{
  "id": "carochi-arte-de-la-lengua-mexicana-1645",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Horacio Carochi's Arte de la lengua mexicana (Mexico, 1645)",
  "summary": "The Nahuatl grammar printed at Mexico City by Juan Ruyz in 1645, whose author added to it \"vna cosa singular\" — a four-accent notation that writes vowel length and the glottal stop the Nahua called saltillo, the two contrasts every earlier grammar had left off the page. It is also the book that records a difference between how Nahua men and Nahua women pronounced one consonant, and that tells the learner the decisive sound cannot be conveyed in writing at all.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "language",
    "books",
    "printing",
    "new-spain",
    "education",
    "translation",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "indigenous-peoples"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "molina-vocabulario-1571"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "olmos-arte-lengua-mexicana-1547"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colegio-de-santa-cruz-de-tlatelolco"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-printing-press-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "nebrija-gramatica-1492"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "santo-tomas-grammatica-quichua-1560"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "montoya-tesoro-lengua-guarani-1639"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-language"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mixtec-printed-philology-1593"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "timucua-printed-philology-1612-1627"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "rincon-arte-mexicana-1595"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tapia-zenteno-noticia-de-la-lengua-huasteca-1767"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "flores-arte-cakchiquel-1753"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "chimalpahin-relaciones-de-chalco-amaquemecan"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juan-bautista-prologo-del-sermonario-1606"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pareja-arte-de-la-lengua-timuquana-1614"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "serna-manual-de-ministros-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "arenas-vocabulario-manual-castellana-y-mexicana"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is Carochi's Arte de la lengua mexicana?",
    "Which grammar first wrote down Nahuatl vowel length and the saltillo?",
    "What are the four accents Carochi used for Nahuatl?",
    "Who approved Carochi's Nahuatl grammar for printing?",
    "What did Carochi say his grammar added that earlier ones lacked?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page reads \"ARTE DE LA LENGVA MEXICANA CON LA DECLARACION DE LOS ADVERBIOS DELLA\", dedicated \"Al Illustriss. y Reuerendiss. Señor Don Iuan de Mañozca Arçobispo de Mexico, del Consejo de su Magestad\", \"POR EL PADRE HORACIO CAROCHI Rector del Colegio de la Compañia de IESVS de San Pedro, y San Pablo de Mexico\", and \"IMPRESSO CON LICENCIA En MEXICO: Por Iuan Ruyz. Año de 1645\" — the book was made in the Americas by a Jesuit college in Mexico City.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Carochi states the innovation himself in the prologue: \"A se añadido à este Arte vna cosa singular, que es el ir accentuadas todas las palabras Mexicanas, para que pueda el que la aprendiere, aprender juntamente la pronunciacion\" — every Nahuatl word in the book is printed with its accent marked, so that the learner acquires the pronunciation along with the form.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Chapter one, section two, sets out the system: \"DE quatro accentos vsaremos en este Arte para distinguir quatro generos de tonos con que se pronuncia la vocal de cada syllaba\". The acute marks a short syllable (\"tétl, piedra: tlétl, fuego\"); the macron a long one (\"ātl, agua: Teōtl, Dios\"); the grave marks \"la pronunciacion que suelen llamar saltillo\", the vowel being sounded \"como con salto, ò singulto, ò reparo, y suspension\" (\"tàtli, padre: pàtli, medicina\"); and the circumflex is reserved for the final vowel of plurals of verbs and nouns ending in a vowel when no other word follows immediately.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Vowel length and the saltillo are the two contrasts that distinguish Nahuatl words which are otherwise spelled identically, and Carochi's fifth book is built on that fact: he writes that in it he treats the adverbs \"y pongo los vocablos, cuia significacion se muda, con sola la variacion del accento\" — the words whose meaning changes by the accent alone.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The grammar corrects the standard dictionary on its first working page. Carochi writes that he does not hold it right to write \"Teŭtl, sino Teōtl, Dios: ni ichpŭchtli, sino ichpōchtli, doncella\", and adds that the same applies to \"otros muchos vocablos, que en el vocabulario se escriuen con o. y u. y es mas acertado escreuirlos con o\" — a direct correction of the u/o spellings inherited from the printed Nahuatl vocabulary.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The same section records a difference in pronunciation between Nahua men and Nahua women. Carochi writes that \"los varones no pronuncian la v, consonante, como en la lengua Castellana\", the sound touching only slightly on the vowel and making no syllable of its own — \"assi esta palabra vēuētl, que significa atabal, ò tamboril, es de dos syllabas, y no de quatro\" — but that \"las mugeres Mexicanas pronuncian la v, consonante como se pronuncia en la lengua Castellana\".",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Carochi concedes that the decisive sound cannot be taught from the book. Describing the forceful final vowel, he writes that it is pronounced \"como quien va à pronunciar la aspiracion h. aunque no es aspiracion; la qual no se puede dar à entender por escrito: sino que es menester oyrla pronunciar à los indios\" — the notation is an aid to a lesson that only Nahuatl speakers can give.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The book was censored and approved by a Nahua nobleman. The viceregal licence records that the viceroy referred the Arte to \"el Bachiller Don Bartolome de Alua\" for his parecer, and that parecer — dated at Mexico 31 May 1645 and signed \"El Bachiller D. Bartholome de Alba\", beneficiado of Çumpahuacán — is printed in the front matter. Alva was a secular priest descended from the ruling house of Texcoco, so the official approval of the Spanish Jesuit's Nahuatl grammar was written by a Nahua speaker of noble descent; the printed sheets establish the office and the signature, not the genealogy, which is not documented in this source.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Alva's approval also states the hierarchy the book assumed. He praises Carochi for having reached, in Nahuatl and Otomi, \"à fatigas de estudio el poder con magisterio declarar lo que los mismos naturales, aunque lo llegan à entender, con dificultad lo aciertan à decir\" — the Jesuit can state with mastery what native speakers themselves grasp but have difficulty formulating. The compliment and the condescension are in the same sentence, and it is a Nahua churchman writing it.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The purpose recorded in the licences is evangelisation and administration, not preservation. The ecclesiastical licence of Dr Pedro de Barrientos Lomelín, Mexico 18 July 1645, states that the Arte was composed \"para que los Religiosos la pudiessen aprender con facilidad, para administrar los Sacramentos, y predicarla à los naturales\", and grants leave to print \"por la vtilidad, que dello se puede seguir à los naturales\". The viceregal licence of 3 June 1645 adds that the Jesuit college of San Pedro y San Pablo asked to print it \"à su costa\".",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The dedicatee was an inquisitor. The dedication page gives Juan de Mañozca's titles in full: \"Inquisidor Apostolico, y fundador de la Inquisicion de Cartagena de las Indias\", \"Visitador General de la Real Audiencia, y demas Tribunales de la Ciudad de S. Francisco de Quito\", \"Inquisidor mas antiguo de la Inquisición del Perù\", and Archbishop of Mexico. The finest description of Nahuatl phonology printed in the colonial period was offered to the man who founded the Cartagena tribunal.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "Carochi's own comparison for a learner who does not master the accents is a racial one, and it is printed on the page: without the pronunciation, he writes, a student \"hablarà qualquiera la lengua Mexicana, por mucho que aya trabajado en ella, poco mejor que vn negro boçal la Española\" — no better than an unacculturated African speaks Spanish. It is recorded here because the book's achievement and the hierarchy of its author's world are on the same leaf.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "Carochi does not claim priority over his predecessors and names the one he rates highest. The prologue opens \"Viendo salido à luz tres Artes desta lengua, sufficientes, y doctos, en particular el del P. Antonio del Rincon, que con tanto magisterio la enseña parecerà superfluo este\"; what moved him, he says, was that the existing grammars carry \"alguna obscuridad, difficil de vencer, si no es à la luz de vn muy buen Maestro\", and not every learner has one.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "The book's frame is Latin grammar, and where Nahuatl does not fit that frame Carochi says so rather than forcing it: the fourth book, he writes, stands \"en lugar de sintaxi (que esta lengua no la tiene)\" and sets out instead \"el modo con que vnos vocablos se componen con otros\". The disclaimer is a limitation of the Latin-derived categories as much as a description of Nahuatl, and is stated here as the author's judgement rather than as fact about the language.",
      "sources": [
        "carochi-arte-1645-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English coverage of Carochi is a sentence saying his is the best colonial Nahuatl grammar, usually citing a modern translation rather than the book. This object quotes the 1645 sheets: the four accents with the examples Carochi chose, the saltillo defined as \"salto, ò singulto, ò reparo, y suspension\", the correction of the dictionary's u-for-o, the gendered pronunciation of one consonant, and the admission that the sound \"no se puede dar à entender por escrito\" and must be heard from Nahuatl speakers. It puts the cost beside it from the same front matter — a licence that exists to make sacramental administration easier, a dedication to the founder of the Cartagena Inquisition, a Nahua censor writing that native speakers cannot say correctly what the Jesuit can, and the author's own comparison to \"vn negro boçal\". Nothing else in reach states both halves from the leaves themselves.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-10",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/carochi-arte-de-la-lengua-mexicana-1645",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/carochi-arte-de-la-lengua-mexicana-1645.json",
  "jsonld": {
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    "name": "Horacio Carochi's Arte de la lengua mexicana (Mexico, 1645)",
    "description": "The Nahuatl grammar printed at Mexico City by Juan Ruyz in 1645, whose author added to it \"vna cosa singular\" — a four-accent notation that writes vowel length and the glottal stop the Nahua called saltillo, the two contrasts every earlier grammar had left off the page. It is also the book that records a difference between how Nahua men and Nahua women pronounced one consonant, and that tells the learner the decisive sound cannot be conveyed in writing at all.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/carochi-arte-de-la-lengua-mexicana-1645",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-10",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Arte de la lengua mexicana con la declaracion de los adverbios della (Mexico: Iuan Ruyz, 1645)",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Horacio Carochi's Arte de la lengua mexicana (Mexico, 1645)"
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}