{
  "id": "valdivia-arte-de-la-lengua-de-chile-1606",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Luis de Valdivia, Arte y gramatica general de la lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile (Lima 1606; Seville 1684)",
  "summary": "The first printed grammar of Mapudungun, read here in its Seville 1684 reprint. Its preface argues that one language runs four hundred leagues from Coquimbo to Chiloe, that it has almost no irregular verb, and that it exceeds Latin in the abundance of its tenses. Chapter one gives a repeatable articulatory procedure for a sixth vowel Spanish and Latin do not have. The same book is dedicated to a cavalry commander of the war against its speakers.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "chile",
    "language",
    "books",
    "printing",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "jesuits",
    "ethnography"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "guerra-defensiva-de-chile"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ovalle-historica-relacion-de-chile"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ercilla-la-araucana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "santo-tomas-grammatica-quichua-1560"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "bertonio-vocabulario-aymara-1612"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "montoya-tesoro-lengua-guarani-1639"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tercero-catecismo-de-lima-1583"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the first printed grammar of Mapudungun or the Araucanian language?",
    "Who was Luis de Valdivia?",
    "How did a seventeenth-century Spanish grammar describe the sounds of Mapudungun?",
    "Did Spanish missionary grammarians rank American languages against Latin?",
    "What was a missionary grammar of a Chilean language actually used for?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page of the volume read here says what the book is and who printed it: \"ARTE, Y GRAMATICA GENERAL DE LA LENGVA QVE corre en todo el Reyno de Chile, con vn Vocabulario, y Confessonario: Compuestos por el Padre Luis de Valdivia, de la Compania de Jesus, en la Provincia del Peru. IVNTAMENTE CON LA DOCTRINA Christiana, y Cathecismo del Concilio de Lima en Espanol, y dos traduciones del en la lengua de Chile, que examinaron, y aprobaron los dos Reverendissimos senores Obispos de Chile, cada qual la de su Obispado.\" The imprint line reads \"CON LICENCIA En Sevilla, por Thomas Lopez de Haro, Ano de 1684.\"",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The sheets opened for this object are the Seville 1684 ones, not the Lima 1606 ones. The Arte was first printed at Lima in 1606 and the 1684 volume is a later printing of it; that the 1684 text reproduces the 1606 text is assumed here from the title page's attribution to Valdivia and is not something these sheets can establish. Claims below describe what the 1684 printing says.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The title page records a fact about dialect that is easy to miss: the volume carries not one translation of the Lima catechism into the language of Chile but two, and each was examined and approved by one of the two bishops of Chile, \"cada qual la de su Obispado\" - each the one of his own diocese. Two authorised versions of the same text in the same language, divided by bishopric, are printed side by side.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The address \"AL LECTOR\" opens with a claim about the reach of the language. Four things make this Lengua de Chile easy, and the first is that in the whole Reyno de Chile there is no other language than this one, which runs from the city of Coquimbo and its bounds to the Islands of Chilue and further, for a space of almost four hundred leagues from north to south, which is the length of the kingdom, and from the foot of the great snowy Cordillera to the sea, which is its breadth, a space of twenty leagues. The text immediately qualifies itself: although in the diverse provinces of these Indians there are some different vocables, the nouns, verbs and adverbs are not all diverse, and so the precepts and rules of this Arte are general for all the provinces.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The second and third of the four things are grammatical judgements, and they rank the language above Latin on the dimensions the author cares about. The language is very regular and uniform in the formation of tenses and persons, so that there is almost no irregular verb - and the contrary of this, the text says, is what makes other languages difficult, \"como se vee en la Latina\". For every kind of verb, substantive, transitive and neuter, there is only one conjugation, and it is so abundant in tenses \"que excede a la Latina\"; that abundance makes a language easier to learn, because the learner finds how to explain his concepts, whereas when the tenses are so few that one has to serve and supply for many, the language becomes difficult.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The fourth thing localises the whole difficulty of the language in its phonology: all the difficulty consists in no more than knowing how to pronounce one imperfect vowel and one consonant which the speakers use frequently.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Chapter I, headed \"DE LA PRONVNCIACION, y Orthographia\", then describes that vowel by telling the reader how to make it, which is a procedure a learner can repeat rather than an impression he must share. There is in this language a vowel beyond the five that the Spanish and Latin languages have, because these Indians pronounce a sound midway between e and u, and use it very frequently, striking it before and after with consonants in the way we strike the five vowels. Although it is necessary to hear it in order to perceive it and to get it right, a rule can still be given, and the rule is: with the lips open and without moving them at all, and the upper teeth together with the lower, whoever wants to pronounce this sound should set out to pronounce u on purpose, and whatever sound comes out is the one these Indians pronounce. After the ear has grown used to it, it will be pronounced easily and without care even when the teeth are apart.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The same chapter distinguishes the new vowel from the nearest Spanish one by the position of the lips, which is an articulatory contrast rather than an auditory one: the perfect u, the fifth vowel, necessarily requires pursing the lips somewhat for its pronunciation, whereas this sixth vowel of this language requires the contrary, that there be no movement in them at all.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Having described the sound, the chapter then solves it as a printing problem, and states the typographic convention it is adopting. Because this sixth vowel has the said similarity with u, it is written with the figure of u with a small virgule above it; and for greater difference, the text says, \"procuramos en esta impression\" to set this sixth vowel in italic with the said virgulita, while the fifth vowel is set in roman. The orthography of the language is being decided in the composing room, and the book says so.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "What the grammar was for is not left to inference: the title page names a Vocabulario and a Confessonario bound with it and the catechism of the Council of Lima, so the book is a kit for preaching to and confessing the people whose language it describes.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The cost sits in the front matter of the same volume, and it is the dedication. The 1684 printing is dedicated to Diego de Lara Escobar, whose offices are recited as ayudante de sargento mayor, veedor de fabricas, captain of Spanish infantry, castellan of San Luis de Alva at the mouth of Baldivia and governor of that place, sargento mayor and captain of light horse, comisario general of the Reyno de Chile, and corregidor of Yca, Pisco and Nasca in Peru. The dedication praises him for having served in those parts for more than twenty-six years \"con su espada, valor, y prudencia\", and describes the right hand that has won him his honours as \"muchas vezes tenida de enemiga sangre\" - many times stained with enemy blood. The grammar of the language is offered to a commander of the cavalry that fought its speakers.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The dedication also states the book's own view of its subject's standing in Europe, in a phrase worth keeping: this \"Idioma forastero en Europa\", being strange and alone, naturally looks for someone to regard it with favour. The grammar is presented as a foreign tongue in need of a patron, not as a curiosity.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "What this object rests on and what it does not. It rests on one volume, the Seville 1684 imprint, read as page scans: the title page, the dedication, the address to the reader and the first chapter of the Arte. The Vocabulario, the Confessonario and the two catechism translations named on the title page were not opened, so nothing is claimed here about their contents. Valdivia's grammars of the Huarpe languages Allentiac and Millcayac, printed in 1607 and the principal record of two languages no longer spoken, are outside this object and were not consulted. And the judgements quoted above about regularity, abundance of tenses and ease of learning are the judgements of a missionary writing to recruit other missionaries, which is why they are reported as what the book argues rather than as settled description.",
      "sources": [
        "valdivia-arte-lengua-de-chile-1684"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language accounts of colonial Chile reach the Mapuche through Ercilla's poem, and Valdivia appears, if at all, as the Jesuit behind a failed peace policy; his grammar is normally a line in a bibliography. This object gives what the pages of the 1684 imprint actually say: the claim that one language ran four hundred leagues from Coquimbo to Chiloe with rules general to every province; the judgement that it has almost no irregular verb and that its tenses exceed Latin's, made by a Jesuit ranking an American language above the language of his own learning; the articulatory recipe for the sixth vowel - lips open and still, teeth together, set out to say u and take whatever comes - and the contrast with the fifth vowel stated as a difference of lip movement; and the decision to print that vowel as italic u with a virgule while the fifth stays roman, an orthography settled in the composing room. It also prints the cost from the same front matter rather than importing a critic: the book is a preaching and confession kit, and it is dedicated to a cavalry commander whose sword hand it praises as many times stained with enemy blood.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
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    "name": "Luis de Valdivia, Arte y gramatica general de la lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile (Lima 1606; Seville 1684)",
    "description": "The first printed grammar of Mapudungun, read here in its Seville 1684 reprint. Its preface argues that one language runs four hundred leagues from Coquimbo to Chiloe, that it has almost no irregular verb, and that it exceeds Latin in the abundance of its tenses. Chapter one gives a repeatable articulatory procedure for a sixth vowel Spanish and Latin do not have. The same book is dedicated to a cavalry commander of the war against its speakers.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/valdivia-arte-de-la-lengua-de-chile-1606",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-13",
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        "name": "Luis de Valdivia, Arte, y gramatica general de la lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile, con vn Vocabulario, y Confessonario (Sevilla, Thomas Lopez de Haro, 1684)",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Luis de Valdivia, Arte y gramatica general de la lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile (Lima 1606; Seville 1684)"
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