Details

Other Title:

Viceita o bizeita : blancos, valientes, talamancos

Subjects:

Bribri dialect -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
Cabecar language -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
Indians of Central America -- Costa Rica -- Languages.
Indians of Central America.
Language and languages.
Cabecar language.
Bribri dialect.
Costa Rica -- Languages.
Costa Rica.

Form/Genre:

Glossaries.
Manuscripts, Spanish.
Manuscripts, Latin American.
Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
Controlled vocabularies.

Language:

Spanish and an Indian language (or dialect) of the Talamanca region of Costa Rica, probably Bribri and possibly also Cabecar.

Summary:

C. Hermann Berendt's transcription of 182 vocabulary entries, including numbers, from the list that Karl Scherzer attributed to the Blanco, Valiente, and Talamanca tribes, in his article entitled Sprachen der Indianer Central-Amerika's (Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Classe, 15. Band, Wien, 1855, p. 28-37). The name Viceita, which Berendt substitutes (title and cover), is often associated with the Bribri, and sometimes also with the Cabecar Indians. Scherzer's article comprised a comparative table of languages of Indians of Central America, and he described the above-named tribes as inhabiting the eastern coast of Costa Rica between Rio Zent and Boca del Toro. Scherzer provided the Indian equivalents of German vocabulary arranged in the order of Albert Gallatin's comparative Indian vocabulary. This manuscript is Berendt's revised version of Ms. Coll. 700, Item 158. It comprises vocabulary entries in Spanish followed by the Indian word in the spelling according to Berendt's analytical alphabet (omitting the spelling according to Scherzer, which Berendt had included in the earlier version). In this revised version of the manuscript, Berendt presents the entries in the alphabetical order of the Spanish entries, and places the list of numbers at the end (p. 10). The notes appended to the vocabulary in the earlier version appear here in revised form as a more formal preface (p. iii-vii), although still with corrections, and some passages stricken. As in the earlier version, Berendt makes reference in the preface (p. iii) to the later publication of this same vocabulary in a book that Scherzer co-authored with Moritz Wagner, Die Republik Costa Rica in Central-Amerika (Leipzig, 1857; p. 573-576). He explains that in the latter work Scherzer reported his source to be a certain Indian by the name of Tomas Ottárola of the Blancos tribe, who was born in San José and lived at the time in Orosi; and that at one point in a note (Wagner/Scherzer, p. 563) he refers to the vocabulary as being the language of the Viseitas (Viceitas) and Blancos. The date 1853 that Berendt gives in his title appears to be a reference, also based on the same work, to when Scherzer actually collected the vocabulary during his travels. In further remarks pertaining to the specification of the Indians and the language in question, Berendt provides additional quotations from Wagner/Scherzer (p. v-vi); refers to a communication he had from Philipp J. J. Valentini (p. v, and stricken passage p. vi); and cites (p. vi) an article by Alexander von Frantzius (Die Säugethiere Costaricas, Archiv für Naturgeschichte, Jg. 35, 1869, p. 286). He also sketches in pencil the location of the river Zent, in the vicinity of the rivers Matina and Chirripo (p. vi).

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from title page (p. i).
Bound together in the same paper cover with Ms. Coll. 700, Item 158.
This was the thirteenth of 19 manuscripts formerly bound together, probably by Daniel Garrison Brinton, and now disbound (Items 129-136, 143, 145, 146, 151-155, and 157-159). The bound volume had the spine title: Languages of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Pagination: Paper, ii + 10 + iii leaves; [i-iii], iv-vii, [viii (blank)], [9], 10-18, [19, 20 (blank)]; contemporary pagination in ink, with roman numerals upper center and arabic numerals upper outer corners.
Layout: Written in 20 lines, with preface (p. iii-vii) in long lines, and vocabulary (p. 9-18) in 2 columns, with Spanish on the left and the Indian language on the right.
Script: Written in the hand of C. Hermann Berendt.
Decoration: Pencil sketch of the Costa Rican rivers Matina, Chirripo and Zent (p. vi).
Binding: Contemporary paper covers; sewn. Gatherings almost or completely detached from each other.
Origin: Written sometime between the publication of the 1857 edition of Die Republik Costa Rica in Central-Amerika, by Moritz Wagner and Karl Scherzer, and C. Hermann Berendt's death in 1878.

Penn Provenance:

From the collection of C. Hermann Berendt, later acquired by Daniel Garrison Brinton (ex libris stamp on the verso of front free endpaper in the bound volume that once contained the present item).

Cited in:

Described in Brinton, Daniel Garrison. Catalogue of the Berendt Linguistic Collection (Department of Archaeology and Paleontology, University of Pennsylvania, 1900), p. 29 (no. 159).
Described in Weeks, John M. "Karl Hermann Berendt: Colección de manuscritos lingüistícos de Centroamérica y Mesoamérica," Mesoamérica 36 (Dec. 1998), p. 676 (no. 155).
Described in Weeks, John M. The Library of Daniel Garrison Brinton (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2002), p. 68-70 (no. 388, document 13).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Coll. 700, Item 159

Contributor:

Berendt, C. Hermann (Carl Hermann), 1817-1878, former owner.
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison), 1837-1899, former owner.

OCLC:

537194267