Agustín de Quintana, Arte de la lengua mixe (Puebla, 1729; reprinted Oaxaca, 1891)
A Dominican's grammar of Mixe, printed at Puebla in 1729 inside a bilingual devotional book of 550 pages, and reprinted at Oaxaca in 1891 by a Mexican philologist who wanted it back in circulation because the independent republic had let the study of Oaxaca's languages lapse. Quintana records vowels his alphabet could not write and sends the learner to native speakers instead; Belmar, printing him 162 years later, argues against the "gente de razón e indios" distinction.
Why this wins its question: Mixe is missing from the standard English account of colonial Mesoamerican philology, which stops at Nahuatl, Maya, Zapotec and Mixtec, and Quintana is cited from bibliographies rather than read. Reading the 1891 Oaxaca reimpresión recovers two things at once. From 1729: a grammarian who lists the six letters his language does not use, describes two vowel sequences that Spanish orthography cannot render, and tells the learner outright that they cannot be explained in writing and must be got from native speakers. From 1891: Francisco Belmar's introduction, which is the reason the text survives in reprint and which puts the colonial record and its republican neglect side by side — a Mexican philologist reissuing a Dominican's grammar because nobody in the state was learning the languages any more, and arguing against the "gente de razón e indios" distinction from the schoolroom evidence. Belmar's own assimilationist premise is quoted with the rest rather than trimmed, and the tier is held at secondary because this is his press and not the Puebla sheets.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page of the reprint reads "ARTE DE LA LENGUA MIXE, POR EL PADRE FRAY AGUSTIN DE QUINTANA. IMPRESO EN PUEBLA EL AÑO DE 1729. Reimpreso por el Lic. Francisco Belmar. OAXACA. IMPRENTA DEL COMERCIO, 1ª CALLE DE LA LIBERTAD, LETRA A. Wenceslao Güendulain y Compañía. 1891." Everything below is read from that 1891 Oaxaca reimpresión, not from the Puebla sheets.
Belmar describes the book he was reprinting from. The Arte "está incluido en la obra del P. Quintana titulada: Instrucción Cristiana y guía de ignorantes para el cielo en lengua mixe impresa en Puebla el año de 1729", occupying part of thirty preliminary leaves that carry no foliation or pagination and that also hold the dedication, approbation, licences, the author's prologue and the errata. The grammar was therefore never published as a book in its own right; it was front matter to a devotional work.
The devotional work itself was substantial and fully bilingual. Its three parts run from page 1 to 228, 229 to 357 and 358 to 550, on the Trinity and the divine perfections, the creation of the universe and the redemption of mankind; the volume comes to 318 leaves; and "A los capítulos en mixe les sigue inmediatamente su traducción en castellano" — every chapter printed in Mixe and then in Spanish, on facing text.
Quintana's own text opens with the letters his alphabet did not need: "Primeramente se advierte, que de todas las letras del Abc, faltan á esta Lengua estas, que se siguen: F. J. K. L. R. S. de las quales ninguna se vsa: por que la que parece podia vsarse, que es la J. no es necessario; porque la H. suple por J."
He then describes two vowel sequences and concedes the limit of writing. The language has "dos Diptongos: vno de u, y o. v. g. cûxm, xüma: y otro de o., y e. v. g. Tôhc, Yôc", in which neither vowel "se pronuncia claramente por si sola; y asi sale la pronunciacion, ó la voz, compuesta de las dos vocales juntas; lo qual no se puede explicar por escrito: y asi es necessario atender á como los Naturales pronuncian los Dipthongos; lo qual, con el cuidado, y exercicio se aprehende." The authority for the sound is the native speaker, and the grammarian says so.
His orthographic solution is stated with its reason: words with such a vowel are written with only one of the two letters, "porq si se escrivieran con las dos, fuera mucha confussion, y mayor dificultad para leerlos" — ordinarily u for the u-o sequence and o for the o-e sequence — except that when a word has a single vowel and that vowel carries the sequence, the letter is doubled: "V. g. Còò: la mano. Nòò: el agua."
Belmar states why he reprinted it in 1891, and the reason is scarcity: he judged the reimpresión useful "tanto por ser rarísimas las obras escritas en este idioma, cuanto porque la presente es poco conocida y la más importante para el estudio de la filología Oaxaqueña en un idioma que aùn se conserva con sus caracteres primitivos". Of Quintana's works he had seen only the Confesonario reprinted, in 1890 at the expense of the comte de Charencey; the others "parecen no ser conocidas en Europa".
His complaint is against his own century, not the colonial one. "Es de lamentar que cada día se descuide entre nosotros el estudio de las lenguas del Estado", he writes, and not even the ministers charged with Christian teaching now trouble themselves, "reduciéndose su ministerio á decirles misa, casarlos, confesarlos, bautizar y ayudar á bien morir, todo lo que los indios practican por rutina sin comprender nada". A colonial grammar was being put back into print in republican Oaxaca because the linguistic competence that produced it had lapsed.
Belmar turns the same evidence against the racial explanation of the day. "Hoy se considera á la raza indígena incapaz de ser civilizada, se le cree ruda por naturaleza y refractaria á toda clase de conocimientos; lo que no es exacto"; those who think so "ignoran las cualidades y condiciones del indio confundiendo su lamentable ignorancia con su rudeza é incapasidad natural". Children were being called "tontos" for not following a teacher speaking a language unknown to them — "Si se pretendiera ilustrarnos en chino ó en alemán… seríamos tan ignorantes como los mixes" — and he calls the settled category "la odiosa distinción de gente de razón é indios, como si estos no estuviecen dotados de las facultades intelectuales que distinguen á los hombres de los demás animales."
Belmar is not a witness for the defence and the object does not use him as one. His stated aims for the study of indigenous languages are assimilationist in the ordinary late-nineteenth-century way — "ya para introducir la civilización entre los indios, ó ya para resolver el problema de la unificación de las lenguas para poder efectuar su educación" — so the language he wanted preserved was, on his own account, a means to an education conducted in Spanish. The 1729 grammar and the 1891 reprint were each made to reach the speakers of Mixe rather than to keep Mixe; their value as a record of the language is incidental to both.