{
  "id": "molina-vocabulario-1571",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Alonso de Molina's Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (Mexico, 1571)",
  "summary": "The two-way Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary printed at Mexico City by Antonio de Spinosa in 1571 — an enlarged second edition of Molina's 1555 vocabulary, with a wholly new Nahuatl-to-Spanish half added. Its alphabet is Nahuatl's, not Castilian's: the letters the language does not use are simply absent from the order. It exists because missionaries had decided they could not do their work through interpreters, and Molina says so on the page.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "language",
    "books",
    "printing",
    "translation",
    "new-spain",
    "firsts",
    "spanish-language",
    "education"
  ],
  "relations": [
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      "rel": "related",
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    {
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      "target": "cordova-arte-y-vocabulario-zapoteca-1578"
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    {
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      "target": "printed-music-in-sixteenth-century-mexico"
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    {
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      "target": "gilberti-arte-lengua-de-michuacan-1558"
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    {
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      "target": "obras-perdidas-de-lenguas-indigenas-de-america"
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    {
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    {
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      "target": "timucua-printed-philology-1612-1627"
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    {
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      "target": "rincon-arte-mexicana-1595"
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    {
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      "target": "tapia-zenteno-noticia-de-la-lengua-huasteca-1767"
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      "target": "noceda-sanlucar-vocabulario-tagala-1754"
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    {
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      "target": "santos-vocabulario-tagala-1794"
    },
    {
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      "target": "chimalpahin-relaciones-de-chalco-amaquemecan"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hernando-de-ribas"
    },
    {
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      "target": "juan-bautista-prologo-del-sermonario-1606"
    },
    {
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      "target": "huauhtli-bledos-de-las-indias"
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    {
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      "target": "interpretes-de-las-audiencias-de-indias"
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      "target": "frisoles-y-pallares-de-las-indias"
    },
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      "target": "chia-de-la-nueva-espana"
    },
    {
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      "target": "hule-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "serna-manual-de-ministros-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "arenas-vocabulario-manual-castellana-y-mexicana"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is Molina's Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana?",
    "When was the first dictionary of Nahuatl printed?",
    "Why did Spanish friars compile dictionaries of American languages?",
    "How did Molina handle the sounds of Nahuatl that Spanish does not have?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page reads \"VOCABVLARIO EN LENGVA CASTELLANA Y MEXICANA, COMpuesto por el muy Reuerendo Padre Fray Alonso de Molina, dela Orden del bienauenturado nuestro Padre sant Francisco\", dedicated \"AL MVY EXCELENTE SEÑOR Don Martin Enriquez, Visorrey de la nueua España\", and is printed \"EN MEXICO, En Casa de Antonio de Spinosa. 1571\" — the book was made in the Americas, not in Spain.",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The closing leaf gives the colophon twice, and the second time in Nahuatl. The Spanish states that \"aqui hazen fin los dos vocabularios, en lengua castellana y nahual o Mexicana que hizo y recopilo el muy Reuerendo padre fray Alonso de Molina\", printed \"en la muy insigne y grande ciudad de Mexico: en casa de Antonio de Spinosa: en el Año de nuestra redempcion de 1571\"; beneath it the same notice runs \"Nican tzonquiça yn ontetl vocabularios ynpan Castillan tlatolli yuan mauatlatolli … yehua Antonio de Spinosa Ypaniuitl. 1571 Años.\"",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "This is a second edition and says what it added. In the prologue to the second half Molina writes that he resolved \"de hazer esta segunda impression, mejorando la obra que auia principiado en dos cosas\": to the vocabulary \"impresso enel año de cinquenta y cinco que comiença en romance\" he added \"mas de quatro mil vocablos\", and he composed and printed the other vocabulary, the one that begins in the Mexican language, which had not existed before.",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The alphabetical order follows Nahuatl phonology rather than the Castilian abecedary. The first aviso states that the language \"carece de algunas letras de nuestro Abece, que son las siguientes. b. d. f. g. r. s.\", so those letters do not appear in the ordering at all: \"despues dela A. se sigue la C. y tras ella la E. y luego la H. I. L. M. N. O. P. Q. T. V. X.\", Greek Y being dropped too because \"tampoco la ha menester esta lengua, pues le basta una. I.\"",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The second aviso extends the same principle to sequences of letters: because the language lacks part of the alphabet, Molina judged himself not bound \"a seguir totalmente el concierto que otros Vocabularios suelen llevar\", and moved entries — notably those in tza, tze, tzi, tzo, tzu, which he says are much used in this language — to the place where a reader of Nahuatl would look for them rather than the place Castilian alphabetisation would dictate.",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The prologue states the working motive without decoration: without the language the clergy cannot preach, \"podran mal saber y descubrir los impedimentos que tienen en sus matrimonios\", and can neither hear confession nor grant or refuse absolution honestly, \"no entendiendo bien lo que dizen\". Molina puts it in two comparisons — \"mal podra el juez saber la sentencia enla causa que no entiende, ni el medico curar la llaga, no entendiendo la relacion delo que padece.\"",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The book is therefore an instrument of evangelisation and administration, and presents itself as one. Molina describes the work as necessary \"para ayudar a los ministros de la nueva yglesia, a la deuida execucion de sus oficios, en la administracion dela palabra de Dios y delos sanctos Sacramentos a estos naturales\", and names the Franciscan commissary general of New Spain, fray Francisco de Ribera, as the superior who \"ha puesto mas espuelas y dado mas calor\" to get it done. Nothing in the prologue claims a purpose of preserving Nahua culture for its own sake.",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Molina disclaims completeness in advance: his intent, he writes, was only \"començar a abrir camino, para que en el discurso del tiempo y con la diligencia de otros mas hábiles entendimientos, se fuesse poco a poco descubriendo la mina inacabable de vocablos y maneras de hablar que esta copiosissima y artificial lengua Mexicana tiene\", and he takes Nebrija's dictionary as the model his Nahuatl half should match in usefulness.",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The prologue also argues from the everyday damage of mutual incomprehension — that courtesy and compliance are read as insult or as coercion when neither side follows the other's speech, so that where thanks would be due, punishment follows instead. The passage is dense sixteenth-century print and is summarised here rather than quoted in full.",
      "sources": [
        "molina-vocabulario-1571-print"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Molina's Vocabulario is normally cited as a bibliographic fact — first dictionary of Nahuatl, 1555 and 1571 — with nothing said about what is inside it. What is inside it is the interesting part, and it is quoted here from the 1571 sheets themselves: an alphabet with six Castilian letters deleted because Nahuatl has no use for them, an ordering bent to fit tz, a colophon printed in Nahuatl as well as Spanish, and an author who states in his own prologue that the whole apparatus exists so that friars can hear confession and test the validity of marriages. The achievement and the motive come from the same pages, so neither can be produced without the other.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/molina-vocabulario-1571",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/molina-vocabulario-1571.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Alonso de Molina's Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (Mexico, 1571)",
    "description": "The two-way Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary printed at Mexico City by Antonio de Spinosa in 1571 — an enlarged second edition of Molina's 1555 vocabulary, with a wholly new Nahuatl-to-Spanish half added. Its alphabet is Nahuatl's, not Castilian's: the letters the language does not use are simply absent from the order. It exists because missionaries had decided they could not do their work through interpreters, and Molina says so on the page.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/molina-vocabulario-1571",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, compuesto por el muy Reuerendo Padre Fray Alonso de Molina, dela Orden del bienauenturado nuestro Padre sant Francisco",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=IK4rAQAAMAAJ&pg=PP3"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Alonso de Molina's Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (Mexico, 1571)"
  }
}