{
  "id": "neve-y-molina-reglas-del-idioma-othomi-1767",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Luis de Neve y Molina, Reglas de orthographia, diccionario y arte del idioma othomi (Mexico, 1767)",
  "summary": "The Otomi grammar printed at Mexico in 1767 by the holder of the Otomi chair at the Real y Pontificio Colegio Seminario, and by his own account the first arte of the language to reach a press. It writes a nasal vowel and a throat vowel, marks a saltillo inside the word, separates three sibilant series, proves a length contrast that turns a needle into a muleteer, counts in twenties, and denies Otomi a participle because its speakers do not use one.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "new-spain",
    "language",
    "books",
    "printing",
    "eighteenth-century",
    "ethnography",
    "education"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "gilberti-arte-lengua-de-michuacan-1558"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "molina-vocabulario-1571"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hervas-catalogo-lenguas-americanas-1800"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-printing-press-americas"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the first printed grammar of the Otomi language?",
    "Who was Luis de Neve y Molina?",
    "How did an eighteenth-century grammarian describe the sounds of Otomi?",
    "How does Otomi count?",
    "What were the chairs of indigenous languages in Mexico for?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page of the volume opened here reads \"REGLAS DE ORTHOGRAPHIA, DICCIONARIO, Y ARTE DEL IDIOMA OTHOMI, breve instruccion para los principiantes, que dicto el L. D. Luis de Neve, y Molina\", with the imprint \"Impressas en Mexico, con las licencias necesarias, en la Imprenta de la Bibliotheca Mexicana, en el Puente del Espiritu Santo. Ano de 1767\". The volume's catalogue entry gives 196 pages.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The same title page states the author's four offices, and they are the whole context of the book. He is described as holder in his own right of the chair of that language in the Real y Pontificio Colegio Seminario, examiner synodal, interpreter of the Tribunal de Fe in the Provisorato de Indios of the archbishopric, and chaplain of the Hospital Real of the capital. The man who wrote down the sounds of Otomi was also the man who rendered Otomi speech into Spanish for the court that judged Indians in matters of faith.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The author claims priority for the printing, and the claim is his own rather than an independent finding. Closing the address to the reader he excuses the defects of the work \"por ser lo primero que discurro en este assumpto, y por ser el primer Arte de este Idioma, que se da a la Imprenta\" - the first arte of this language given to the press. No manuscript arte of Otomi was consulted for this object, so the statement is reported as the author's and not confirmed here.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The book is built as a three-stage course and says so. The same address to the reader explains that the beginners instructed in the manner of writing and the easier pronunciation may pass to the second part, which is the dictionary, and there read, pronounce and learn the stock of nouns and verbs that are most common and necessary, having with this sufficient matter to proceed to the third part, which is the arte, without going about begging words to form their sentences.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The first part opens by locating the difficulty in the sound system rather than in the grammar. Paragraph 1 says that he cannot deny what all generally confess, which is that the whole difficulty of this language consists in its pronunciation, and that he has therefore thought it convenient to give notice and explanation of the many characters with which it is written; the language is said to use all the letters of Castilian except F, J, K, L, R and S, the want of the F being supplied by ph as Castilian sometimes writes it in Philosophia.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The vowels are separated by where the voice is placed, with a gloss for each. Paragraph 8 states that the u is of three kinds: the first clear, written and pronounced as the Castilian u; the second called narical, written with a circumflex and pronounced by spreading the voice through the nostrils, as in the word for salt; and the third called gutural, written y and pronounced with the teeth well closed, the upper molars against the lower, drawing the voice from deep in the throat, always taking care not to confuse it with the gutural g, since experience teaches that the sound of the voice in the y is more obscure - the example given is the word for pain.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Three sibilant and affricate series are separated the same way, each with a word to hold it. One is written z, illustrated by the word for the harvest; the second is called fuerte, written tz and pronounced by pressing the tip of the tongue against the palate and throwing the sound out with force, illustrated by the word for vomit; the third is called resongada, written with a distinct character and pronounced with a grumble made softly, illustrated by the word for a stick.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "A saltillo is described and given a mark of its own. Paragraph 16 says that in the middle of a word a small stroke is customarily placed, which they call saltillo, denoting that in pronunciation a certain kind of pause or suppression of the voice is to be made, so that the word seems to divide - the example is the verb to crouch down, printed with the stroke between its two syllables.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Length is then shown to carry meaning, and shown by a pair rather than asserted. Paragraph 17 states that all the words of this language, nouns, verbs or any other part of speech, are pronounced long in their last syllables where the accent marks it, and those without the accent short, and that in this alone the word for a needle, pronounced long, differs from the word for a muleteer, pronounced short. The two are printed with the same letters and different accents.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The dictionary closes on a numeral list that is plainly vigesimal. Twenty, forty, sixty and eighty each have their own word built on the same element - printed N-rahte, Yohte, Hiurahte and Goohorahte - and thirty, fifty, seventy and ninety are each formed by adding the word for ten to the preceding score. A hundred and a thousand have separate forms. The base is twenty and not ten, and the printed list shows it without the author remarking on it.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The grammar's first chapter refuses a Latin category on the evidence of how people speak, which is the most modern thing in the book. It counts seven parts of the Otomi sentence - noun, pronoun, verb, preposition, adverb, interjection and conjunction - together with particles, some meaningful and some meaning nothing by themselves and only in company with one of the seven. That there is no participle, it says, is clearly proved by the practice observed among the Indians, since to answer the present participle \"he who loves\" they say a short phrase built on the pronoun for who. The absence is argued from usage, not from the paradigm.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "What this object rests on, and what it does not. It rests on the full-view digitisation of the 1767 Mexico printing, opened at the cover, the title page, the dedication, the address to the reader, and pages 1, 5, 8, 96 and 101; the licences and approbations were not read, and the dictionary itself was seen only at its last page, so nothing is claimed about its size or its coverage. The purpose of the book is not hidden by it: the sounds were written down so that priests could catechise and confess in Otomi, and the author held office in the tribunal that tried Indians for offences against the faith. The description and the instrument are the same book.",
      "sources": [
        "neve-y-molina-reglas-othomi-1767"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Otomi is the large Mesoamerican language that English-language accounts of missionary linguistics leave out: the story runs Nahuatl, then Purepecha or Maya, and Otomi appears as a name in a list. Where Neve y Molina is mentioned at all it is as a bibliographic entry with a date. This object gives what the 1767 pages actually say: the four offices printed under the author's name, including interpreter to the tribunal of the faith in the Provisorato de Indios; his own claim to be the first arte of the language given to a press; the letters of Castilian the language does not use; the nasal vowel and the throat vowel with a word apiece; the three sibilant series; the saltillo and the stroke that marks it; the accent pair that separates a needle from a muleteer; the twenty-based numerals printed at the end of the dictionary; and the refusal of the participle on the evidence of observed speech. It also states, in the same voice, that the book was made so that Otomi speakers could be catechised, confessed and questioned - which is why the phonology survives at all.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
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    "name": "Luis de Neve y Molina, Reglas de orthographia, diccionario y arte del idioma othomi (Mexico, 1767)",
    "description": "The Otomi grammar printed at Mexico in 1767 by the holder of the Otomi chair at the Real y Pontificio Colegio Seminario, and by his own account the first arte of the language to reach a press. It writes a nasal vowel and a throat vowel, marks a saltillo inside the word, separates three sibilant series, proves a length contrast that turns a needle into a muleteer, counts in twenties, and denies Otomi a participle because its speakers do not use one.",
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