MEMORY AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE PRESERVATION OF THE LÍNGUA GERAL AMAZÔNICA: A CODEX IN DIALOGUE WITH THE PRESENT

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between memory, language, and technology in preserving the Língua Geral Amazônica (LGA), based on the semi-diplomatic edition of the Grámatica da lingua geral do Brazil, com hum diccionario dos vocábulos mais uzuaes, produced between 1750 and 1758 and preserved at the General Library of the University of Coimbra. Resulting from doctoral research in Philology, the study combines paleographic, codicological, and computational analyses to investigate the manuscript’s materiality, authorship, and social functions. The methodology included on-site observation, graphoscopic measurements, and a semi-diplomatic edition to reconstruct the historical process of the document’s production and circulation. The findings reveal two distinct scribal hands—likely those of the missionary Bettendorff and an Indigenous or mixed-race scribe—and confirm the codex’s dual role as both pedagogical tool and political testimony. The research demonstrates that, despite its erasure under the Pombaline Directory, the LGA survived in Nheengatu, still spoken in Upper Rio Negro communities. By proposing an “engaged philology,” the study interprets critical editing and digitization as acts of symbolic restitution and democratization of linguistic memory. Thus, technology, when allied with Philology, becomes an instrument of resistance and historical reconstruction, restoring to Amazonian communities the voice inscribed within their own colonial archives.