Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [211]
* Quechua is basically spelt and pronounced like Spanish, but w and k are common. Hence õ is ny as in canyon, and j is ch in as in loch. An apostrophe after a consonant marks a glottal catch in the voice. A major exception to Spanish convention is that q is pronounced with the uvula at the back of the mouth, as in Arabic; and immediately before or after it i is pronounced more like [e], and u as [o]. This is the fundamental reason why the language’s name is given sometimes as ‘Quechua’, and sometimes as ‘Quichua’. The first u is in any case just a reminiscence of Spanish spelling: the pronunciation is more like [qecwa].
* Something of the same seems to have happened with the Mayan languages, but with less conscious collaboration with, or aping of, Spanish literary forms. The Mayans had not recently been united under indigenous leaders. Nevertheless, they did develop a literature, but it was one that largely followed the norms and content of their older traditions. It includes the heroic myths of the Popol Vuh, the elegiac and tragic dialogue with a doomed warrior (Rabinal Achi), and the Books of Chilam Balam, which are traditional almanacs. It was a form of underground resistance to Christian domination.
* Motolinía was a Nahuatl pseudonym, adopted by him because it meant ‘poor’. The original name of this Franciscan friar had been Fray Toribio de Benavente.
* The encomienda was an economic institution universal in the Spanish American colonies; it was a leasehold granted by the king, under which a designated encomendero was given full rights to exploit the labour of Indians on an estate, on condition only that the Indians received religious instruction.
† ‘Reverend Father, what case is it in?’
* The echoes of this former majesty are widespread. Quechua was one of the eleven languages used by the Jesuits in their missions in Paraguay. It is also attested to this day, in small communities in the north of Chile, and Acre in the west of Brazil.
* ’para que de una vez se llegue a conseguir el que se extingan los diferentes idiomas de que se usa en los mismos Dominios, y sólo se hable el Castellano …’, quoted in Triana y Antorveza ( 1987: 511).
† The Portuguese Crown had expelled all Jesuits from Brazil in 1759. (See Chapter 11, ‘Portuguese pioneers’, p. 394.
* Quotes from the Philippine constitution of 1987 (cited in Quilis 1992: 83).
† The 2001 census figures place the Hispanic population of the USA at 37 million, 13 per cent of the total, and the largest minority in the country, having just now overtaken the African-Americans’ 36.1 million. The Hispanics are the only US minority to retain routine usage of their heritage language, Spanish, with two TV channels, Univisión and Telemundo, and over two hundred publications with a joint circulation of over 12 million (El País newspaper, Madrid, 23 March 2003).
11
In the Train of Empire: Europe’s Languages Abroad
Surveying the world’s current top ten languages by population (the full top twenty are identified and discussed in Chapter 13), we note that no less than six of them have spread through the expansion of European global empires in the past five centuries: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German and French. The spread of Spanish, the earliest of these, distinguished by the leading—though somewhat spoiling—role of the Catholic Church, we have just reviewed. The spread of English, the most spectacular, where global market enthusiasm seems to have taken over just as national dominance left off, we reserve for the next chapter. Before that, we need to consider the careers of the others, so many classic cases of modern imperial expansion, driven by passions for wealth, exploration and national glory, often accompanied by the zeal of Christian missionaries.
The story of the languages