{ "id": "gilberti-arte-lengua-de-michuacan-1558", "type": "entity", "name": "Maturino Gilberti, Arte de la lengua de Michuacan (Mexico, 1558)", "summary": "The grammar of Purepecha printed at Mexico by Juan Pablos in 1558, sixteen years before the better-known Lagunas Arte and surviving in a single incomplete copy that left the country. Its opening warning is that it would be a very great danger to say this language can be written with whatever letters one likes, and it proves the point with minimal pairs. Its closing folios are model sentences for giving orders in the house, so the book states its own use.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "americas", "new-spain", "michoacan", "language", "books", "printing", "sixteenth-century", "ethnography" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "lagunas-arte-y-dictionario-1574" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "olmos-arte-lengua-mexicana-1547" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "first-printing-press-americas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "molina-vocabulario-1571" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "yangues-principios-lengua-cummanagota-1683" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "colegio-de-san-nicolas-obispo" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "neve-y-molina-reglas-del-idioma-othomi-1767" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "orozco-y-berra-geografia-de-las-lenguas-1864" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "colegio-de-san-nicolas-de-michoacan" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "juan-de-san-miguel-de-uruapan" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "arte-de-la-lengua-cahita-1737" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "colegio-de-san-nicolas-obispo-de-michoacan" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "fray-juan-de-san-miguel-uruapan" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "matlatzinca-pirinda-missionary-philology" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "veracruz-recognitio-y-dialectica-1554" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "relacion-de-michoacan" } ], "questions": [ "What was the first printed grammar of the Purepecha or Tarascan language?", "Who was Maturino Gilberti?", "How did sixteenth-century friars describe the sounds of Purepecha?", "What did a viceregal printing licence in Mexico in 1558 actually say?", "What were missionary grammars of Mexican languages used for?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The volume read here is a reprint, and its title page says so: \"ARTE DE LA LENGUA TARASCA O DE MICHOACAN por el R. P. Fr. Maturino Gilberti de la Orden de San Francisco. Impreso en Mexico el ano 1558. Lo reimprime por vez primera, bajo los auspicios del Sr. Secretario de Justicia e Instruccion Publica, Lic. D. Joaquin Baranda. El Dr. Nicolas Leon, Ex-Director del Museo Michoacano\", Mexico, Tipografia de la Oficina Impresora del Timbre, Palacio Nacional, 1898.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.95 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The reprint exists because the original had all but disappeared, and the editor prints the story. Nicolas Leon states that only one incomplete copy was known, which had belonged to Jose Fernando Ramirez and was sold in London, leaving in Mexico not even brief notes of its contents; that he searched for it with great tenacity for more than twenty years; and that it came into his hands two years before this printing through the generosity of the Guardian of the convent of Santa Cruz de Queretaro, Fr. Salvador de los Dolores Arguello.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The editor also states exactly how faithful the reprint is, which decides how it may be cited. He wanted a facsimile reimpression, ran into difficulties he calls insuperable and gave the idea up; he obtained only that the title page and the first three leaves be traced and reproduced in lithography, so as to give an idea of the typographical composition of the work; and in the rest he says the division of page and line, the errata and the mistaken pagination were strictly preserved, so that except for the type it may be considered a facsimile edition.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The traced title page of 1558 reads \"ARTE DE la legua de Michuaca copilada por el muy Reueredo padre fray Maturino Gylberti, dela orden del Seraphico padre sant Francisco, de regular obseruacia. Ano de. 1558.\", with the imprint line \"Hecha en casa de Iuan Pablos Impressor\" below the woodcut border. The press is the first established in the Americas.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The licence printed in the front matter is a piece of colonial publishing practice worth reading in full, because it protects the author against his printer. Don Luys de Velasco, viceroy, governor and captain general of New Spain and president of the royal Audiencia, gives licence to Juan Pablos, printer, to print in the city the arte and vocabulario and diccionario named in the faculty on the other side, it being established that the work was approved and examined and that the printing was fitting - on condition that the said printer treat and agree with fray Maturino Gylberti, the person who composed the said arte and vocabulario, on the time in which it is to be printed and the price at which it is to be sold. It is dated at Mexico on 12 August 1558 and subscribed \"Don Luys de Velasco\", by command of his lordship, \"Antonio de Turcios\".", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The book's first methodological statement is a refusal of improvised spelling. Under the heading AVISO PRIMERO it declares that it would be a very great danger to say that this language can be written and pronounced as one likes, and that with whatever letters it is more or less understood, and that the following rules are set down so that this error may appear more clearly. The head of the same page records that something had been badly placed in the writings of his predecessors; the sentence begins on the preceding leaf, which was not opened, so what it refers to is left open here.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.75 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "REGLA PRIMERA then proves the point with minimal pairs, which is a recognisably phonemic argument made in 1558. Words written with tza, tze, tzi, tzo, tzu mean one thing and those with ca, ce, ci, co, cu under a cedilla another: \"Tzahcamani\" is to whiten something and \"cahcamani\" is for the water to dry up; \"Tzahpandini\" is to know something imperfectly and \"cahpandini\" is to drink it all so that nothing is left. A contrast that changes meaning is demonstrated by pairs rather than asserted.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The avisos also describe stress and the sound inventory against the Castilian and Latin models the author knew, and note where the model fails. The accent in this language does not always follow that of Latin or Castilian romance, which is commonly thrown on the penult or antepenult, whereas in this language it is often thrown on the middle syllables; and many words are to be pronounced with no accent or dwelling at all.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "AVISO QUARTO records the sound system a second way, through the reshaping of Spanish loanwords, and the list is the earliest kind of contact evidence a philologist can want. The language is said to lack many syllables used in Castilian romance - fa fe fi fo fu, ja je ji jo ju, lla lle lli llo llu, la le li lo lu, sa se si so su - and so for Francisco they say \"Parecescu\", for Iacobo \"xacupa\", for lluvia \"luuia\", for Luys \"nuis\", for Sancto \"Xanto\", for caballo \"cauayo\", for nino \"nino\" or \"niya\" and for Ysabel \"Xapera\". The author adds that all this holds among the common people, while the ladinos speak very well, like the Spaniards - a judgement whose standard is Spanish pronunciation, stated by the man writing the rules.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "The applied part of the book says what the grammar was for, and it is not flattering. On the leaf numbered folio 167 the model sentences turn from travel talk - two roads by which we may go, when we reach that cross we shall see the town, the sun is setting and we have delayed too long on the road - to a section headed \"Para mandar en casa\", for giving orders in the house: go to the church to commend yourself to God and do not delay long; go for firewood to the hill; bring the big spoon and the little one; there is no cauldron, so with what am I to draw water. A grammar that ends in commands to servants is a document about the relation it was written to serve.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "The bibliography of the author is not reconstructed here but pointed to, as the editor points to it. Leon states that Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta published a detailed notice of Gilberti's printed writings then known in his Bibliografia Mexicana del siglo XVI, and that he himself printed a biography of the friar together with a notice of the unpublished works he had managed to own or to see, in the Anales del Museo Michoacano, year II; he says both books are in the hands of all Americanists and that he therefore did not reproduce their matter here. Neither of those two works was opened for this object.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c12", "text": "The 1558 imprint precedes by sixteen years the Arte y dictionario en lengua Michuacana of Juan Baptista de Lagunas, printed at Mexico by Pedro Balli in 1574, which is the Purepecha grammar more often cited. The two are the surviving printed grammatical descriptions of the language from that century, and the same nineteenth-century editor, Nicolas Leon, brought both back into print - Lagunas at Morelia in 1890 and Gilberti at Mexico in 1898.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898", "lagunas-arte-y-dictionario-facsimile-1983" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c13", "text": "What this object rests on, and what it does not. It rests on an 1898 reprint that reproduces the 1558 text line for line but in new type, with only the title page and three leaves traced from the original - so it is tiered secondary, on the same reasoning that tiers the 1983 Lagunas reproduction secondary, and no claim here should be read as the original sheets having been inspected. The vocabulario and diccionario named in the viceroy's licence were a separate printing and were not opened. And the grammar exists to make preaching, confession and household direction possible in Purepecha: the linguistic achievement and the purpose are the same object.", "sources": [ "gilberti-arte-tarasca-leon-1898" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "secondary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "English-language accounts of missionary linguistics in Mexico run through Nahuatl, and where Purepecha appears at all it is through Lagunas 1574. Gilberti's 1558 Arte, printed sixteen years earlier by Juan Pablos, is usually a bibliographic entry with a date. This object gives what the pages say: the viceroy's licence of 12 August 1558 binding the printer to agree with the friar on the printing time and the sale price; the first aviso, that it would be a very great danger to hold that the language can be written with whatever letters one likes; the minimal pairs tzahcamani against cahcamani and tzahpandini against cahpandini by which a phonemic contrast is demonstrated rather than asserted; the observation that stress falls on middle syllables where Latin and Castilian would put it on the penult; the loanword adaptations Parecescu, xacupa, cauayo and Xapera; and the folio of model sentences headed \"Para mandar en casa\". It also names the cost in the same voice - the last part of the grammar teaches Spaniards to give orders to the people whose language it describes - and it states that the volume opened was an 1898 reprint, which is why the tier here is secondary.", "confidence": 0.8, "last_verified": "2026-08-12", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/gilberti-arte-lengua-de-michuacan-1558", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/gilberti-arte-lengua-de-michuacan-1558.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Maturino Gilberti, Arte de la lengua de Michuacan (Mexico, 1558)", "description": "The grammar of Purepecha printed at Mexico by Juan Pablos in 1558, sixteen years before the better-known Lagunas Arte and surviving in a single incomplete copy that left the country. Its opening warning is that it would be a very great danger to say this language can be written with whatever letters one likes, and it proves the point with minimal pairs. Its closing folios are model sentences for giving orders in the house, so the book states its own use.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/gilberti-arte-lengua-de-michuacan-1558", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-12", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Arte y dictionario con otras obras en lengua Michuacana, compuesto por Fray Juan Baptista de Lagunas (Mexico, en casa de Pedro Balli, 1574) - facsimile with a historical introduction", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Af4aAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Maturino Gilberti, Arte de la lengua tarasca o de Michoacan (Mexico, 1558), reprinted by Nicolas Leon, Mexico, 1898", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=nFQTAAAAYAAJ" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Maturino Gilberti, Arte de la lengua de Michuacan (Mexico, 1558)" } }