Reglas de Ortografia, Diccionario y Arte del Idioma Othomi: Breve instruccion para los principiantes

Author: Neve y Molina, Luis

Year: 1863

Publisher: Tipografia de Mariano Villanueva

Place: Mexico City

Description:

254+[2] pages sextodecimo (4 ¾" x 3 ¼" bound in nineteenth century quarter leather and boards, spine tooled in gilt. Second Edition. First published in 1767. 

Consists of 3 parts: Part 1, “Reglas de orthographia” (pages 1-12); Part 2, “Diccionario de los nombres, y verbos mas comunes, y necessarios en el idioma othomì”, listing Otomi equivalents for approximately 2000 terms in Spanish alphabetical order (pages 13-95) and concluding with a list of numbers 1-1000 (pages 95-96); and Part 3, “Arte del idioma othomi; breve compendio de reglas, para que los principiantes puedan con facilidad formar oraciones, ê instruirse en los mayores rudimentos de este idioma” (pages 97-160), in Spanish with Otomi examples. Author identified as “cathedratico proprietario de dicho idioma en el Real, y Pontificio Colegio Saminario, examinador synodal, è interprete de el Tribunal de Fè en el Provisorato de Indios de este Arzobispado”

A foundational 18th-century dictionary and orthography for the native Mexican Otomi language. Neve y Molina, who may have been Otomi himself, was the first to set out standard orthographical rules for spellings of words in the Mexican tongue. The work is split into three parts. The first contains Molina's orthography; the second provides Otomi equivalents for over two thousand Spanish words and a list of numbers from one to one thousand; and the third section consists of a grammar of the language in Spanish with examples of Otomi phrases. "The author was the first to establish a proper system of characters, which has been since retained" --Sabin.

Neve y Molina was a native Otomi and the preliminary matter of the volume indicate that he was professor of the language at the Tridentine Seminary in Mexico City and chief translator of Otomi at the Ecclesiastical Court. His grammar was the earliest published of this language. Palau (#190160) notes the rarity of the first edition of 1767. Only one copy of the present edition has sold at auction since at least 1975, according to American Book Prices Current. 

Condition: 

Rubbing to covers; offset to endpapers, blue residue of original wrapper remnant along gutter margin of title page; else very good.