Hacer lo que uno siempre ha deseado. entrevista al Dr. Adolfo Constenla Umaña.

I have become a bit of obsessed with the late Dr. Adolfo Constenla Umaña, the emeinence grise of Chibchan linguistics.

He seems to have almost single-handedly fostered a cottage industry of studying the languages of Costa Rica. He was a wonderful, prolific writer, and clearly he must have been a marvelous fieldworker, because he produced an astonishing amount of research on many languages, mostly but not all from the Chibchan family.

I was so excited to find this interview by someone I interpret as Constenla’s protege, Carlos Sánchez Avedaño, who is carrying on Constenla’s work on Malecu and other languages of Costa Rica.

In this post I’m just going to collect notes from the interview, some of which I may end up adding to the Wikipedia page on Constenla: Adolfo Constenla Umaña

Random notes

The elementary school that Constenla attended in San José still exists, and it is called Escuela Juan Rafael Mora Porras.

https://www.facebook.com/escuelajuanrafaelmoraporras/

They have a charming Blogspot homepage:

https://escuelajuanrafaelmoraporras.blogspot.com/

A lawyer and politician, Juan Rafael Mora Porras was the first president after independence from Spain in 1821. He was a key figure in the country’s early development, and he is remembered for his efforts to modernize the country and promote education.

Constenla learned a considerable amount of Hungarian from neighbors as a child in San José.

He mentions this book:

https://archive.org/details/onindiantribesla00gabb/

Actually he used the Spanish translation in:

https://repositorios.cihac.fcs.ucr.ac.cr/cmelendez/items/8df758eb-345c-4dfd-aad3-f55ffca977f4

Fernández, León. "Colección de documentos para la historia de Costa Rica. Tomo III." Revista del Archivo Nacional 33.1-12 (1969): V-492.

Térraba

https://archive.org/details/ensayolexicogrf00gagigoog/

Pittier, Henri, and Carlos Gagini. Ensayo lexicográfico sobre la lengua de Térraba. Tipografía nacional, 1892.

Umaña, Adolfo Constenla. "Hacer lo que uno siempre ha deseado. entrevista al Dr. Adolfo Constenla Umana." Estudios de Lingüística Chibcha 35 (2016): 157-183.

The source of the present notes.

Books by Constenla

Poesía tradicional indígena costarricense / Adolfo Constenla Umaña. PM3351 .C65 1996

“Estudio introductorio sobre las literaturas tradicionales de los pueblos chibchas -- Textos guatusos -- Textos talamanqueños -- Textos borucas -- Textos térrabas -- Textos de la cultura guaimí bocotá -- Bibliografía.”