Indigenous Language Literacy in Colonial Central America By Owen Jones

https://www.academia.edu/123564124/Indigenous_Language_Literacy_in_Colonial_Central_America The multifaceted development of indigenous language literacy in colonial Central America and in all of Spanish America included the instruction and education of missionary friars and priests as well as indigenous elite youths who would become scribes, choir masters, and parish caretakers in their municipalities. Both indigenous men and European monks and priests would use native languages to create documents using revised Latin letters for the ends of protecting private and community assets or spreading Catholicism. Indigenous scribes would sometimes use Nahuatl as a “vehicular language” to keep notarial documents in lieu of their own native languages. In Central America in the Cuchamatanes Mountains, rather than write in Mam, for example, scribes sometimes wrote in Central American Corrected Nahuatl. The informal education of some Spanish and casta men who conducted business in Central America with indigenous peoples was another facet of indigenous language literacy. They would oft... ...