Actual footage of the moment. I was there recording during colonization
DazSamueru on
Actually the New World viceroyalties made very little effort to spread the Spanish language after the conquest. The Catholic church quickly could get by with a combination of native languages (a version of the Nahuatl language with Roman characters was developed) and Latin, and it was easier to administer in local languages. Quechua actually spread under Spanish rule, displacing smaller indigenous languages. It was only after independence in the 19th century when the Latin American republics made a real top-down effort to enforce Spanish.
Ostler addresses this in *Empires of the Word*, which is about the spread of languages.
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Actual footage of the moment. I was there recording during colonization
Actually the New World viceroyalties made very little effort to spread the Spanish language after the conquest. The Catholic church quickly could get by with a combination of native languages (a version of the Nahuatl language with Roman characters was developed) and Latin, and it was easier to administer in local languages. Quechua actually spread under Spanish rule, displacing smaller indigenous languages. It was only after independence in the 19th century when the Latin American republics made a real top-down effort to enforce Spanish.
Ostler addresses this in *Empires of the Word*, which is about the spread of languages.
Historically accurate