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The vast Vocabulario dela lengua aymara was composed by the illustrious Italian Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio and printed in the workshops of the Society of Jesus by Francisco del Canto in the city of Juli (Puno) in 1612. After a dedication -written in Latin- to the most illustrious Father Domingo Valderrama, first archbishop of La Paz, he dedicates a brief epistle to the priests of the Aymara nation where he justifies the purpose of his work: “el principal intento que tuve (sacerdotes de Cristo) en sacar a luz este Vocabulario dela lengua aymara (dejando aparte la gloria de su divina Majestad que es el primer blanco a que deben mirar todas nuestras obras) fue acudir al buen deseo que vuestras mercedes tienen de saber hablar congruentemente a los indios de sus doctrinas para quitar de sus entendimientos las tinieblas de la ignorancia en las cosas de su salvación y enseñarles los misterios de nuestra católica religión”.
Bertonio is a clear example of translingualism: being an Italian native speaker, he had to learn Spanish when – at the age of 20 – he entered the Society of Jesus. It is impossible to ignore that the linguistic work of the priest was conditioned by his evangelizing task, but that has not prevented thinkers of the stature of Umberto Eco from having elevated their philological and translational work: in La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, Eco points out that Bertonio had found in the ductile Aymara language a kind of Adamic language. After the succinct grammar, the vocabulary is developed in two volumes. However, the patent evangelizing task should warn the students of this work about the ultimate goals of its author: the salvation of the souls of those who had Aymara as their mother tongue at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Jean Christian Egoavil
Proyecto Estudios Indianos

Digital Resources
Berg, Hans van den (2012). Las ediciones del Vocabulario de la lengua aymara