that fact in the texts (entextualization) (Eisenhart 2008). The entextualization concept was discussed by Bauman & Briggs (1990) from the perspective of the ethnography of communication (Dell Hymes) and the performance theory (Richard Bauman). 4 As Weber (2005: 2) pointed out: “Spain’s Bourbon reformers, like their enlightened counterparts elsewhere in Europe and America, hoped to bring about progress by applying the methods of science to society.”

204 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca occasions the expedition members learned from the missionaries in person or in their writings, in which they contributed wide range of materials and testimonies related to geography, flora and fauna as well as the social behavior of the natives and the nuances of their culture, within which the language of each ethnic group stands out as a subsystem with its own light (Bock 1977: 546–547).5 The period covered between the last decades of eighteenth century and 1810 is of special interest in New Granada. Herrán Baquero (1988) deals with the crisis of the colonial regime and the struggle between two great socio-political trends: the traditionalist one, linked to the Spanish colonial era, and the modern current of the Enlightenment, with a spiritual and material strength to push urgent changes in society. During the period of the Enlightenment, one of the ways to strengthen the discoveries of the Europeans, including those of the Spaniards, in the Americas was known as the “botanical expeditions”, through which numerous discoveries were achieved in mineralogy, botany and agriculture, with repercussions also in medical areas, and above all, very useful in commercial terms. In the Viceroyalty of Peru, an expedition was held by the Spanish botanists Hipólito Ruiz (1754–1816) and José Antonio Pavón (1754– 1840) in 1777 (Lambert & Vahl 1797; Humboldt 1993). This type of expeditions was also undertaken in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially into areas located at the south of the city of Santa Fe (today Bogotá). Some of these expeditions were particularly important, such as the one that was led by José Celestino Mutis in 1783 (Pérez Arbeláez 1983), or the journeys to the south of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (Ramos 1959: 373– 419) carried out between 1776 and 1792 by the Panamá-born physician Sebastián José López Ruiz (1741–1832), who also undertook an expedition to his native land in order to report about precious raw materials like quicksilver (azogue) (Díaz-Piedrahita 1991: 191–209). However, since the early seventeenth century religious institutions such as the Augustinians, the Dominicans, the Jesuits of the Sacra Congretatio de Propaganda Fide, founded in 1622 (Bayle 1940a: 121–185), and the Franciscans had been preparing the so called “apostolic expeditions” into the path of the Alto Magdalena, between the eastern highlands of Bogotá, the Cauca valley and the western ones, and in those regions delimited by the tributaries of the three great || 5 This is so since the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, when the notion of mission emerges, as Pierre Chaunu (1973: 224) pointed out. Vicente Castro & Rodríguez Molinero (1986: 13) referred to Bernardino de Sahagún as a “proto-anthropologist” in New Spain. At the suggestion of the Spanish authorities, Sahagún translated parts of his texts, written originally in Nahuatl, into Spanish, a task that he ended in 1577, the same year in which Felipe II banned from writing in Nahuatl (Vicente Castro & Rodríguez Molinero 1986: 156).

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rivers, the Orinoco, the Marañón and the Amazon, considered as of high difficulty in access. From the beginning of colonization, at the early sixteenth century, the testimonies that highlight the ethnic and linguistic complexity of the Indians in the southern Andean and Amazonian regions of present-day Colombia are many and very early. The studies of the documentary sources emphasize a defining aspect of the discoveries in the New World by the Spaniards: the system of encomiendas of Indians during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and their regulation (Padilla Altamirano 1977: 112), the description of the characteristics of encomiendas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (López Arellano 1977: 113–252, González Rodríguez 1977: 253–368) and also the role of the encomenderos and encomiendas in the Popayán area as a part of the domain of New Granada (Marzahl 1978). In turn, the missionaries acted in these regions through the so-called “frontier missions” (Friede 1953), a procedure whereby some success was achieved in the recognition and description of many of the “Indian nations” during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These Indian nations were designed as groups of Indians who, according to the definition given in the missionary language (Gumilla 1745: 107), recognized themselves as kindred. As Colombian historians have studied in depth (Gómez López 1987, Zárate Bottía 1993), the Indian nations, sometimes peacefully and sometimes in a hostile way, continued to exist until the nineteenth century in the Andean and Amazonian areas of present-day Colombia. The description of these areas and their natural inhabitants was incorporated into the activity of cronistas de Indias (New World chroniclers) as Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, who, in the fifth volume of the Décadas o Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del mar océano (Decades, or General History of the facts of the Spaniards in the islands and mainland of the Ocean Sea, 1601–1615), devoted a chapter to the district of the Audiencia of Santa Fe de Bogotá (Chapter 16), another one to San Francisco de Quito (Chapter 17) and another one to Popayán (Chapter 18), indicating the time and reason for the founding of the various districts, cities and towns. He also gave reference to the ethnic groups that inhabited each one of them, to the families and, where appropriate, to the languages that the different peoples spoke. The Decades of Herrera, together with other seventeenthcentury chronicle, the Noticias historiales ([1625] 1981) of the Franciscan Father Fray Pedro Simón (O’Neill & Domínguez 2001: 1849), are cited as sources of a natural history about the discovery of the Orinoco river, published in the middle of the eighteenth century under the title El Orinoco ilustrado y defendido (1741) (Bayle 1945) by José Gumilla, of the Society of Jesus. This Jesuit was Procurator

206 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca General of the province of Nuevo Reino and was destined in the missions of Casanare, Meta and Orinoco. In the eighteenth century, the frontier missions complemented the scientific expeditions and both were engaged in the task of establishing the boundaries between the domains discovered by the various European nations. Both served as comisiones de límites (‘boundary commissions’), so that the boundaries between the possessions of the Spaniards and the Portuguese were fixed inch by inch through the scientific expeditions and frontier missions, that were consolidated during the second half of the eighteenth century, especially in the period 1752–1792, according to the statement of Jiménez de la Espada (1898: 204). Later in the eighteenth century, another missionary, well known for his participation in the frontier missions of the Orinoco, the Italian Jesuit priest Filippo Salvatore Gilij (1721–1789), published a key work for the description of the native inhabitants, and the main components of flora and fauna in these areas, the Saggio di Storia Americana (1780). Among other sources he mentions the work of Father Gumilla, not without some criticism about the verisimilitude in the treatment of some of the events narrated as he had done. As evidence of the interest that the realization of the details in the geography of the American continent awoke, the development of works of data collection began to be implemented during the eighteenth century according to the spirit of the Enlightenment. There were a large number of well-established textual genres that were practiced regularly. The elaboration of dictionaries stands out among them. In regard to the Viceroyalty of New Granada, the volume V of the Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias occidentales by Antonio de Alcedo (1734–1812), published in 1789, highlights (Capel 1981, Lerner 1971). A number of ethnographic and linguistic evidence comes from the so-called Relaciones written by both religious persons and explorers. These Relaciones offer interesting data for the socio-historical study of the installation of the European world in the New World reality with the added feature of the immediacy to the situation (Dunmire 2008: 84) and, together with the intrinsic interest of the historical significance of the events narrated, provide first-order sociocultural, ethnographic and linguistic knowledge. Among them, those of the Jesuits arising from the peculiar tradition established among the fathers of this institution should be mentioned, according to which they were obliged to give annually a detailed account of their actions and discoveries, in order to make a track of the tasks assigned to each missionary father. Many of them have been published and are testimony of the New World discoveries (Schmitt 1984, Bitterli 1986, Harpprecht & Höpker 1986, Blemus 1988). For example, the reports of Joliet and Marquette, written between 1673 and 1677 (Klaus 1991: 56–90), are of great importance to account for the discovery and navigation of the Missis-

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sippi River, or the Relations of Father Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit from Rouen, which provide knowledge about basic aspects of the socio-historical study of the French installation into a new reality, and are relevant for the history of the Nouvelle-France discovery. In his introduction to Le Jeune’s Relations, Deffain (1995) lists the various types of writings used by the Jesuits in their missionary activity: devotional books, spiritual guidance, preaching, spiritual correspondence of confessors and, finally, letters and reports of missionaries in the New World and Asia. Explorers and missionaries differ, however, in the role given to the contribution of the Indians. The first ones use the references taken from the missionaries directly or through their stories as authorities showing their findings, whereas the natives have virtually no role. The missionaries, however, consider the Indians as objects of their evangelizing, and at the same time as excellent environment connoisseurs. The interaction between missionaries, explorers and natives can be seen in one of the two Relaciones written by Sebastián José López Ruiz: Relación del viaje a las montañas de los andaquíes y charoguajes (a manuscript of 1783) and Relación de producciones desde Ibagué hasta Neiba (a manuscript of 1784).6 In this document, López Ruiz includes a letter addressed to him by a missionary as evidence about the existence of cinnamon trees in the area explored. The missionary ends his letter with a clear reference to the Indians, considering them to be his parishioners. In López Ruiz’ words: {f 368v} (...) y se confirma estar con este designio por capítulo de carta fecha en la nueva población o reunión de ellos a 6 de Julio del presente año, que me escrivió el misionero Fray José Iglesias, el que a más de este punto contiene otro de alguna consideración. Dice así: “(...) En el pueblo hay 70 almas; tienen hechas sus rosas [rozas] y sembrados; tienen once casas acabadas y están haciendo la iglesia y convento. Están todos contentos y animados a todo lo que vuestra merced y yo les ordenemos. Por enero estábamos todos animados y muchos indios de los de afuera a abrir el camino del Caguán entrando por la sabana, esto es, por afuera hasta dar aquí, unos entrando de afuera y otros empezando por aquí para afuera. Y esté vuestra merced cierto que todos los indios de aquí y todos los más de la Ceja lo quieren y estiman, haciendo muchas expresiones de vuestra merced y prontos como he dicho arriba. Estando yo viendo, palpando y experimentando todo esto, se me parte el corazón naturalmente, cuando considero que los he de dejar y más conociendo de certidumbre que, faltándoles yo, se buelven todos otra vez a desperdigar, regarse, rezinandose [¿resignándose?] a sus bosquez, pues cada nada me lo están diciendo que de faltarles {f 369r} lo hazen. Yo por animarlos siempre les digo que con ellos moriré” (López Ruiz, ms. 1784).

|| 6 They are still unpublished documents from the Archivo General de Indias in Seville (AGI, Audiencia de Santa Fe 737) and were transcribed by us for this research.

208 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca [{f 368v} (...) and it is confirmed that they are with this intention by a letter written in the new population or at a meeting of them on July 6 this year, a letter that the missionary Fray José Iglesias sent me, which contains some issues of concern. He writes so: “(...) seventy people live in the village; they care for their slash-and-burn fields and sown fields, have finished eleven houses and are building the church and the convent. They are all happy and encouraged to all that you and I order them. In January, all of us and many Indians from outside were encouraged to open the way to El Caguán entering through the savannah, that is, from the outside to get here, some coming from outside and others starting out here. And be sure that all the Indians here and most of La Ceja appreciate you and hold you in high regard, making many praises of you and are also ready, as I said above. While I was seeing, feeling and experiencing all this, my heart naturally breaks down, when I consider that I must leave them, and even more knowing with certainty that if I fail to be with them, they will all scatter again, retiring to their forests because every so often they are telling me that if I am not with them they {f 369r} will go. In order to encourage them, I always tell them that I will die with them.” (López Ruiz, ms. 1784)]

At another point in the Relación, López Ruiz states that this same missionary was also acquainted with the Indians of the Caguán and La Ceja areas and their languages: “Everyone was understood by a lay monk called Fray José Iglesias, an old missionary among them who made profession of interpreter (...).” As a feature of close proximity between the missionaries and López Ruiz, the latter mentions some of them by their proper name: “(...) The aforementioned Fray Domingo del Fierro”; “(...) the Indians of the village of Santa Maria killed their zealous missionary Fray José Joaquín de la Madre de Dios Arango, who accompanied me a few days in that village and in the one of San Francisco Solano”. Together with their contemporaries whom he personally knows, López Ruiz refers to other missionaries, known by him from the writings that they have issued as a result of their missionary activities. The most remarkable case is that of the Jesuit priest Juan Magnin and his Descripción de la provincia de Quito (A description of the province of Quito, 1740, Bayle 1940b: 11–185), in which, as López Ruiz says, Magnin pointed out “the identity of the Caquetá River and Yupurá, according to the news from Father Magnin. When he was a missionary in Mainas, he acquired timely news from Sucumbíos.” He also quotes Father Manuel Román, a Jesuit missionary of the Orinoco, who, in 1744, discovered the confluence of the Orinoco River with the Río Negro. López Ruiz literally acknowledges: “As much as I have sought, I could not find in this capital the Relación he made about the confluence that this river has with the Río Negro, through which he entered from his mission by chance.” However, López Ruiz does not mention Father José Gumilla’s report about the discovery of the Orinoco River, published as El Orinoco ilustrado (1741) (O’Neill & Domínguez 2001: 1849). In his Relación del viaje a las montañas de los andaquíes y charoguajes (1783), López Ruiz deals with the findings of cinchona bark in different areas

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near the city of Santa Fe de Bogotá, as well as of cinnamon, another precious commodity from Southern Colombian regions together with wax, tobacco or cotton. He later published several scientific reports on each of them in the Memorial Literario de la Corte de Madrid (López Ruiz 1793a, 1793b, 1793c, 1793d). Of these, cinchona, with a very widespread use among European physicians and scientists, became a reference of progress both in science and in the economic history of the second half of the eighteenth century in the Americas and all over Europe.7 López Ruiz was the recipient of one of Alexander von Humboldt’s letters written between 1799 and 1804. He wrote it in Quito on February 4, 1802. In this letter, Humboldt offers López a more effective route for transporting cinchona.8 We cannot deal here with the controversy between López Ruiz and Mutis for primacy in the discovery of cinchona trees in territories of present-day Colombia. El arcano de la quina (Arcanum of Cinchona), a book written by Mutis, was posthumously published in Madrid. Previously Mutis’ manuscript had been published along several issues of the Papel Periódico de Santafé de Bogotá in the years 1793–1794.9 As we have seen in the introduction of this article, the fulfillment of the order received from the crown by the Viceroy of New Granada, Antonio Caballero y Góngora, to prepare questionnaires, in which repertoires of different vocabularies and phrases of Amerindian languages spoken in the territories under his command were collected, was accomplished by Mutis as regards the territory of present-day Colombia. The manuscripts constitute the “Mutis Collection” at the

|| 7 As evidenced by the study of the Genus Cinchona, written by the Danish-Norwegian botanist Martin Vahl (1749–1804) and translated to English by another botanist, Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761–1842), for the Linnean Society of London (Lambert & Vahl 1797). 8 In the extracts of his journals (www.comunidadandina.org/bda/docs/CO-CA-0004.pdf, accessed on March 5, 2013) Humboldt referred to the Andaquí mountains, which he describes as “rich in mica-schists” and as a decisive geographical point in the path of the cinchona. 9 As the botanist Joseph H. Kirkbride, Jr. points out: “The earliest sources of Quina were from the present Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Mutis discovered in 1772 that the genus also grows in modern-day Colombia, and his interest in its medicinal use, distribution, harvesting and taxonomy continued until his death. His interest in Quina or Cinchona L. led Mutis to prepare one of his most important manuscripts, “El Arcano de la Quina,” in which he set forth all of his knowledge concerning Cinchona. […] In 1793, publication began in a small-format weekly newspaper, Papel Periódico de Santafé de Bogotá, starting with issue 89 dated the 10th of May, 1793. Thereafter, three to eight pages occupying a majority of the space in the newspaper were published each week for 39 weeks. Approximately 215 pages in all were published including one table; the last four pages appeared in issue 128 on the 7th of February, 1794 (Kirkbride 1982: 693).” For the posthumous book, see Mutis (1828).

210 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca Library of Royal Palace of Madrid.10 They represent a major advance for the firsthand knowledge of different language families in areas classified from the point of view of their history as highly complex in regard to ethnographic and linguistic domains, as we are going to discuss in the following section.

4 Dynamics of linguistic and ethnic boundaries in Central-Southern Colombia According to recent studies (González de Pérez & Rodríguez de Montes 2000), Amerindian language families that are distributed throughout the central and southern areas of Colombia are the following ones: 1) Two groups in the Southern Andes: The Inga language, belonging to the large family Quechua which is located in the department of Putumayo, Nariño, in the high Caquetá and at the end of the Cauca, and the Páez language, in the Cauca department. Although Páez appears in several classifications as belonging to the family (macro) Chibcha, there is no evidence that it is so. 2) Four groups of languages in southern Amazonia: The Siona language of the Western Tucano linguistic family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador – communities on the Putumayo River and its tributaries. It includes the subdivisions: Koreguaje-tama (on the Orteguaza river, a tributary of the Caquetá), Siona and Makaguaje. The lexicon of the Koreguaje language in the department of Caquetá has been described by Rivet and Beuchat, in the compilations of Brinton (1892); Castellví (1938) mentions Koreguaje in the census of the department of Caquetá. There are studies on the phonology of Koreguaje (Dupont 1986). Another language in this categorization is Witoto. The language Witoto (an adjective that means ‘enemy’ or ‘slave’, applied by whites to this indigenous group of Caribbean origin) has a very small number of speakers (Pineda Camacho 1987: 151– 164). And finally, the Andoque language, which belongs to one of the few survivors of the Amazonian cultural and ethnic complex between the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers, is to be mentioned in this enumeration. Other families of indigenous languages in related areas are the Caribbean, the Bora and the Tucano in Caquetá and Putumayo (within the Macro-Caribbean

|| 10 Today the Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia (ICANH) is editing these manuscripts (http://www.icanh.gov.co/tools/marco.php?idcategoria=7607, accessed on March 5, 2013). See in this regard Gómez Aldana & Giraldo Gallego (2011).

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branch), the Chocó family in the Cauca river up to Antioquia (within the Chibchan-Páez branch) (Landaburu 2000: 42). Until today the description and cataloging of the languages spoken in those territories offer a high level of complexity, since the confusions between different ethnic groups and different languages, as Landaburu (2000: 41) states, are common in the territories of central and southern Colombia. Historically, Friede (1953: 21–22) checked this mix of ethnic and linguistic designations with the example of the Andakí (Andaquíes), which was actually a general term for the ethnic groups settled in the Colombian Andes, near the sources of the Magdalena River, which also gives its name to the mountains where these groups live. The ethnic composition of the Andakís has not been determined so far neither by ethnographers nor historians: identified with Aguanungas, next to the town of Timaná and the Mocoa, the ethnicity of the Andakís is also identified with the Piraques, historically in alliance with the Tamas (Friede 1953: 93). It can be said that they belonged to the Chibcha linguistic family and were located in the Muisca border, serving as a link to initiate political and trade relations with the Panches, Pijaos and Muiscas.

Figure 1: The Upper Magdalena at the time of the conquest (Friede 1953: 32–33)

212 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca Friede (1953: 69–79) describes the linguistic situation of the Andakí ethnic group through the historical evidence from the works of missionaries: “A missionary report of 1773 stated that four main languages (lenguas matrices) were spoken in the Caquetá: Andakí, spoken by the Aguanungas, Huaque, Quiyoya and Seona.” The same applies to Chareguayes, people spread along the Orteguaza, Peneya and Caquetá rivers, also called Charaguayes (López Ruiz 1793, with other graph-phonetic variants: charaguae, koreguaje and churubae). This latter name was present in a 1696 report of the missionary Juan Martín de San José, the evangelizer of “andaquíes and yaguanongas and churubáes”, with the conclusion that their language was the same as the one of Andakís (Friede 1953: 23–24). Both the existence of a great number of indigenous languages and the lack of a general language (from the European point of view) that would serve the various indigenous peoples to communicate with each other and with the Europeans during the historical period of coexistence contribute, among other things, to the appearance of complexity. Thus, for example, in the early seventeenth century the cronista Herrera – from a clear viewpoint of needs for colonial domination – says in his Decades (1602–1615) that “throughout the kingdom there is no general language” (Chapter XVI, Del distrito de la Audiencia de Santa Fe de Bogota, en el Nuevo Reino de Granada, p. 31) and then adds that “the language most widely understood is that of Panches”, an ethnic group located near the province of the Musos and Colimas (Durbin & Seijas 1973). In spite of this, with respect to the central and southern regions of present-day Colombia, still in its discovery phase in the mid-seventeenth century, one of the most interesting tries of establishing a lingua franca (“general language”) for this Indian region, particularly concerning the languages of the tribes in the region of the Putumayo and Caquetá rivers is described in an anonymous manuscript from the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, titled Vocabulario de la lengua general de los indios del Putumayo y Caquetá (1751) and edited by the Spanish naturalist and scholar Marcos Jiménez de la Espada (1898–1899, 1904), in which the author provides some thoughts on the reason (mixed language and use for wider communication) for the inclusion in the title of the adjective ‘general’ referring to the languages of the area: La calificación de general que el autor asigna al idioma de su vocabulario revela, en mi juicio, que no era (o es) peculiar de nación determinada, muy densa o difundida o dominadora, y que el calificativo equivale al de franco, como el que se aplica al que emplean para facilidades de comunicación y comercio los ribereños de nuestro Mediterráneo, y usaban los indios yuncas litorales del Perú. Y si este mi parecer es admisible, tras él viene la sospecha de que el léxico de los franciscanos quitenses pueda ser el de un lenguaje no propio y exclusivo de los indios del Yapurá y Putumayo, pero mixto de otros cercanos y a-

Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions | 213 fines y compuesto y ordenado para la mayor comodidad y expedición de su negocio evangélico (Jiménez de la Espada 1898: 200).11

This nineteenth-century scholar supports the idea that the author of the Vocabulario was the eighteenth-century renowned Franciscan missionary Father Fernando de Jesús Larrea, born in Quito in 1700 (Mantilla 1995). He also supports the assertion of the Jesuit missionary Filippo Salvatore Gilij (1780) that the lengua general at issue corresponds to the family called Maipure. This group was considered by the French Americanist Lucien Adam (1833–1918), a contemporary of Jiménez de la Espada (1831–1898), to be a vague and confusing language group in contrast with the unitary character of the Carib linguistic family. In Jiménez de la Espada’s words: Inclúyese en la familia Maipure (sin contar otras varias, v.g. el Piapoco) el lenguaje de los Uainumas, habitantes de la región comprendida entre el Cauinari, afluente del Yapurá, y el Upi, tributario del Iça-Putumayo. El de los Cauixanas, vecinos del lago Acunauy, en la comarca del Yapurá. El de los Mariatés, en la región inferior del Iça-Putumayo. El de los Jumanas (ó Yumanas) entre el Yapurá y el Iça-Putumayo, en la confluencia del Yoami y del Puréos (?) y el de los Passés en los territorios del Japurá inferior (Jiménez de la Espada 1898: 200).12

As it has been already mentioned in section 2, the Viceroyalty of New Granada witnessed, in the last years of Charles III’s reign, the launch of a project initiated by the Spanish crown, in which the initial search for general languages (linguae || 11 [The adjective general that the author assigns to the language of their vocabulary reveals, in my view, that it was (or is) not peculiar to a given nation, very dense or diffused or dominant, and that the adjective is equivalent to the one used in the expression lingua franca, as applied to the language that the people of the Mediterranean coasts employ in order to make easier communication and commerce, and the Yuncas, the coastal Indians of Peru, used. And if this view is acceptable, after it the suspicion is that the lexicon of the Quito Franciscans cannot be a language own and exclusive of the Indians of Yapurá and Putumayo, but mixed with other neighboring and similar languages, and composed and arranged for convenience of their evangelical tasks]. 12 [The following languages are included in the Maipure family (not counting several others, e.g. the Piapoco): The language of the Uainumas, the inhabitants of the región between the Cauinari, a tributary of the Yapurá, and the Upi, a tributary of the Iça-Putumayo. The one of the Cauixanas, neighbors of the Acunauy Lake, in the region of the Yapurá. The one of Marietés, in the lower region of the Iça-Putumayo. The one of the Jumanas (or Yumanas) between the Yapurá and the Iça-Putumayo at the confluence of the Yaomi and the Puréos (?) and the one of the Passés in the territories of the lower Japurá].

214 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca francae) was replaced by the description of individualized grammars and vocabularies of Amerindian languages (Triana y Antorveza 1993: 26–32).13 In the Viceroyalty of New Granada, José Celestino Mutis was responsible for coordinating the work of the collection of grammars and vocabularies of the following languages, among others: Andakí, Arawak, Carib, Ceona, Guama, Guaruano, Pariagoto, Mosca, Motilon, Otomaco, Taparito and Yaruro. In 1928 eight of these manuscripts from the Library of the Royal Palace were published in Madrid.14 Larrucea de Tovar (1986: 216) stated that no comprehensive study had been published till then on the issue of the orders of Charles III to the Viceroys of Spanish America to collaborate with the request of Catherine II, Empress of Russia.15 The texts above characterized were a result and testimony of the scientific action linked to the discovery and evangelization. They can shed light on the study of the contact between Spanish and the Amerindian languages of the various areas of present-day Colombia. Although these texts follow the context of Enlightenment, also respond to the principles of cultural construction of the

|| 13 In these works, a very rich linguistic material can be found: short sentences in interrogative, exclamatory or assertive modality; grammatical forms (pronouns, adverbs, verbs in infinitive or in different tenses) and, as for the lexicon, different aspects of everyday life, or denominations of human body parts together with detailed descriptions of landforms (rivers, valleys, mountains, etc.), as well as flora and fauna. In this respect we must also mention Willem Adelaars’ following words: “For a long time, the work of Spanish colonial grammarians was cast aside by modern linguists as unreliable because of their alleged adherence to ‘the Latin model’. In addition to this being only partly true, the fact that these grammarians are not even worth a mention in contemporary historical accounts of language studies and linguistics is surprising, if not grossly unfair. The last two decades have witnessed a reappraisal and a renewed interest in the writings of Spanish colonial grammarians. They are now studied in their own right and no longer as incidental sources of consultation only […] (Adelaar 2012: 7).” 14 Here we transcribe the bibliographic catalog card retrieved from the website IBIS: http://realbiblioteca.patrimonionacional.es/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=42581. Access on August 14, 2013: “Autor: Palacio Real (Madrid. Biblioteca lenguas de América: Manuscritos de la Real Biblioteca, tomo I. Madrid, 1928 (Gráficas Reunidas), 452 p. Contenido: Arte y vocabulario de la lengua achagua – Vocabulario andaqui-español – Vocabolario [sic] para la lengua aruaca – Vocabulario de español a Caribe – Vocabulario de la lengua que usan los yndios de estas misiones ceona – Traducción de algunas voces de la lengua guama – Cathesismo en guaraní y castellano – [Vocabulario] de Aspanyol [sic] y Guaraúno (Lenguas de América, Manuscritos de la Real Biblioteca. Madrid, 1928).” In this regard, also see Klein & Klein (1978). 15 On Catherine of Russia’s contribution to the scientific knowledge of the world’s languages see Key (1980). Also see the more recent studies by Julio Calvo Pérez (2004) and Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz (2006) on a 1788 Quechua vocabulary, whose manuscript, composed because of the Empress Catherine’s initiative, is in the Archivo General de Indias of Seville.

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OTHER’s language in grammars and dictionaries of indigenous languages developed by the missionaries (Zimmermann 2006: 320). In contrast, text types of an administrative nature such as reports of discoveries have connections with the discursive tradition of cronístico type. In all of them the function of loanwords from the Amerindian languages must be placed in a context of cultural and linguistic contact, without involving a bilingual situation fully established. In the reports of explorers and scientists concerning the areas of present-day Colombia, from the seventeenth century onwards and especially in the final decades of the eighteenth century, we need to distinguish two types of Amerindian loanwords in Spanish: on one side, the Amerindian loanwords from the European conquest and colonization of early times, forming a constituent part of New World Spanish since the early days of transplantation, in the so called process of “Indianization” described in cultural semantics (Campbell 2004, cited in Parodi 2009: 15); on the other hand, those Amerindian loanwords that are due to the actions of frontier missionaries and explorers in precise and concrete contact situations. The nature and survival of many of them, in the absence of studies much more accurate and detailed, is not easy to trace. Besides, the studies of the current stages of the alleged Amerindian languages in which these loanwords originated hardly reflect coincidences with the terms documented in the various colonial texts. In López Ruiz’ Relaciones we can observe the coexistence of Amerindian loanwords with a long trajectory in Spanish, even since the first chroniclers, whose origin is in the Amerindian languages of the areas of present-day Colombia that he describes and about which it is difficult to find evidence outside the texts in which these Amerindian loanwords are included. In the future we must continue to look for the extent of the inclusion of such Amerindian loanwords in Spanish outside the scientific register or the missionary activity of those authors at the time. If we take, for example, the domain of flora in López Ruiz’ Relaciones following his expeditions to the regions of Andaquí and Ibagué – together with general indigenous loanwords from the West Indies (antillanismos) such as bejuco (f. 414r), corozo (f. 423v), yuca (f. 425r) – the most frequent Amerindian loanwords are those identified by Sala (1977, cited by Montes Giraldo 1997: 40) as “Amerindian loanwords used in four or more countries outside the original area” and known in Colombia “both in the general speech and in the language spoken in some regions.” In complete enumerations of plants referred to the provinces of Mariquita and Neiba a great number of these loanwords are intro-

216 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca duced.16 Names of trees like the following ones are from Taíno origin: the guamo and its fruit, the guamá (Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Hist. General, I, 299) (Friederici 21960: 724, Alvar Ezquerra 1997: 173), the anón ‘sugar apple’ and the guácimo.17 Previously López Ruiz (1784) had referred to the tutumo and its fruit totuma ‘gourd’, names from Arawak-Carib origin (Montes Giraldo 1997: 62), which under the variant totumo was quoted by Fray Pedro Simón ([1625] 1981: IX, cap. XLVIII, 97) and José Gumilla (1745: II, cap. XXI, 443) (Friederici 21960: 777, Alvar Ezquerra 1997: 360).18 The word chirimoya seems to come from Guatemalan Quiché, while zapote or çapote ‘sapodilla’ and aguacate ‘avocado’ come from Nahuatl, this latter accompanied by its almost synonymous cura, whose referent is one of the many varieties of this tree and its fruit. The fruit of sapodilla is cited as munonçapot by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (Hist. General, I, 306), a word also used by José Gumilla (El Orinoco, I, chap. IV, 74) (Alvar Ezquerra 1997: 394–395). Quechua loanwords in Colombian Spanish make up a significant group of those usual indigenous loanwords to the point that, according to Montes Giraldo (1986: 338), “it can be said that the greatest flow of indigenous loanwords in Colombian Spanish comes from Quechua.” Their presence is also strong in areas of southwestern Colombia, even in areas inhabited by Muisca ethnic groups (Rodríguez de Montes 1984 cited by Montes Giraldo 1997: 39). In the texts of López Ruiz (1783) different plants appear with Quechua names: guaco ‘bejuco’, guadua ‘bamboo’ y guaduales ‘bamboo forests’. By the uniqueness of its referent and its significance in the society and the economy since its discovery in the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century, the Quechua word quina ‘cinchona’, as the name for a complex set of trees from which the curative substance was extracted, highlights in the texts of López Ruiz (1783). On this occasion, López Ruiz (1784) adds, beside the Quechua loanword quina ‘cinchona’, one of the equivalents in the language of the natives, who belonged to the complex Andakí ethnic group, “tree or pole huiaca

|| 16 “(…) Se hallan en dichas provincias los árboles zapotes, mamelles, curas o aguacates, guamas, anones, guanábanos y chirimollas y finalmente la higuera (López Ruiz 1784: f 594v).” 17 In this regard López Ruiz writes: “(…) Yo he reconocido la que manifiesto en los paquetes A. B. y se halla en la voca del monte camino de la hazienda de Ferra, que fue poco ha de estas temporalidades, cuya espesa montaña consta de cedros, granadillos, nogales silvestres, guazimos y otros muchos (López Ruiz 1784: f 592r).” 18 “(…) [margin C.] Baxo de esta cifra o letra se contienen unos calabacillos del árbol, que llaman tutumo, de cuya especie se hallan algunos árboles en la parroquia de Santa Bárbara de la Esmeralda, jurisdicción del cavildo de Ibagué, perteneciente al govierno de Mariquita (López Ruiz 1784: f 591r).”

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sunga.”19 This is an instance of the second type of Amerindian loanwords in Spanish about which we have talked above, those loanwords coming from the lexicon of the languages spoken by the various ethnic groups of the region and whose presence is difficult to check in other texts or vocabularies. In addition, López Ruiz ends the list with another denomination of the plant, which complicates things further: Mandingo, a word linked to an African ethnic group, which suggests that he knew also the presence in Africa of a product extracted from the tree called karate, highly valued by the commercialization of an oil or cream useful for the care of the skin. López Ruiz refers to this oily essence with indigenous loanwords from the languages of the Orinoco and the Amazon: “válzamo copayva o azeite canime,” a product he will call later by another name “azeite de palo (López Ruiz 1784: 385r).”20 In regard to the various Amerindian languages and ethnic groups of the different areas in Colombia, Table 1 shows the grammatical and lexical differences among the vocabularies of different language families collected in the manuscripts of the “Celestino Mutis Collection” through the contrastive study of the noun bee, an insect with numerous species in the Americas (both Native and European) and of great interest to the colonial economic life because of products like wax and honey linked to it. The first observation is that not all indigenous languages have an entry for this word (Siona, Guarano, Páez and Pariagoto). Instead, it can be observed that some languages have more than one entry. But the most remarkable is that in one of them, Muisca-Chibcha, indicated in bold in Table 1, are two entries, one for the generic insect and another one for the specific species of the tierra caliente. If we continue with the contrast and review of the Vocabulario de la lengua general de los indios del Putumayo y Caquetá, as we see in Table 2, lexical and semantic fields for ‘bee’ increase considerably. The basic words are two: paya, related to a particular type of bee, the ‘black bee’ (payá), and guay/cuay, which seems to refer both to the generic species and the remaining one of bees.

|| 19 [margin “Cuanta variedad de quina en Andaquíes, además de las otras tres especies dichas”] “no perdí de vista los árboles de quina, que con prodigiosa abundancia se crían en aquellas dilatadísimas montañas de los Andaquíes, cuyos naturales llaman en su idioma a este árbol o palo sunga huiaca, que en español corresponde a árbol o palo que amella la hacha que lo corta, aludiendo a la mucha duresa de su madera (López Ruiz 1784. f 413r).” 20 Other Amerindian loanwords (carate, caratosa and caratoso) belong, in turn, to the Spanish list of the vocabulary of the language Siona (or Ceona) contained in the corresponding manuscript (2916BPRM) of the Mutis Collection: Reā = carate, Reaco = caratosa, Reaquè = caratoso.

218 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca Table 1: ‘Bee’ in the vocabularies of Amerindian languages spoken in New Granada (late eighteenth century)

ARAUACO CARIBE OTOMACO SIONA (CEONA)

MUISCA-CHIBCHA GUAMA GUARANO PAEZ ANDAKI PARIAGOTO AYAGUA

BEE (‘abeja’)

LOWLANDS BEE (’abeja de tierra caliente’)

Mabbaysa Guano Yangà Nagcoña – Busua pquiana/Busuapqua mne Pane – – Bacoya – Mabayanirri, vel maba

– – – – Tochua – – – – –

Table 2: ‘Bee’ in the Vocabulario de la lengua general de los indios del Putumayo y Caquetá cijpaya ‘abeja negra pequeña’

small black bee

conzapaya ‘abejas que habitan con hormigas’ guatianaca ‘abejón colorado’ huequepaya ‘abeja grande negra’ huimaxaguay ‘abejas que crían dicha brea’ yéjaoâ ‘abejas que tienen las colmenas en tierra’ jochapayacuay ‘abejas que dan la miel agria’ méjaguay ‘abejas grandes coloradas’ náncomiaguay ‘abejas que dan la cera blanca’ oaguay ‘todo género de abejas’ sesepáchu ‘una abeja’

bees living with ants red drone big black bee bees raising the said pitch bees having hives on land bees giving sour honey big red bees bees giving white wax every kind of bees a bee

In 1780 the Jesuit Gilij picks up the word tenbiguài (with the same lexical base guai/gay collected by the missionary who composed the vocabulary of the general language of Putumayo and Caquetá in the mid eighteenth century) as the name given to a type of insect by the Orinoco tribes of the Maypure and Tamanaco language families.21 In this case, the integration process in Gilij’s Saggio is the type that Montes Giraldo (1997: 37) calls explanatory, or also, “with || 21 “Il Tenbiguài non punge punto; ed è similissimo a que’ moscini, che si trovano alle botti (...) Più molesto del Tenhiguài (1) [Nota (1) In Isp. Mosquitos bovos] è il moscherino chiamato dagli Spagnuoli Melèro. E’ nero, e della grossezza de’ Tenbiguài (...) Questo moscherino, il quale, com’ho detto, chiamasi in Ispagnuolo Melèro, potrebbe dirsi nel nostro Italiano il Mellifero. Porta seco in fatti una specie di materia viscosa, che ivi comunemente credesi mele (Gilij 1780: libro V, p. 276).”

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encyclopaedic explications”. The type of explication is not guided only by biological criteria but by those for the practical use (the wax of these bees) by colonial people (colonists and missionaries as well). In the Relación de producciones desde Ibagué hasta Neiba, López Ruiz (1784) integrates the Amerindian words in the enumeration of the classes of bees and the types of wax using the procedure that we can call practical definition for colonizer’s use (Montes Giraldo 1997: 37).22 The alternation in the lists of words from the Spanish patrimonial vocabulary such as melcocha,23 with the Amerindian loanword munui, tinged with Spanish adjectives (bermeja ‘reddish’ or pintada ‘painted’) is one of the most common processes of inclusion of the other's language in the texts of scientists, as well as in the ones of chroniclers and missionaries. In the particular case of munui, this is a word whose track we have not found in the texts of missionaries, writers or explorers.24 This example of the bee species illustrates the manner in which the description of the new surrounding reality was reflected in the scientific register. As López Ruiz himself acknowledges, this task was done in direct contact with the activity of missionaries.25 López doubts that the theoretical knowledge of the European scientists really serves to address the new reality that they find and of which they want to extract the highest yield. Instead, he promotes the idea of || 22 “(…) De estas varias especies, 1ª La una se llama capote [y] fabrica una cera menos blanca que la antecedente. 2ª Otra nombrada melcocha la fabrica aún menos blanca que la capote. 3ª Otra llamada arama, la hace bermeja. 4ª Otra conocida por los indios con el nombre de munui bermeja hace su cera negra como la otra. 5ª Otra, a que llaman munui pintada que también la fabrica negra. La especie de abeja arama forma siempre sus enxambres y colmenas en la parte exterior de los árboles (…) Tengo hecho encargo de la cera llamada capote que me aseguran ser también blanca y que se coge en los montes del Cumeral y Piay (López Ruiz 1784: f. 369v–370r) [emphasis ours].” 23 In the case of capote (literally ‘long cloak’, ‘bullfighter’s cape’) may be a misspelling by zapote or sapote (also sometimes çapote) ‘sapodilla tree’, a word of Nahuatl origin. See Friederici (21960: 673–674) s.v. zapote: “Zapote, çapote, tzapote, çapot, sapote. The Aztec word tzapotl was the general term for all sorts of trees with pulpous and sweet fruits, but more particularly for the Achras Sapote, the sapodilla-, naseberry-, nisberry- or bully-tree with its sapadillos or sapodilla-plums as fruit […].” 24 Without further research we might hypothesize that munui is a word related to [mɨ?ɨni] ‘dirty’ of Muinane, a language belonging to the Bora linguistic family, whose speakers are located in the middle Caquetá River, in the basin of the Putumayo and near Leticia (Walton et al. 2000: 271). 25 “Asi lo podrán informar también en caso necesario el citado Fray Domingo del Fierro como los padres misioneros del Caquetá y Putumayo, quienes dos veces al año embian por encargos considerables porciones de cera a varios sujetos del distrito de Timaná y a Popayán, como también para el consumo de la que se gasta en su colegio (López Ruiz 1783: f 367r–367v).”

220 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca the worth of skills for the advancement of the knowledge of the many innovations that are offered to the scientists in that environment. In his own words: ¿Para qué? ¿qué importa que el abad Pluche en su Espectáculo de naturaleza; el abad Nollet en su Física experimental, Las cartas edificantes; los Diccionarios franceses de Física; Económico, de Trevoux y, sobre todos, el de Comercio, digan acerca de este particular cuánto en teórica se puede apetecer y si a los primeros pasos en estas ejecuciones practicas ocurren al más reflexivo naturalista tantas perplegidades, dudas y tropiezos, ya por varios accidentes y diversidad, de muchas circunstancias locales, como por las incidencias contrarias o favorables a la consecución de sus empresas? Todo esto pone en tortura y confusión al físico más experto y, si no viene en su socorro la propria práctica y experiencia de las operaciones que quiere manejar; tardará poco en abandonar impaciente el trabajo de sus tareas. Al contrario el oficial o jornalero, acostumbrado a ver y executar cuantas industrias se aplican en semejantes casos, su tino en el cómo y cuándo dará lecciones de perfección y acierto al más estudioso de la naturaleza, desproveído por otra parte de la necesaria práctica (López Ruiz 1783: f 369r-369v).26

There are many examples that show the difficulty of differentiating the concrete referents designated by each of the indigenous peoples. We analyze here the lexical and semantic field of a tree, which in the mental conception of the European science has a hyperonym, ‘palm’, whose fruit has another hyperonym, the word ‘coconut’.27 Because his knowledge of the world does not allow López to identify accurately the type of tree to which he is referring, he uses the generic expression “one of many trees on that mountain.” He calls coco ‘coconut’ the || 26 [What for? What does it matter that Abbot Pluche in his Spectacle of Nature; Abbot Nollet in his Experimental Phyics, The Edifying Letters; The French Dictionaries of Physics, of Economics, Trevoux’s dictionary and above all the Dictionary of Commerce; may say about this issue what can be wanted on theoretical grounds if, after the first steps, so many perplexities, doubts and setbacks occur to the more reflective naturalist in these practical tasks, by several accidents and diversity of many local circumstances or incidents contrary or favorable to the achievement of their business? All this places the most expert physicist in torture and confusion and if the practice and experience in the operations that he wants to run does not come to his aid, to leave impatient the work of his tasks will take little time to him. Instead the craftsman or laborer, used to view and execute all industries that are applied in such cases, his skill in the how and when will teach lessons of perfection and success to the most learned scholar devoid of the necessary practice]. 27 “Se remite un coco, fruta de árbol que en Muso y La Palma llaman urtubes y los naturales de Mariquita tumbilos, cuyos urtubes remití con la relación de Muso y ahora remito uno entero, que en el sitio de Tomogoo, feligresía de la viceparroquia de Prado, agregada a la villa de la Purificación conseguí tomar de uno de muchos árboles que en aquella montaña se hallan y los micos, o monos, los toman, y con las manos los golpean sobre los palos o alguna piedra hasta conseguir el destaparlos para el fin de comer lo que dentro contienen dichos cocos, como lo he palpado (López Ruiz 1784: f 593r).”

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fruit extracted from that tree and adds two other names for the same referent, two Amerindian loanwords – urtubes (borrowed from the language of Muisca people) and tumbilos, according to the natives of Mariquita de Ibagué, among which the Pijao Indians were. As López says, the indigenous population and the missionaries of the parishes of the area provided him with these terms. Applying the experimental method, such as he advocates, makes him see that the comparison with the coconut which he gives for the European readers is misleading, as the coconut that he knew is hard and difficult to cut, and therefore a different one.28 One might think that the high numbers of Amerindian languages present in all areas of New Granada – in addition to the province and government of Quito, incorporated in the Viceroyalty – accounted for an enrichment of the nuances that scientists needed in their descriptions. New realities and concrete referents would require the words with which each ethnic group named the things. The two Amerindian loanwords used by López Ruiz to refer to the fruits of the palm (urtubes, tumbilos) seem to belong, according to his indication, to the Muisca language family in the Muzo area, inhabited by the Muzo-Colimas Indians, adjacent to the Pijaos, of the Caribbean family, and the Panches, identified as the custodians of one of the few general languages of the New Kingdom of Granada (Durbin & Seijas 1973). Choosing the lexical items from these languages and not from others reveals a colonial attitude of naming a thing for Spanish communicational purposes, not a linguistic aim of giving all the terms in all these languages where the plant has a name. Finally, we are going to check what happens to the other processes of sociolexical adaptation by revising the semantic field of ‘palm’, as stated in Table 3, first in the Relación de Ibagué (López Ruiz 1784) and also in connection with two other texts: the historical and scientific essay on the missions of the Orinoco by Gilij, also from the second half of the eighteenth century (1780), and the Vocabulario de la lengua general del Putumayo y Caquetá, written in 1751 and, as already mentioned above, edited in the late nineteenth century (and beginning of the twentieth) by Jiménez de la Espada (1898–1899, 1904). Among the different types of ‘palm’ about which López Ruiz (1784) speaks, we can point out what he refers with the hyperonym ‘palm’, a tree similar to the soursop (guanábano), which, according to the scientist, is named with terms || 28 “Tratando sobre estos cocos o urtubes en la relación que de Muso remití, hago reflexión haver expuesto que lo que contenían en su interior dichos urtubes era una especie de carne, como la de los cocos de palma y ahora he experimentado lo contrario a lo que se me havía informado y se verá en el que remito, cuya tapa es fácil levantar, dándole unos cortos golpes sobre algún palo, o piedra, a imitación de los micos, o monos (López Ruiz 1784: f 593r).”

222 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca coming from the Spanish patrimonial lexicon, cabeza de negro, or with the Amerindian name chicón, which also comes from the language spoken by the Muzos. Another species named by López Ruiz (1784) is the palma cachipae, scientifically called Guilelma gasipaes, already mentioned by Pedro Simón ([1625] 1981: VI, chap. XLIX, 103), but mostly by José Gumilla (1745: II , chap. XXI, 440). “Los europeos, que usan mucho de su fruto llaman cachipaes” (“The Europeans, who use a lot of the fruit, call them cachipaes,” referring both to the tree and its fruit, a kind of date]. And he continues with practical explications as regards the potential use by Europeans. “Las mujeres blancas de la costa dicha, después de hervidos los cachipaes, los muelen, amasan y forman pan” (“The white women from the said coast, after the cachipaes have been boiled, grind them, knead and bake bread,” Gumilla 1745: II, cap. XXI, 441). In this case, it is a variety very close to the palma chontaduro mentioned in the Vocabulario de la lengua general del Putumayo y Caquetá as the Spanish counterpart of the Amerindian loanword eeñé, from the Maipure language family, and its fruit (ene). Another kind of ‘palm’, the corozo palm, although with the form somewhat distorted “palm of coros”, is identified by López Ruiz in locations close to Mariquita and Neiva, this latter area inhabited by the Tamas, speakers of a language from the Koreguaje family, in which the equivalent term for ‘palm’ is, according to López, nolÿ. This species “from which fat is drawn and a cool drink called chicha is made” (López Ruiz 1784: f. 594r) is also mentioned by Gilij and previously had been mentioned in the manuscript on the general language of the Indians of the Putumayo and Caquetá, in which the equivalent term for ‘palm’ was númi.

5 Closing remarks Throughout this study, we have tried to show the complex situation in the area covered by this research, which may be an example for the whole Spanish America. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the missionaries were witnessing a change in the situation existing until then, as the Bourbon policy sought greater control of the Spanish possessions in the New World and leaned for it on the civil servants and the secular clergy. Thereafter, the missionaries had to start collaborating with the crown in the new policy of colonial expansion and increasing of knowledge that characterizes the Enlightenment. To highlight this aspect has been the main purpose of our study.

Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions | 223 Table 3: ‘Palm’ in Gilij’s Saggio (1780), López Ruiz’ Relación de Ibagué (1784) and Vocabulario de los indios del Putumayo y Caquetá (1751) PALMA

SAGGIO (Gilij)

RELACIÓN de Ibagué (López Vocabulario PutumayoRuiz 1784) Caquetá

Palma

La palma que vi più celebre, alta, e di bellissime foglie, è quella, che dagli spagnuole dicesi Seje. Merita di sapersi nele lingue indiane il suo nome. E di due specie. Altra chiamata da’ Maipùri Pupèrri, e da’ Tamanàchi Quanamàri somiglia più le Spagnuole (...) Palma oure spinosa, (...), e di selve, è il Corozzo, è cotanto dura (...)

Palma cachipae Palma del chicón, cabeza de negro, que en Muso llaman Chicón. Palma coros, que también llaman nolÿ, de la que se saca manteca y se hace una bebida fresca, que llaman chicha. Palma cuesco, de que raspando la corteza se saca cierta especie de cera. Palma recina, de que raspando la corteza se saca cierta especie de cera Palma real, de sus ramos se fabrican las trenzas para hacer sombreros, que llaman de paxa o paxisos, con dichas palmas se cubren casas de campo.

Conzañé, palma Eéñe, palma de chontaruro Neéñe, una palma Númi, palma de coroso Gueaora, palma Ora, una palma Pétóne, palma que da estos cocos.

Fruto de la palma

E’ palma il Cocco, ma gentile, e che pientasi per farne un palmeto a guisa de’ nostri olivi. Il frutto della palma Vacciai (1) In Isp. Corozzo, detto da’ Tamanamàchi Avarà (...) La esterna corteccia, la quale somiglia a quella del Cocco, è cotanto dura (...)

Cocos que en Muso y La Palma llaman urtubes y los naturales de Mariquita tumbilos.

Conzahui, fruta de la palma (conzañé) Ene, chontaruro, fruta Huiconza, fruta de una palma Neé, fruta de esta palma (neéñe) Péto, coco, fruta de una palma (pétóne) Ticu, palmito, o cogollo de palma

El cogollo que llaman palmito es alimento, de suerte que se come guisado, en ensalada y cultido.

Púnti, ramo, o cogollo de palma. Númijac, hoja de esta palma (númi) Orahuati, toda bara, o astilla de esta u otra palma (ora) Orajuáhue, ramasón de esta palma

Partes de la palma

224 | Micaela Carrera de la Red and Francisco José Zamora Salamanca The incorporation in different historical stages of the Amerindian loanwords coming from the OTHERS’ languages, their ways of integration for colonial purposes and their impact on the Spanish of Colombia is an arduous task, still under construction. By incorporating historical testimonies, we have been able to deal with the space that Montes Giraldo (1997: 34–69) noted as an aspect with little research, limited in scope and content. Perhaps, the contrast and comparison of the vocabularies with the chronicles, reports and other documents – which in turn will have to be transcribed and edited – has been one of the more passable roads in our approach. In this research we have also analyzed the components, mainly those lexical ones, of the scientific discourse written in Spanish in those days, linked to the meeting of two worlds in the context of a colonial society.

References Manuscripts López Ruiz, Sebastián José (1783): Relación del viaje a las montañas de los andaquíes y charoguajes. Archivo General de Indias (Seville), Sección Gobierno: Audiencia de Santa Fe, 757, ff. 409r-427v. 1783, septiembre 30 (Santafé de Bogotá). López Ruiz, Sebastián José (1784): Relación de producciones desde Ibagué hasta Neiba. Archivo General de Indias (Seville), Sección Gobierno: Audiencia de Santa Fe, 757, ff. 589r-595r. 1784, junio 6 (Santafé de Bogotá). Printed works Adelaar, Willem F. H. 2012. Historical overview: descriptive and comparative research on South American Indian languages. In Lyle Campbell & Verónica Grondona (eds.), The indigenous languages of South America. A comprehensive guide, 1–58. Berlin: de Gruyter. Alcedo, Antonio de. 1786–1789. Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias occidentales América. Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel González. Alvar Ezquerra, Manuel. 1997. Vocabulario de indigenismos en las Crónicas de Indias. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Bauman, Richard & Charles L. Briggs. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19. 59–88. Bayle, Constantino S. J. 1940a. IV Centenario del descubrimiento del Amazonas: Descubridores jesuitas del Amazonas. Revista de Indias 1. 121–149. Bayle, Constantino S. J. 1940b. Breve descripción de la provincia de Quito. Manuscrito del Padre Juan Magnin. Revista de Indias 1. 150–185. Bayle, Constantino S. J. (ed.) 1945. Gumilla, José S.J., 1745, El Orinoco ilustrado y defendido. Historia natural, civil y geographica de este gran río y de sus caudalosas vertientes (Madrid: Aguilar). Madrid: Manuel Fernández, Impresor del Supremo Consejo de la Inquisición y de la Reverenda Cámara Apostólica.

Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions | 225 Bitterli, Urs. 1986. Alte Welt – Neue Welt. Formen des europäisch-überseeischen Kulturkontakts vom 15. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. München: Beck. Blemus, René. 1988. Jean Nicollet en Nouvelle-France. Un Normand à la découverte des Grands Lacs canadiens (1598–1642). Cherbourg: Isoète, collection Carnets de l’histoire. Bock, Philip K. 1977. Introducción a la moderna antropología cultural. México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Brinton, Daniel Garrison. [1892] 1946 . La raza americana. Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova. Calvo Pérez, Julio. 2004. El proyecto de Catalina II y la corona española: los listados léxicotipológicos del quechua y del aimara que no llegaron a su destino. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI) 3. 169–192. Campbell, Lyle. 2004. Historical linguistics. An introduction. Cambridge; MA: MIT Press. Capel, Horacio. 1981. Los diccionarios geográficos de la Ilustración española. Barcelona: Geo Crítica. [Cuadernos Críticos de Geografía Humana, vol. 31]. Carrera de la Red, Micaela. 2007. El estudio de la instalación del español en la zona de Popayán (Colombia). In Martina Schrader-Kniffki & Laura Morgenthaler (eds.), La Romania en interacción: Entre historia, contacto y política. Ensayos en homenaje a Klaus Zimmermann, 163–196. Madrid/Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Castellví, Fray Marcelino de. 1938. La lengua kofán. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 30. 219–233. Chaunu, Pierre. 1973. Conquista y explotación de los nuevos mundos (siglo XVI). Barcelona: Labor. Dakin, Karen, Mercedes Montes de Oca & Claudia Parodi (eds.) 2009. Visiones del encuentro de dos mundos en América. Lengua, cultura, traducción y transculturación. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz, Sabine. 2006. Quechua for Catherine the Great: José Joaquín Ávalos Chauca’s Quechua Vocabulary (1788). International Journal of American Linguistics 72(2). 193–235. Deffain, Dominique. 1995. Un voyageur français en Nouvelle-Françe au XVIIe siècle. Étude littéraire des relations du père Paul Le Jeune (1632–1641) (Canadiana Romanica 9). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Díaz-Piedrahita, Santiago. 1991. Sebastián López Ruiz y el hallazgo de azogue en Panamá. Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias 18(69). 191–209. Dunmire, Patricia L. 2008. The rhetoric of temporality: The future as linguistic construct and rhetorical resource. In Barbara Johnstone & Christopher Eisenhart (eds.), Rhetoric in detail. Discourse analyses of rhetorical talk and text, 81–112. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Dupont, Pedro Carlos. 1986. La langue koreguaje (tukano occidental), phonologie et morphologie. Paris: Université Paris VII dissertation. Durbin, Marshall & Haydé Seijas. 1973. A note on Panche, Pijao, Pantágora (Palenque), Colima and Muzo. International Journal of American Linguistics 39. 47–51. Eisenhart, Christopher. 2008. Reporting Waco: The constitutive work of bureaucratic style. In Barbara Johnstone & Christopher Eisenhart (eds.), Rhetoric in detail. Discourse analyses of rhetorical talk and text, 57–80. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Eisenhart, Christopher & Barbara Johnstone. 2008. Discourse analysis and rhetorical studies. In Barbara Johnstone & Christopher Eisenhart (eds.), Rhetoric in detail. Discourse analyses of rhetorical talk and text, 3–21. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

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Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions | 227 Klaus, Peter. 1991. Die Entdeckung des Mississippi durch Joliet und Marquette (1673): ein französischer Beitrag zur Erkundung Nordamerikas. Neue Romania 10. 45–78. Klein, Harriet E. Manelis & Herbert S. Klein. 1978. The “Russian Collection” of Amerindian languages in Spanish archives. International Journal of American Linguistics 44(2). 137– 144. Lambert, Aylmer Bourke & Martin Vahl. 1797. A description of the Genus Cinchona. The various species of vegetables from which the Peruvian and other barks of a similar quality are taken. London: B. & J. White, at Horace's Head, Fleet-Street. Landaburu, Jon. 2000. Clasificación de las lenguas indígenas de Colombia. In María Stella González de Pérez & María Luisa Rodríguez de Montes (eds.), Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: una visión perspectiva. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Larrucea de Tovar, Consuelo. 1986. José Celestino Mutis (1732–1808) and the report on American languages ordered by Charles III of Spain for Catherine the Great of Russia. In Antonio Quilis Morales & Hans Josef Niederehe (eds.), The history of linguistics in Spain, 213–231. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (previously published in Historiographia Linguistica 6, 213– 229). Lerner, Isaias. 1971. The ‘Diccionario’ of Antonio de Alcedo as a source of Enlightened Ideas. In A. Owen Aldetge (ed.), The Ibero-American enlightenment, 71–93. Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press. López Arellano, M. Luisa. 1977. Las encomiendas de Popayán en los siglos XVII y XVIII. In M. Luisa López Arellano, Adolfo L. González & Silvia Padilla Altamirano (eds.), La encomienda de Popayán. Tres studios, 115–252. Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-americanos. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. López Ruiz, Sebastián José. 1784. Relación de producciones desde Ibagué hasta Neiba. Santa Fé. López Ruiz, Sebastián José. 1793a. Historia natural. Conclusión del viage á las montañas Andaquíes para inspeccionar los árboles y cultivo de la canela. Continuación del Memorial Literario, instructivo y curioso de la corte de Madrid XIV. 343–355. López Ruiz, Sebastián José. 1793b. Historia Natural. Carta de D. Sebastián López Ruiz, el excelentísimo Señor D. Antonio Caballero y Góngora, Arzobispo Gobernador de Santa Fé, sobre los descubrimientos de la cera. Continuación del Memorial Literario instructivo y curioso de la corte de Madrid. Septiembre de 1793. Parte Segunda XIV. 385–395. López Ruiz, Sebastián José. 1793c. Otra del mismo D. Sebastián, á dicho Señor Gobernador de Santa Fé, sobre el Petroleo ó Aceyte de piedra negra. Continuación del Memorial Literario, instructivo y curioso de la corte de Madrid XIV. 395–396. López Ruiz, Sebastián José. 1793d. Otra del mismo, á dicho Señor Gobernador de Santa Fé, sobre la quina. Continuación del Memorial Literario, instructivo y curioso de la corte de Madrid XIV. 396–400. Mantilla, Luis Carlos. 1985. Cali y su convento de San Francisco. Bogotá: Editorial Kelly. Mantilla, Luis Carlos. 1995. Larrea, Fray Fernando de Jesús. Biblioteca Virtual. Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. Bogotá: Banco de la República http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/biografias/larrfray.htm (access on August 19, 2013). Marzahl, Peter. 1978. Town in the Empire: Government, politics, and society in seventeenthcentury Popayán. Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies.

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Connections between the scientific discourse and the frontier missions | 229 Vicente Castro, Florencio & J. Luis Rodríguez Molinero. 1986. Bernardino de Sahagún, primer antropólogo en Nueva España (siglo XVI). Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca & Institución Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. Walton, James, Grace Hensarling & Michael B. Maxwell. 2000. El Muinane. In María Stella González de Pérez & María Luisa Rodríguez de Montes (eds.), Lenguas indígenas de Colombia. Una visión descriptive, 255–273. Santafé de Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Weber, David J. 2005. Bárbaros. Spaniards and their savages in the age of enlightenment. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Traducción al español: Bárbaros. Los españoles y sus salvajes en la era de la Ilustración. Barcelona: Ed. Crítica [2007]. Zárate Bottía, Carlos Gilberto. 1993. Actividad extractiva, organización espacial y cambio ambiental: la quina en el Alto Putumayo. (Maestría en Ciencias Sociales Con Mención en estudios Amazónicos 1991–1993), Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales Sede Ecuador, Quito. Retrieved from http://flacsoandes.org/dspace/bitstream/10469/93/4/TFLACSO-01-CGZB1993.pdf. Available from http://flacsoandes.org/dspace/ (accessed on August 14, 2013). Zimmermann, Klaus. 2004. La construcción del objeto de la historiografía de la lingüística misi onera. In Otto Zwartjes & Even Hovdhaugen (eds.), Missionary linguistics/Lingüística misionera. Selected papers from the First International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Oslo, 13–16 March 2003, 117–138. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2006. Las gramáticas y vocabularios misioneros entre la conquista y la construcción transcultural de la lengua del otro. In Pilar Máynez & María Rosario Dosal G. (eds.), V Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en Acatlán, 319–356. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Facultad de Estudios Superiores de Acatlán.

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 || Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus: Van Ouwenlaan 32, 2597 CW Den Haag, THE NETHERLANDS, [email protected]

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 ||  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’.

|| 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’

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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’

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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.”

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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]

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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.)

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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’

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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 Alexander-Bakkerus, Astrid. 2005. Eighteenth-century Cholón. Utrecht: LOT. Anonymous (18th century). Vocabulario enla Lengua Castellana, la del Ynga, y Xebera. Ms. Add. 25,232, British Library. Anonymous (18th century). Doctrina Christiana and Gramatica dela Lengua Xebera, Ms. Add. 25,324, British Library. Smith-Stark, Thomas C. 2007. Lexicography in New Spain (1492–1611). In Otto Zwartjes, 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. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2006. Las gramáticas y vocabularios misioneros: entre la conquista y la construcción transcultural de la lengua del otro. In Pilar Máynez & María Rosario Dosal G. (eds.), V. encuentro Internacional Lingüística en Acátlan, 319–356. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Méxio. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2009. La construcción discursiva del léxico en la Lingüística Misionera: interculturalidad y glotocentrismo en diccionarios náhuatl y hñahñu-otomí de los siglos XVI y XVII (Alonso de Molina, Alonso Urbano y autor anónimo 1640). Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 7(1). 161–186. Zimmermann, Klaus. 2014. Translation for colonization and Christianization: The practice of bilingual edition of Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590). In Klaus Zimmermann, Otto Zwartjes & Martina Schrader-Kniffki (eds.), Missionary linguistics V/ Lingüística V: Translation theories and practices. Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Bremen, 28 February – 2 March 2012 (Studies in the History of Language Sciences 122), 85–112. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Index of Persons (including authors) Adelaar, Willem F. H. 19, 214 Albalá, Paloma 8 Alcedo, Antonio de 206 Aldama y Guevara, Jose Agustin 181f., 185f. Alexander-Bakkerus, Astrid 250 Allen, William 79, 88f. Altena, Thorsten 134 Altman, Cristina 12 Alvar Ezquerra, Manuel 216 Amidu, Assibi A. 57 Amselle, Jean-Loup 159 Anderson, Benedict 110, 118, 121 Andersson, Charles John 110, 120 Aquino Cortés y Zedeño, Jerónimo Tomás 181, 184f. Auroux, Sylvain 30, 36, 157 Avila, Francisco de 181

Brenzinger, Matthias 133 Briggs, Charles L. 203 Brincker, Peter Heinrich 116f., 119 Brinton, Daniel Garrison 210 Brown Myers, John 85 Brugmann, Karl 60 Brutel, E. 31, 38, 44, 46 Bryan, Margaret A. 87 Bucholtz, Mary 171 Budler, Johann Friedrich 136f., 140ff. Bühlmann, Walbert 114ff. Burkhart, Louise M. 190 Burrus, Ernest J. 8 Büttner, Carl Gotthilf 52f., 56, 61, 110, 114, 116f. Buxton, Thomas Fowell 80f. Buys, Gerhard 132, 136

Baggioni, Daniel 39, 40 Bam, Jan Hendrik 136, 145, 147 Bauman, Richard 203 Bayle, Constantino S. J. 204f., 208 Bazin, Hippolyte 170, 172 Becker, Jérôme 34 Beidelman, Thomas O. 78 Bela, Vassady Jr. 81, 86, 91 Benoist, Joseph-Roger (de) 169 Bilbe, Mark Charles 132, 134 Binger, Louis-Gustave 161ff., 170f. Binotti, Lucia 187 Bitterli, Urs 206 Bleek, William H. I. 33, 109f., 116ff. Blemus, René 206 Blench, Roger 87 Blumenthal, Arthur L. 62 Boas, Franz 156 Bock, Philip K. 203f. Bolekia Boleká, Justo 75, 89f., 94, 96, 98f. Bonn, Alfred 112f. Bonvini, Emilio 157ff. Bouniol, Joseph 170 Bowie, Fiona 139 Brauner, Siegmund 63

Caballero y Góngora, Antonio 209 Callaway, Henry 117 Calvet, Louis-Jean 9, 12f. Calvo Pérez, Julio 214 Campbell, Lyle 215 Canger, Una 182 Capel, Horacio 206 Carochi, Horacio 181f. Carranza, José 181 Carrera de la Red, Micaela 201 Castellví, Fray Marcelino de 210 Castillo-Rodriguez, Susana 84 Catherine II the Great 214 Chamisso, Adelbert von 7f. Chapman, James 110, 113f., 120 Charles I 178 Charles III (Carlos III) 192, 201, 213f. Chaunu, Pierre 204 Chimundu, Herbert 158 Chrétien, Jean-Pierre 172 Chumbow, S. Beban 88 Cienki, Alan 60 Clarke, John 75, 79, 81, 85ff., 88ff., 90ff., 98 Clavigero, Francisco Xavier 181 Clifford, James 76f.

256 | Index of Persons (including authors) Cloete, Daniel 138 Cole, Desmond T. 157 Coll, Armengol 84 Colombat, Bernard 31, 37, 156 Comaroff, Jean 77f. Comaroff, John 77 Comrie, Bernard 67 Conrad, Sebastian 6, 19 Córdova, Juan de 180, 184 Creissels, Denis 54 Cyffer, Norbert 15 Dakin, Karen 201 Dard, Jean 159 Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz, Sabine 214 Dedering, Tilman 144, 147 Deffain, Dominique 207 Del Cerro, Juan 85 Delafosse, Maurice 159, 172 Delaunay, Père H. 31f., 39, 41, 43ff. Delbrück, Berthold 60, 63f. Delius, Siegfried 52f., 56, 61, 66, 68 Dewein, Barbara 5, 9, 11ff. Díaz-Piedrahita, Santiago 204 Dixon, R. M. W. 54, 67 Domínguez, Joaquín María 205, 208 Doneux, Jean Léonce 157f. Drießler, Heinrich 113ff. Dryer, Matthew 54 Dunmire, Patricia 206 Dupont, Pedro Carlos 210 Dupriez, Bernard 37 Durbin, Marshall 212, 221 Eisenhart, Christopher 201, 203 Elbourne, Elizabeth 135 Elffers, Els 69 Elffers-van Ketel, Els 68f. Engelberg, Stefan 14 Errington, Joseph 11, 13, 20, 33f., 36, 42f., 77, 158 Fabian, Johannes 30f., 33ff., 39, 157f., 163 Faidherbe, Louis 162ff., 165, 170f. Farell, Don A. 7 Ferrage, Marius 170 Forbes, Eric 8ff.

Fountain, Catherine 177, 188 Franco Aixelá, Javier 96, 100 Frawley, William 189 Friede, Juan 201ff., 205, 211f. Friederici, Georg 216, 219 Fries, Hans Hermann 110, 114, 120 Fritz, Georg 7ff. Fritz, Samuel 231f., 234, 239, 243 Gabelentz, Georg von der 68 Galazzi, Enrica 155 Galdo Guzmán, Diego de 181 Galton, Francis 118 Gaomas, Nokokure Rogate 139 Gareis, Reinhold 121 Geeraerts, Dirk 201 Gewald, Jan-Bart 108, 110 Gilij, Filippo Salvatore 206, 213, 218, 221ff. Gilmour, Rachael 7, 13, 113, 115f., 119, 158 Giraldo Gallego, Diana A. 210 Gómez Aldana, Diego F. 210 Gómez López, Augusto J. 205 González de Pérez, María Stella 210 González Rodríguez, Adolfo Luis 205 Good, Albert Irwin 93 Graffi, Giorgio 69 Graichen, Gisela 108, 113 Grenfell, George 75, 79 Grout, Lewis 117 Gründer, Horst 108, 113, 134 Guerra, Juan 181 Gumilla, José S. J. 205f., 208, 216, 222 Guthrie, Malcolm 86 Haacke, Wilfrid H. 14, 142 Hackmack, Susanne 12 Hahn, Carl Hugo 107, 109ff., 114ff., 118f., 142ff., 148ff. Hahn, Johannes Samuel 117 Hahn, Josaphat 113, 120 Hahn, Theophilus 113, 117 Hair, Paul E. H. 167 Hardach, Gerd 7 Harpprecht, Klaus 206 Harries, Patrick 121 Haspelmath, Martin 54, 58 Hastings, Adrian 84, 138

Index of Persons (including authors) | 257 Hayford, Mark Christian 80 Heath, Shirley B. 178f. Heese, Carl Pieter 114, 116 Heine, Bernd 37, 54 Hennig, Mathilde 12, 15, 54, 57, 116f. Henrichsen, Dag 108, 117 Hernández de León Portilla, Ascensión 178 Hernández, Esther 75 Herrán Baquero, Mario 204 Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de 205, 212 Hidalgo, Margarita 179 Hill, Kenneth 189 Hinz, Felix 194 Holzweissig, Friedrich W. 60 Hone, Emma Sarah 111 Höpker, Thomas 206 Hornbostel, Gertrude 7, 9 Houis, Maurice 158f. Hovdhaugen, Even 5f., 12 Hübschmann, Heinrich 60 Humboldt, Alexander von 204, 209 Hymes, Dell 203 Iliffe, John 119 Irle, Johann Jakob 110, 113ff., 120 Irvine, Judith 158f., 168 Isabel II 83 Izouî, Hisanosuke 9 Jacob, Joachim 134 Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos 206, 212f., 221 Jiménez, Francisco 181 Johnston, Harry 75, 79, 81, 83, 86, 89, 91 Johnstone, Barbara 201 Jones, Daniel 156 Jonker Afrikaner 109, 120, 139, 145 Jörris, Anna 112 Juanola, Joaquin 75, 79, 86, 90, 92, 94, 97f. Jungraithmayr, Herrmann 12 Karg, Wolfram 16 Kats, Jacob 7, 9 Kaulich, Udo 132 Kellermeier-Rehbein, Birte 13 Key, Mary Ritchie 214 Kienetz, Alvin 136 Kingsley, Mary H. 83

Kirkbride, Joseph H. 209 Klaus, Peter 206 Klein, Thomas 12, 214 Kleinschmidt, Franz Heinrich 109, 111f., 135ff., 143, 145, 147ff. Knudsen, Hans Christian 140 Kobès, Aloys 165f, 167f. Koelle, Pascal D. 86f. Koerner, Konrad 62 Köhler, Oswin 115 Kolbe, Friedrich Wilhelm 110, 112f., 116f., 119 Krapf, Johann Ludwig 33 Krifka, Manfred 54 Kröger, Rüdiger 33 Kumm, Hermann K. 83 Kutzner, Sandy 15 Lagunas, Juan Baptista de 180 Lambert, Aylmer Bourke 204, 209 Lamoise, Paul 167 Landaburu, Jon 211 Larrea, Fernando de Jesús 213 Larrucea de Tovar, Consuelo 201, 214 Latham, Robert G. 79, 88f. Lau, Brigitte 108, 110, 112f., 115ff., 119, 136, 139, 147f. Lauer, Hiltrud 14 Lauwers, Peter 37 Lavigerie, Charles-Martial Allemand 31f., 35, 169 Le Jeune, Paul 207 Lee, Samuel 155 Leenhardt, Maurice 76f. Legere, Karsten 33f. Leipold, Johann 130 Lentz, Carola 110 Leopold II 35 Lepsius, Karl Richard 88, 119, 156 Lerner, Isaias 206 Lerot, Jacques 37 Lestrade, Sander 61 Levi, Joseph Abraham 34 Libermann, François 166 Lislerud, Gunnar 134 Lockhart, James 190 López Arellano, M. Luisa 205

258 | Index of Persons (including authors) López Ruiz, Sebastián José 204, 207ff., 212, 215ff., 219ff., 223 Lopinot, P. Callsitus 7, 9f. Loth, Heinrich 120 Lückhoff, Daniel 130 Ludlam, Thomas 81 Lynn, Martin R. S. 82ff. Madre, Corbinian 9 Magnin, Juan S. J. 208 Mantilla, Luis Carlos 213 Marchese, Lynell 87f. Marty, Anton 60, 64 Marzahl, Peter 205 Masson, Peter 19 Matsuoko, Shizuo 7, 9 McFarlane, Anthony 200 Meeuwis, Michael 158 Meinhof, Carl 4, 17, 33, 52ff., 61ff., 68 Ménard, P. F. 38 Mendieta, Geronimo de 181 Menzel, Gustav 120, 132 Merrick, Joseph 85, 91ff. Merrick, Richard 91 Mignolo, Walter 77, 186f., 190 Möhlig, WilhelmJ. G. 12, 54, 61 Molina, Alonso de 181f. Montel, Etienne 160f., 167, 169f. Montes Giraldo, José Joaquín 215f., 218f., 224 Moore, Francis 160 Moritz, Eduard 115 Mossolow, Nicolai 113 Mounin, Georges 37, 76 Mühleisen, Susanne 14 Mühlhäusler, Peter 14 Müller, Friedrich 88 Mutis, José Celestino 201, 204, 209, 214, 217 Nambala, Shekutaamba 132, 136 Nebrija, Antonio de 187 Neveu, Franck 37 Newmeyer, Frederick 58 Nipperdey, Thomas 134 North, Eric M. 90, 93f. Nurse, Derek 37 Nyada, Germain 14

O’Neill, Charles 205, 208 Oermann, Nils Ole 108 Ohly, Rajmund 109, 112, 115ff. Olmos, Andrés de 181 Orman, Jon 133 Orosz, Kenneth J. 6, 14 Page, Ivan 32, 38 Palomo, José 7f., 10 Paredes, Ignacio de 181 Parodi, Claudia 190, 215 Parr, Theophilus 75, 79, 89ff. Pavón, Jóse Antonio 204 Pérez Arbeláez, Enrique 204 Pérez, Manuel 181 Peroz, Etienne 163 Pharo, Lars Kirkhusmo 76f., 179 Phillip II/Felipe II 178, 204 Phillip IV 178 Pierard, Richard 108 Pineda Camacho, Roberto 210 Planert, Wilhelm 52f., 56f., 61 Poullart des Places, Claude 166 Prunier, Gérard 172 Pugach, Sara 33, 61 Pujadas, Tomás 84 Purvey, John 93 Quijano, Anibal 77, 79 Quilis, Antonio 7 Quir, Felipe 91 Rafael, Vicente 186f. Rambaud, Jean-Baptiste 163f. Ramos, Demetrio 204 Ranger, Terence O. 109ff., 118, 121 Rath, Johannes 110, 112ff., 147f. Rengel, Alonso 181 Ricard, Alain 32 Rickard, David T. 88 Riese, Julius 15 Rincón, Antonio del 182, 184 Robillard de, Didier 39 Rodríguez de Montes, María Luisa 210, 216 Rodríguez Molinero, Luis 204 Rodríguez, Estebán 7 Rodríguez-Ponga, Rafael 7

Index of Persons (including authors) | 259 Roehl, Karl 52f., 56, 61, 68 Rogers, Robert F. 7f. Roldán de Montaud, Inés 80 Román, Manuel 208 Römer, Ruth 15 Ross, Robert 135 Ruiz, Hipólito 204 Sacleux, Charles 30ff., 36ff., 40ff., 44ff., 167 Sadel, Gerd 145 Safford, William Edwin 7ff. Sahagún, Bernardino de 187, 204, 234, 250 Saker, Alfred 85 San José, Juan Martín de 212 Sander, Immanuel Friedrich 148f. Sandoval, Rafael 181, 192f. Sanneh, Lamin O. 76 Sauvant, Émile 170 Schischkoff, Georgi 62 Schiwy, Freya 186f., 190 Schmelen, Elizabeth 137 Schmelen, Heinrich 109, 130, 135, 143 Schmelen, Johanna 111 Schmelen, Zara 137, 143 Schmidt, Sigrid 117 Schmidt-Brücken, Daniel 15, 43 Schmitt, Eberhard 206 Schuster, Susanne 8 Schwörer, Emil 14 Scriba, Georg 134 Seidel, August 52f., 56, 61 Seijas, Haydé 212, 221 Seuren, Pieter A. M. 68 Shorter, Aylward 161, 171 Sibeud, Emanuelle 159 Siiskonen, Harri 120 Simón, Fray Pedro 205, 216, 222 Siouffi, Gilles 38 Smith, Joseph 99 Smith-Stark, Thomas C. 46, 239 Spear, Thomas 110f. Speitkamp, Winfried 6, 14, 18 Steadman-Jones, Richard 13 Steere, Edward 33 Steinmetz, George 108 Stolberg, Doris 6, 13f. Stolz, Thomas 5, 8ff., 12

Suárez Roca, José Luis 75, 177 Sundiata, Ibrahim 83 Swartbooi, Willem 147 Tapia Zenteno, Carlos de 181, 183f., 191f. Tavárez, David Eduardo 179 Thomson, Thomas R. Heywood 79, 88f. Tracy, Joseph 80 Triana y Antorveza, Humberto 214 Trüper, Ursula 136, 143 Usera y Alarcón, Jerónimo 75, 79, 84ff., 90ff., 96ff., 100 Vahl, Martin 204, 209 Vail, Leroy 110f., 118f., 121 Valenzuela, Pilar 231 Vallejo, José Mariano 91 Van den Avenne, Cécile 171 Van den Eynde, Félix 31, 43ff. Vaz, Teresa Bernadete 91 Vázquez Gastelu, Antonio de 181, 185 Vedder, Heinrich 114f., 118, 120, 138, 144f. Velten, Carl 52f., 55, 61, 66 Vera, Román de 10 Vetancurt, Agustín de 181ff. Vicente Castro, Florencio 204 Viehe, Gottlieb 113, 116 Vollmer, Franz Heinrich 111 von der Gabelentz, Georg 68 von Preissig, Edward Ritter 7, 9 Vossmann, Christina 10 Walton, James 219 Warneck, Gustav 129ff., 150 Warnke, Ingo H. 5, 15f., 43 Weber, Brigitte 14 Weber, David J. 201ff. Wegener, Philipp 68f. Wellenreuther, Hermann 134 Welmers, William E. 87 Welmers, Wim 57f. Westermann, Diedrich 87 Wheeler, Arthur Leslie 191 Willems, Klaas 60 Williamson, Kay 87 Wimmer, Michael 137

260 | Index of Persons (including authors) Winkler, Pierre 8 Wolff, H. Ekkehard 17 Wundt, Wilhelm 62ff., 69 Wurmb, Theobald von 130, 132 Wycliffe, John 93 Yegüe, Santiago 91

Zahn, Gustav 130 Zárate Bottía, Carlos Gilberto 205 Zeller, Joachim 108 Zimmerer, Jürgen 108 Zimmermann, Klaus 5f., 8, 11ff., 17f., 21, 40, 46, 75, 77f., 158, 177, 179, 188, 200f., 215, 231f., 234, 240, 249ff. Zwartjes, Otto 6, 12, 78, 177

Index of Languages Afrikaans 131, 133, 136ff., 142, 148, 150 Andakí 212, 214, 218 Andoque 210 Arabic 12, 31, 36, 45, 113, 119, 162ff., 169 Arawak 214, 216 Ayagua 218 Bamanan (aka Bambara) 155, 157, 159ff. Banok 93 Basque 63 Bassa 87 Bechuana 88 Bimbia 79, 89 Bubi (aka Bube) 75, 79, 83, 86, 88ff., 92ff., 96ff. Bulu 93 Cameroons 79 Cape Dutch (see Afrikaans) Carib 214, 216, 218 Ceona (aka Siona) 214, 217f. Chamorro 3, 7ff. Chareguayes (aka Charaguayes, Charaguae, Koreguaje, Churubae) 212 Chibcha 210f., 218 Cholón 250 Duala (aka Dwalla, Dualla) 79, 85, 88 Dutch 7, 109, 112, 133, 136ff., 140, 147, 149f. Ediya (aka Edeeyah, Adeeyah) 79, 81, 89 Egyptian – Ancient 113 – Coptic 113 English 34f., 55, 82, 84, 87, 91f., 101, 130ff., 138, 140, 149f., 156, 189, 245 – Pidgin ~ 82f., 85, 96 Ewe 14 Fernandian Tongue 75, 79, 85f., 88, 90f., 94ff. French 30ff., 44f., 57, 69, 155ff., 162f., 166, 170f. Fula 161, 163ff.

German 7, 13f., 55, 57, 113, 119, 130, 134, 140, 142, 163f., 232, 245 Gogo 41 Grebo 87 Greek 37, 112, 158 Guama 214, 216, 218 Guarano 217f. Haya 41 Hebrew 100, 112f. 182f. Herero 107ff., 129, 144f., 148ff. Hopi 189 Inga 210 Isubu 85, 88 Jebero (aka Shiwilu) 231ff., 237, 239ff. Jiula 160 Kafir 142f. Khoekhoegowab (aka Damara) 138, 143ff., 150 Kikongo 41 Kirundi 38 Kolonial-Deutsch 14 Kroo (aka Krio) 82 Kru 75, 97, 100 Latin 36ff., 51, 57, 59, 65, 100, 134, 158, 182f., 187f., 191, 194, 239f. Lingala 41 Luganda 178 Mabea 93 Makaguaje 210 Malinké 160, 166 Maninka 160, 172 Mosca 214 Motilon 214 Mpongwe 88 Muisca-Chibcha 217f. Nahuatl 31, 76, 177ff., 204, 216, 219, 234, 246 Nama 111ff., 136f., 140ff.

262 | Index of Languages Nariño 210 Ndjobi-Ewondo 14 Ñano 79, 86ff., 90f., 97 Otomaco 214, 218 Páez 210f., 217f. Pariagoto 214, 217f. Pichi 83 Portuguese 80, 83 Purépecha 180 Quechua/Quichua 19, 210, 214, 216, 232f., 236, 242, 244, 246, 248, 251 Serer 166f. Spanish 8, 10, 36, 75, 84, 88, 91, 94, 97ff., 163, 167, 178ff., 182f., 185, 187, 189ff.,

199ff., 214ff., 219, 221f., 232ff., 239, 244, 246f., 250f. – Castilian 178ff., 187 – Colombian ~ 216 Sukuna 41 Swahili 29ff., 51ff., 158, 167 Taparito 214 Tshiluba 41 Witoto 210 Wolof 159f., 166f. Yaruro 214 Yucatec 76 Zapotec 180, 184

Index of Subjects accusative 51f., 54ff., 59, 63, 66ff., 239f. Africa 4, 6, 15, 18, 30, 34ff., 40, 79ff., 84f., 110f., 134f., 143, 169, 171f., 217 – East ~ 30, 158 – North ~ 32 – South ~ 13, 18, 108f., 111, 114, 130ff., 149f. – South-West ~ 129ff., 134, 136, 138, 142, 147, 149 – West ~ 30, 80f., 83, 86ff., 91, 93, 155, 158, 160 African languages 4, 15, 29ff., 33, 35f., 41, 43, 52, 54, 57f., 61, 63, 88, 100, 113, 133, 149f., 155ff., 162f., 167 African(ist) linguistics 53, 61, 63, 88, 157 agent/patient 6, 18, 67ff. Agustinians 204 Amazonian areas 205, 210 Americas, the 177, 202ff., 209, 217, 246 – Ibero ~/Spanish ~ 36, 202f., 214, 222 – Latin ~ 18, 20, 77, 177 – North ~ 63, 82, 183 – South ~ 19, 249 Amerindian languages 19, 75, 186, 189, 200f., 209, 214ff., 221 andaquies (andakis) 201, 207f., 211f., 217 Armed Brothers of Sahara 169 arte/colonial grammar 181, 183, 185, 214, 234, 243, 251 Asia 4, 18, 20, 36, 158, 207 Australia 5, 63 Bagamoyo 31f., 40 Bantu languages 13, 33, 54f., 62f., 86, 88, 108, 113, 117, 122, 148, 150 Baptist Missionary Society 75, 81, 91 Baptists 75, 79, 81, 83ff., 91f., 96, 101 Barmen 129ff., 134, 136, 140, 143, 147ff. Bethany 109, 111, 136, 145, 147, 150 Bora languages 210, 219 borrowing 13, 164f., 239f., 246 Burkina Faso 160, 170

Caguán river 207f. Cameroon(s) 6, 14, 75, 81, 85 Cape Colony 108f., 111, 114, 129, 132, 136, 145 Capuchins 8f., 80, 157 Caquetá (river/department) 208, 210, 212, 217ff., 221ff. case 51ff., 183, 234, 239, 245 Cauca (river/department) 204, 210f. Chibcha languages 210f. Chocó languages 211 Christian doctrine 179, 190, 232f., 244, 249f., 251 Christianization/Christianity 7, 10, 76f., 80, 109, 112, 115, 131, 136, 139, 190, 194, 199f. Church Missionary Society (CMS) 33, 88, 155, 167 church service 113, 133, 148 Claretians 75, 79, 85, 92 clicks 140ff. codification 6, 149f., 188 collective marker 235f. Colombia 199ff., 205, 209ff., 214ff., 224 colonization 30, 33ff., 41, 43, 53, 77f., 83f., 97, 99, 101, 133, 177, 187, 205, 215 colonial attitudes 16, 221 colonial discourse 4, 14ff., 18ff., 199 colonial empire(s) 4ff., 10, 34, 200 colonial gaze 116, 122 colonial grammars/dictionaries 38, 66, 70, 76, 179, 181f., 191, 214f., 234, 237 colonial ideologies 13, 90 colonial languages 7, 14, 16, 94, 97 colonial linguistics 3, 21, 187f. colonial policies 33, 171 colonial thinking 231, 244ff. colonialism 3ff., 11ff., 15ff., 51, 107, 110, 186f. coloniality 16, 78f. 190 Congo 35, 41, 46, 75, 81f., 87 Congregation of The Holy Spirit 32, 161, 166f. Cookfontyn (Kookfontein) 136f., 141, 147f. Corisco 100 corpus planning 114, 117, 121f.

264 | Index of Subjects culture (native/indigenous, European) 42, 76, 78, 82, 94f., 99f., 109f., 115, 117f., 121f., 132, 134, 194, 204, 231, 239f., 242, 244ff., 249ff. curriculum 138, 149 daily life 84, 115, 136 Damara(land) 129f., 139, 142, 144ff., 150 dative 55ff., 63, 66f., 88, 239f. descriptive linguistics 4, 46 Deutsch-Neuguinea 14 Deutsch-Ostafrika 14, 35, 52f. Deutsch-Südwestafrika 14 discourse 37, 171, 199, 203, 224, 234f., 250f. divide and rule 107, 120 Doctrina Christiana 232, 234 Dominicans 79, 204 dual 141, 246 Eben-Ezer 132, 135 Ecuador 209f. eighteenth century 160, 204ff., 209, 213, 215f., 218, 221f. Enlightenment 75, 83, 199, 201f., 204, 206, 214, 222 Equatorial Guinea 75f., 80ff., 86, 88, 95, 97, 100f. eurocentrism 110, 243f. evangelization 34f., 41, 77f., 84, 93, 100, 130, 169, 189, 199f., 214, 232, 249 fables 117, 121 fauna and flora 204, 206, 214, 246f. Fernando Po/Bioko 75, 78ff., 100 France 18, 80, 157, 159, 166 Franciscans 181, 204, 213 Gambia 89, 160, 166, 169 genitive 54f., 57, 235, 239f. German colonialism 4, 6, 18, 51, 107 Germany 4ff., 8, 15, 33f., 61, 71, 107, 112, 131, 136, 168 grammar 8f., 15ff., 29ff., 37ff., 51ff., 78f., 86, 92f., 199f., 111, 119, 131, 141ff., 150, 158, 160, 165ff., 170f., 177, 179ff., 201, 214f., 232, 234, 239f., 243, 250f.

grammatical functions 52, 59, 63, 66f., 70 grammatical traditions 29, 36ff. grammatization, exo-grammatization 29, 36, 46, 157 graphematic coding 142 graphization 155, 157f., 171f. Great Britain 34, 79f., 85 Great-Namaqualand 129f., 135f., 139, 143, 145ff., 150 Guam 7f., 10 Guinea 160, 169 heaven 94f., 115, 141, 148, 150 hell 94f., 98f., 232 Hispanization 75, 79, 83f., 97, 99f., 194 imperialism 3, 6, 18, 58, 71, 107 Indians 184ff., 191ff., 199ff., 205, 207f., 213, 221f., 243f. indigenization 129f., 133 indigenous loanwords 215ff. interpreter (translator) 81f., 85, 90ff., 93, 96, 100, 112f., 118, 139, 143, 145, 147ff., 157, 160, 170, 208 Ivory Coast 87, 160, 162 Japan 3, 7ff., 18 Jesuits 85, 157, 200, 204, 206f. Khoisan languages 138f., 141, 148ff. Kiautschou 6 Komaggas 135ff. Kru languages 79, 86ff. Krumen 81f., 86ff., 91, 97 la Ceja region 207f. language attitudes 19, 177ff., 194 language competence 130, 132 language contact 13f., 18, 78, 82 language policy 6, 14, 18, 35, 129ff., 178f., 191 language studies 11, 57, 214 language teaching 58, 84, 187, 233 lexical engineering 114, 116f. Lilifontein 135 lingua franca 35, 83f., 133, 139, 142, 171, 212f., 233, 242

Index of Subjects | 265 linguistic colonization 83, 177 linguistic diversity 4, 39, 86, 133, 158f. linguistic identity 19, 178 linguistic ideologies 36, 39 loanwords 78, 116, 199, 215ff., 221, 224 London Missionary Society (LMS) 109, 132 Maipurean languages 213, 222 Mali 160, 166, 170 Mande languages 160 Marianas/Mariana islands 7ff. Mariquita region 215f., 220ff. Mexico 177, 184ff., 193f. Micronesia 8f., 14, 18 missionaries – Baptist ~ 75, 84, 91, 96 – Catholic ~ 6, 31, 75, 91, 96, 157, 168, 177 – Claretian ~ 85 – English ~ 33 – French ~ 29f., 32, 155, 161 – German ~ 9, 33, 43, 122 – Herero ~ 112, 115, 120, 122 – Portuguese ~ 18, 36 – Presbyterian ~ 93 – Protestant ~ 6, 33, 107, 167f. – Rhenish ~ 107f., 111, 120, 130, 136, 142, 149f. – Spanish 8, 83f., 96ff., 101 – Spiritan ~ 167ff., 171 – Swiss ~ 121 Missionary Linguistics 3, 13, 21, 33, 36f., 75, 78, 86, 89, 118, 158, 177, 190, 200 missions (frontier ~) 199ff., 205f. Moravian Church 132, 134 Muisca (people) 211, 216, 221 multilingualism 42, 132, 143f. (Great-)Namaqualand 129f., 135ff., 139f., 143, 145, 147, 150 Namibia 14, 18, 107ff., 111f., 121f., 131, 133, 147 negation (marker) 16, 235f., 240 New Spain 31, 46, 177ff., 191, 204 nineteenth century 75f., 78f., 85, 87ff., 155f., 158f., 166, 203, 205, 213, 221 normalization 39f., 90 number/quantifier 52, 242, 245f. object 52ff., 55f., 59, 63, 66f., 69f., 88

Oceania 4, 14, 18, 63 Old Testament 85, 93 Orinoco river 205f., 208, 216ff., 221f. Orlam 108ff., 119f., 122, 135, 138, 150 Papua New Guinea 14, 63 pastoral care 133, 135, 137 pedagogical grammars 15, 38 periphrase/periphrastic 241, 246 Peru 204, 209, 212f., 231f., 242, 250 Philippines 18, 186 phonographic 163, 167, 170f. pietism 129, 134 Pijaos Indians 211, 221 plural marker 235, 246 Portugal 6, 18, 80 pragmatic relations 67f., 70 Putumayo (department/river) 210, 212f., 217ff., 221ff. question marker 235, 243 racist ideas/idologies 79, 88, 92, 144 reduce to writing 156, 167 Rehoboth 109, 111, 139, 147 repetition 235f. restrictive marker 235f. Rhenish Mission Society (RMS) 109, 129ff., 139, 147ff. Sacra congretatio de Propaganda Fide 204 Santa Isabel 81, 84f., 90 school 6, 14f., 81, 83, 85, 96, 100, 133f., 137ff., 145, 149, 158f., 166 Schutzgebiete 4, 14 semantic field 122, 217, 220f., 237 semantic relations 68 Senegal 159f., 162, 164, 166, 169f. Sierra Leone 80ff., 167 slave trade 40, 80, 82f. Société des Missionnaires de Notre-Dame d'Afrique (see White Fathers) Spain 6, 8, 18, 75, 79f., 83ff., 97, 100f., 179, 191, 202ff. Spaniards 75, 80, 83f., 96f., 101, 181, 184, 186, 190f., 193, 201f., 204ff., 244, 246 Spanish colonial era/empire 189, 200, 204

266 | Index of Subjects Spiritans 29, 31f., 164, 166ff. standardization (standardizing) 39f., 43f., 90, 107, 114, 121, 150, 172, 188 Steinkopf 135ff. subject 52ff., 55f., 59, 63, 66ff., 88 Tanganyika 35, 119 Tanzania 14, 41 terminology 38, 51f., 57f., 64, 67, 69, 114ff., 186, 194 theme/rheme 67, 69 topic/focus 66ff. transcription 155ff., 161ff., 166f., 170f. transculturalization (transculturation) 77, 177ff., 190ff., 249 translingualization 250 translinguistic process 155ff., 161ff. transliteration 75, 77ff., 91, 99, 163 Tucano languages 210

Uganda 35 vehicular language 155, 159f. Viceroyalty of New Granada 199f., 203f., 206, 213f. Völkerpsychologie 62f. Warmbath 147 West Indies 80f., 215 White Fathers 29ff., 38, 40f., 155, 169ff. World War I, II 7ff., 61, 170 Wuppertal (Wupperthal) 107, 131f, 136 Yupurá River 208 Zanzibar 32f., 35, 40ff., 44