Details

Subjects:

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

Form/Genre:

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

Language:

Spanish; and Bribri, Cabecar and perhaps other Indian languages, or dialects, of the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. Notes in Spanish and English.

Summary:

C. Hermann Berendt's transcription of a vocabulary list of approximately 128 words in Spanish and an Indian dialect of the Talamanca region of Costa Rica, with inclusion of elements of Cabecar and Bribri, among others; accompanied by a pencil sketch of the region, depicting rivers and population groups, under the following title (in Berendt's hand): Sketch of distribution of the Talamanca Indians made by Prof. William M. Gabb, New York, July 1876 (label on verso: Gabb, Talamanca Indians, map). The map appears to be a copy made by Berendt. The vocabulary list contains over 200 Spanish entries, but some lack a corresponding Indian entry. A note in Berendt's hand, reporting an opinion attributed to Prof. Gabb, reads in its entirety: Not from Talamanca, though containing words of Cabecar and Bribri and other similar suspects; an admixture of the language of the Valientes, of whose idiom, however, we no nothing yet (f. 1r). The groups represented on the map are Bribri; Cabecar (also: San José de Cabecar?); and Tiribi (Teribe, Terraba). The rivers labeled in the area where these groups are concentrated are Choli or Zhorquin; Uren; Lari; Coen; and Tiliri. One other Indian group is labeled, in a different area of the map, in the vicinity of the Changina branch of the Tilorio River, with the following note: on the upper Changina, Changina Indians unapproachable for Whites as well as for Indians. In a note Berendt refers to the vocabulary as being one of the dialects of old Talamanca, either Bribri or Viceita (f. 2v). Daniel Garrison Brinton (p. 498) refers to this manuscript as containing a specimen of Guetar dialect. The manuscript leaves were originally tipped in on flyleaf inside of contemporary paper covers, which accompany the manuscript. Possibly this item has some relationship to Ms. Coll. 700, Item 157, by Lebkowitz, which Berendt describes as coming to him by a similar path.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from cover.
This was the fifteenth 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.
Foliation: Paper, 3. Manuscript comprises 2 leaves (bifolium) of vocabulary, and a map (1 leaf).
Layout: Vocabulary written in 26-28 lines, in 2 columns of entries; within each column, Spanish is on the left and the Indian language on the right.
Script: Vocabulary written in the hand of C. Hermann Berendt.
Decoration: Pencilled map depicting rivers and population groups.
Origin: Written in the hand of C. Hermann Berendt between approximately 1874 and 1876, with map drawn ca. 1876, probably in New York.

Penn Provenance:

Berendt notes that he received the vocabulary from Charles N. Riotte, who had preserved it during the time that he was the United States ambassador to Costa Rice in San José (1861-1867). In 1867, Riotte had given it to the Department of State, Washington, D.C., where, later, in 1874, it was transcribed (and sent to Berendt?). Berendt says that he does not remember who composed it or where. (f. 2v)
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. 152).
Described in Weeks, John M. "Karl Hermann Berendt: Colección de manuscritos lingüistícos de Centroamérica y Mesoamérica," Mesoamérica 36 (Dec. 1998), p. 681 (no. 173).
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 15).

Publications about:

Brinton, Daniel Garrison. "The ethnic affinities of the Guetares of Costa Rica." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 36 (1897): 496-498.

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Coll. 700, Item 152

Contributor:

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

OCLC:

537327638