draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

la dirección de varios de dichos misioneros he formado algunas gramáticas y otros me han
favorecido formándolas. Estos manuscritos, y las muchas cartas con que los misioneros
han respondidio a mis preguntas y dudas sobre las lenguas y naciones que las hablan,
forman parte preciosa de mi pequeña librería poliglota: y en esta obra cito los nombres
de los principales misioneros que me han dado las noticias que en ella pongo sobre las
lenguas bárbaras que ellos entendían, y sobre las naciones de que eran misioneros, o que
con ellas confinaban.
(Hervás y Panduro (1800:73-74), cited in Fúrlong Cárdiff (1955:61-62)) 120
Despite Hervás y Panduro’s proclaimed intent in the above-cited passage to indicate the source
of indigenous language texts in the Saggio pratico delle lingue, he fails to do so for the Omagua
Lord’s Prayer (Hervás y Panduro 1787a:98-99). It is likely that Hervás y Panduro obtained the
Omagua Lord’s Prayer from Joaquín Camaño Bazán (b. 1737 La Rioja – d. 1820 Valencia), 121 an
Argentine Jesuit with whom he correspondend intensely regarding South American languages, but
that Camaño Bazán was not the ultimate source of the text. This correspondence, part of which
is preserved in the Vatican Archives, reveals that Camaño Bazán provided Hervás y Panduro with
considerable lexical and grammatical data on Omagua (Clark (1937), Fúrlong Cárdiff (1955:48-87,
138-182)). 122 However, he had no direct experience with Omagua himself, since his missionary
activities were confined to the Gran Chaco of modern-day Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil,
a region in which Omagua was not spoken. It is clear from his correspondence with Hervás y
Panduro, however, that Camaño Bazán had accumulated information on a wide range of South
American languages, and it is likely that he obtained the Omagua Lord’s Prayer as part of this
process, subsequently passing it on to Hervás y Panduro. From whom Camaño Bazán obtained the
120 Translation (ours):
I, then, have attempted to read and even purchase (without fear of the inconvenience to which the
narrowness of my very limited means exposed me), grammars of as many languages as I have heard
of. This made me aware of the fact that only a small number of these were books in print, and as
such that I should supplement these by consulting those individuals who spoke or understood the
many languages on which nothing has been printed. For this my present circumstances have provided
the most advantageous position that there has in the world been up until now, and that will again
only be realized with great difficulty in the coming centuries. This position has been and is that of
finding myself in Italy amid crowds of wise Jesuits, previously dispersed across nearly the entire face
of the Earth to spread the holy gospel, even to the most remote and barbarous of nations, and now
companions of mine embroiled in the same disgrace which, tearing us away from the breast of our
homeland, has cast us out to the beaches of Italy.
In this [undertaking], surrounded by ardent and wise missionaries from nearly all the nations known in
the world, I have been able to easily consult, some by word of mouth, and others by letter, requesting
from each one the words that from the language of the nation of their mission I place in my multilingual
vocabulary and in other volumes, and some indication of their grammar. With the guidance of several
of said missionaries I have formed grammars, and yet others have assisted me in forming them. These
manuscripts, and the many letters with which the missionaries responded to my questions and doubts
about the languages and nations that speak them, form an indispensable part of my small multilingual
library: and in this work I cite the names of the principal missionaries who have provided me the
information I put in it regarding the barbarous languages that they understand, and regarding the
nations of which they were missionaries or with whom they confined themselves.
121 For more biographical details see Fúrlong Cárdiff (1955:7-37).
122 The correspondence served, among other things, as the basis of an unpublished seven-page grammatical sketch
of Omagua that Hervás y Panduro produced. Our knowledge of this sketch stems from the fact that the German
linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt employed it in preparing his own sketch of Omagua at some point in the early
19th century (see introductory comments by Wolf Dietrich in von Humboldt (2011:417)).
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