Talk:Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (Yucatán conquistador)

message: Comment by User:Vivero, the main author of the Spanish-language article, in response to my request for his sources; copied from Wikipedia talk:Spanish Translation of the Week -- Jmabel | Talk 22:57, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
:Mainly/only... Bernal, indeed. He is the only eyewitness source, and also the most comprehensive one. In the article I also mention the letter sent by Veracruz founders to Charles V... but only to show that most contemporaries thought that Hernandez expedition started as a slavery raid. This letter is usually edited in the same book with the "Cartas de Relación" ("Report letters" could be a good translation?) of Hernan Cortes to the emperor, and is often confused with the first letter of Cortés, which unfortunately is lost. Talking about the same question, slavery raid yes or not, I also mention 20th century Cortés biographer Salvador de Madariaga, who wrote that it had nothing to do with slave traffic, and was only devoted to exploration and adventure (but Madariaga tends to be a rather "patriotic" biographer, not very neutral in my opinion). I also mention Diego de Landa's "Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán" (he was a franciscan priest, bishop of Yucatan, devoted to the conversion of the mayas), both for adding another testimony favouring the slavery hipothesis, and for doubting about the funny, but maybe uncertain, etimology Yucatan = I don´t understand you. Concerning the etimology of Yucatan, I also mention Fray Toribio de Benavente, "Motolinia" (another franciscan, but devoted to nahuatl speaking indians, not to mayas), maybe the first person that mentioned the funny story of the name of Yucatan. For writing the article I also re-read (but I didn't mention, if I remember well) my favourite teller (more than historian) of the Conquest of Mexico, the american William H. Prescott (a very interesting man. He deserves a longer biography in wikipedia; but, like Madariaga, he was a bit pro-spaniards)and the mexican biographer of Cortés (the modern one, and maybe one of the bests) Juan Miralles. I will add a.s.a.p. to the es: article the info about edition, ISBN, etc. of this sources; some of them are the same that I already added to the Cuauhtémoc biography (in spanish). Thank you for your suggestion, Jmabel, and please forgive me for my maccaronic english and for delaying the info about books and internet webs (it´s almost midnight in Spain, I have to sleep!) --Vivero 22:48, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: I'm pretty much finished with this. Thank you, Vivero for your excellent answers above. A (very) few difficulties remain; I bet you can help with most of these, too.
Hi, Jmabel I'm Vivero. I'ts a pleasure for me to try to help. After each difficulty (but think that most items are difficult also for me!):
*...acaso demasiado para ser del todo cierta — se cita a menudo. I certainly get the general point, but I don't precisely understand. If you can say this in English, great, otherwise even a Spanish paraphrase would probably do it for me.
:: ...whose surprising and amusing story -maybe too surprising and amusing to be a true story- is frequently quoted... What I wanted to say is that one must be skeptic when hearing stories that look too surprising and amusing... maybe the stories were devised with that goal, rather than truth. "se cita a menudo" is aproximately "is frequently mentioned, or quoted,.."
*...aclarando que al suyo le decían "tlati" Is this "clarifying that they called their own tlati", or do I misunderstand.
:: Yes, you are right, but I don´t know if it is understandable in English (maybe neither in Spanish!). The spaniards were talking about "their" bread, saying that it was made with yuca "nuestro pan está hecho de yuca", and the mayas were speaking about "their" bread, saying that it was called "tlati" ("aclarando que al suyo [a su pan] le llamaban tlati" --> clarifying that the name of mayan bread was "tlati"). Imagine that conversation between people speaking mutually unknown languages, speaking about many things, without understanding each other. In some moment of the conversation, the maya speaker repeats "yuca-tlati" several times, just reminding the talk about bread, and the spaniards, out of context, think that he is trying to inform about the name of his country... suddenly, a mixed caribbean-maya word is born! ... (of course, spanish bread was made of wheat... except in America, where there still was no wheat and yuca was a nice alternative)
* Would escopetas be correctly translated as "shotguns", or did it have a different meaning at this point in history? Elsewhere there is a reference to arcabuces, which translates unproblematically as "arquebusses". Were these escopetas something different?
::Yes, "escopetas" is "shotguns" according to my dictionary. Bernal Díaz del Castillo uses exactly the word "escopetas" ("y llevamos quince ballestas y diez escopetas..."), a bit surprising for me, for I used to think that "escopeta" was a modern word for a modern gun... Sorry, I have no idea about old fire arms, so I don`t know if "arcabuces" is precise. Anyway, Bernal wrote "escopetas", and for the soldiers using the weapon, "escopeteros"
*Similarly bateles: should this be translated as "dinghies", or is that anachronistic?
::Un batel is simply a small boat, according to the DRAE dictionary (by the way: the word comes from old english bat through french batel). A dinghy, according to my Merriam-Webster, is just the same, so it´s ok... Is tender another choice? Maybe tender is an older word than dinghy.
:::Come to think of it, "launches" is a great word to use here, since it refers to what the boats were used for, and elides any question of how they were constructed. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:03, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
*...desplazarse asidos a las bordas de las lanchas... Again, I get the approximate notion. I follow all of these words (except maybe asidos), but several of them (desplazarse, lanchas) are ambiguous enough that I can picture more than one actual scenario. Again, a paraphrase would probably help. 
::To save their lives, they had to quickly move (desplazarse) to the ship, almost swimming, taken root or taken hold (asidos) to the boards or edges of the boats, and therefore more vulnerable to the arrows and stones throwed by the indians. I remember that I used the word "lanchas" for formal reasons, to avoid the tiring repetition of batel and bote, but maybe is not the best word: just the same problem that you have with dinghy.  
:: I have some other slight difficulties or doubts with the English text, but I can't explain them now. Maybe next Saturday I will ask you about, Thank you --Vivero 01:07, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  last remaining translation difficulties 

message: Joe, thanks for the corrections re name abbreviations. As for the identification of the Spaniards' firearm as a musket, I was relying (as with much of the rest of the updates) on J.M. Cohen's 1963 (abridged) translation of Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain, published in Penguin Classics edition. In this, he translates:
:We took fifteen crossbows and ten muskets, and started to follow the road along which the Cacique was going with his great company of Indians. (p.19)
and:
:But, thanks be to God, when they felt the sharp edge of our swords and the effect of our crossbows and muskets, they quickly took to their heels, leaving fifteen dead on the field. (also p.19)
Cohen's translation of this term might not necessarily be specific or technically apt, and possibly he only uses it as a generic term for an early firearm. They might actually have been technically arquebuses, the time period seems to be about right, but our wikipedia musket article also tells us that muskets were around from possibly the 14thC. as well. I'm not really au fait with the military technology of the period, would have to do some further research to find out.--cjllw | TALK 06:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: They wouldn't have been arquebuses: he would have used the then-common Spanish word arquebustos. At that time, escopetas may well have meant muskets. I only know its modern meaning. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I've now asked about escopetas at that date on :es:Discusión:Escopeta. Hopefully a native speaker with expertise will respond. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

text: During the fighting, the Indians shouted to one another "Al calachuni, calachuni", which means in their language, "Attack and kill the captain."
I amended the description of this accordingly.--cjllw | TALK 08:14, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

text: On this one, I would say that Cohen is playing a bit fast and loose with his source. After all, it's not like the Spanish even necessarily knew exactly what they heard, let alone that Bernal Díaz wrote it down correctly 50 years later. And then he extrapolates from that. Functionally, I guess that is what it meant, but there is nothing in Bernal Díaz to bear that out. "Calachuni" seems generally equivalent to cacique; the al is Spanish; there is nothing more here than "to the captain/chief". - Jmabel | Talk 23:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ok thanks, hopefully our compañeros on es.wiki can help out. I agree that Bernal is not the sort of chap who would be attentively noting down their utterances in the heat of the battle- I'm sure by their subsequent actions the intentions of the attackers would have been unequivocal, whatever it was that they said. Perhaps it can be tweaked to indicate that this is only BD's later interpretation.--cjllw | TALK 01:09, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll take a shot - Jmabel | Talk 06:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

text: thanks Joe, that latest amendment is a neat solution.--cjllw | TALK 08:45, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Muskets, etc 

message: at first I read: "Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (died 1524) was a Spanish conquistador, known to history..." a while later I read: "Hernández did not live to see the continuation of his work; he died in 1517, the year of his expedition,..." - maybe it is my blame and some other Hernandez is meant but I don't think so -- Hartmann Schedel cheers 18:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right, it should be c.1517 not 1524. This was recently changed by an anon edit, have changed it back. Possibly they were confusing with the other Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, founder of León, Nicaragua & later executed by Pedrarias in 1526. While I don't think that the Yucatan Hernandez de Cordoba's date of death is exactly known, it's presumed he died from his wounds not very long after the expedition returned to Cuba in 1517.  --cjllw ʘ TALK 07:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: thank you for the fast response -- Hartmann Schedel cheers 11:14, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of Dead 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: no consensus. There seems to be no consensus if an article on Francisco Hernández de Córdoba is justified. I think this should either be taken to AfD, which is a better place to evaluate WP:Oneevent, or a separate discussion should be had on splitting this article. (non-admin closure) VR talk 01:45, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (Yucatán conquistador) →  – The article is about the expedition. There aren't any further biographical details about Francisco Hernández de Córdoba. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:31, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

text: Note that a disambiguator (1517) or (Yucatán) is needed. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

text: *I'm okay with suggestion by User:Walrasiad. Move most of this to an improved article on the expedition and leave behind a basic biography. Glendoremus (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 29 September 2021 

message: I'll be making a new page for the expedition to Yucatan details (but use references I already have as there's loads of better quality ones than Bernal Diaz). When done, I'll notify here / move expedition details from this page to the new page, so we can have this article be just a biography :) – Asdfjrjjj (talk) 09:36, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Page at Hernández de Córdoba expedition. Too spent to clean up this article atm but hopefully someone takes a razor to it, leaving just bio as per Sep 2021 discussion, would be grand. – Asdfjrjjj (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  New page for expedition