Some brief and short Rules for the better learning of the _Indian_ tongue called _Poconchi_, or _Pocoman_, commonly used about _Guatemala_ and some other parts of _Honduras_.
Although it bee true that by the daily conversation which in most places the _Indians_ have with the _Spaniards_, they for the most part understand the _Spanish_ tongue in common and ordinary words, so that a _Spaniard_ may travell amongst them, and bee understood in what hee calleth for by some or other of the Officers, who are appointed to attend upon all such as travell and passe through their townes: Yet because the perfect knowledge of the _Spanish_ tongue is not so common to all _Indians_, both men and women, nor so generally spoken by them as their owne; therefore the Preists and Fryers have taken paines to learn the native tongues of severall places and countries, and have studied to bring them to a Form and method of Rules, that so the use of them may bee continued to such as shall succeed after them. Neither is there any one language generall to all places, but so many severall and different one from another, that from _Chiapa_, and _Zoques_, to _Guatemala_, and _San Salvador_, and all about _Honduras_, there are at least eighteen severall languages, and in this district some Fryers who have perfectly learned six or seven of them. Neither in any place are the _Indians_ taught or preached unto but in their native and mother tongue, which because the Preist onely can speake, therefore are they so much loved and respected by the Natives. And although for the time I lived there, I learned and could speake in two severall tongues, the one called _Cacchiquel_, the other _Poconchi_, or _Pocoman_, which have some connexion one with another; yet the _Poconchi_ being the easiest, and most elegant, and that wherein I did constantly preach and teach, I thought fit to set down some rules of it, (with the Lords Prayer, and brief declaration of every word in it) to witnesse and testifie to posterity the truth of my being in those parts, and the manner how those barbarous tongues have, are, and may be learned.
There is not in the _Poconchi_ tongue, nor in any other the diversity of declensions, which is in the _Latin_ tongue; yet there is a double way of declining all Nownes, and conjugating all Verbes, and that is with divers particles according to the words beginning with a vowell or a consonant; neither is there any difference of cases, but onely such as the said Particles or some Prepositions may distinguish.