Nahuatl
Nahuatl | |
---|---|
Aztec, Mexicano | |
Nawatlahtolli, mexikatlahtolli,[1] mexkatl, mexikanoh, masewaltlahtol | |
Native to | Mexico |
Region | Mexico: Puebla Veracruz Hidalgo Guerrero San Luis Potosí State of Mexico Nuevo León Mexico City Morelos Tlaxcala Jalisco Tamaulipas Oaxaca Michoacán Durango Chihuahua Communities in: US El Salvador Nicaragua[2][3] Guatemala Honduras Costa Rica[4] Canada |
Ethnicity | Nahua peoples |
Native speakers | 1.7 million in Mexico (2020 census)[5] |
Uto-Aztecan
| |
Early form | |
Dialects | |
Latin Aztec script (up to 16th century) | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Mexico (through the General Law of Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples)[6] |
Regulated by | Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas[7] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | nah |
ISO 639-3 | nhe Huasteca NahuatlFor other varieties, see Nahuan languages |
Glottolog | azte1234 Aztec |
Pre-contact (green) and current (red) extent of Nahuatl as a dominant language in Mexico | |
Nahuatl (English: /ˈnɑːwɑːtəl/ NAH-wah-təl;[8] Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaːwat͡ɬ] ⓘ),[cn 1] Aztec, or Mexicano[11] is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE.
After the conquest, when Spanish colonists and missionaries introduced the
Today, Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along the coastline. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are not mutually intelligible. Huasteca Nahuatl, with over one million speakers, is the most-spoken variety. All varieties have been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish. No modern Nahuan languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery.[15] Under Mexico's General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, promulgated in 2003,[16] Nahuatl and the other 63 indigenous languages of Mexico are recognized as lenguas nacionales ('national languages') in the regions where they are spoken. They are given the same status as Spanish within their respective regions.[cn 2]
Nahuan languages exhibit a complex morphology, or system of word formation, characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination. This means that morphemes – words or fragments of words that each contain their own separate meaning – are often strung together to make longer complex words.
Through a very long period of development alongside other indigenous
Classification
As a language label, the term Nahuatl encompasses a group of closely related languages or divergent dialects within the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Mexican
In the past, the branch of Uto-Aztecan to which Nahuatl belongs has been called Aztecan. From the 1990s onward, the alternative designation Nahuan has been frequently used instead, especially in Spanish-language publications. The Nahuan (Aztecan) branch of Uto-Aztecan is widely accepted as having two divisions: General Aztec and Pochutec.[18]
General Aztec encompasses the Nahuatl and Pipil languages.[cn 3] Pochutec is a scantily attested language, which became extinct in the 20th century,[19][20] and which Campbell and Langacker classify as being outside general Aztec. Other researchers have argued that Pochutec should be considered a divergent variant of the western periphery.[21]
Nahuatl denotes at least Classical Nahuatl, together with related modern languages spoken in Mexico. The inclusion of Pipil in this group is debated among linguists. Lyle Campbell (1997) classified Pipil as separate from the Nahuatl branch within general Aztecan, whereas dialectologists such as Una Canger, Karen Dakin, Yolanda Lastra, and Terrence Kaufman have preferred to include Pipil within the General Aztecan branch, citing close historical ties with the eastern peripheral dialects of General Aztec.[22]
Current subclassification of Nahuatl rests on research by
Terminology
The terminology used to describe varieties of spoken Nahuatl is inconsistently applied. Many terms are used with multiple denotations, or a single dialect grouping goes under several names. Sometimes, older terms are substituted with newer ones or with the speakers' own name for their specific variety. The word Nahuatl is itself a Nahuatl word, probably derived from the word nāhuatlahtōlli
The speakers of Nahuatl themselves often refer to their language as either Mexicano[25] or some word derived from mācēhualli, the Nahuatl word for 'commoner'. One example of the latter is the Nahuatl spoken in Tetelcingo, Morelos, whose speakers call their language mösiehuali.[26] The Pipil people of El Salvador do not call their own language Pipil, as most linguists do, but rather nāwat.[27] The Nahuas of Durango call their language Mexicanero.[28] Speakers of Nahuatl of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec call their language mela'tajtol ('the straight language').[29] Some speech communities use Nahuatl as the name for their language, although it seems to be a recent innovation. Linguists commonly identify localized dialects of Nahuatl by adding as a qualifier the name of the village or area where that variety is spoken.[30]
History
Pre-Columbian period
On the issue of geographic origin, the consensus of linguists during the 20th century was that the Uto-Aztecan language family originated in the southwestern United States.[31] Evidence from archaeology and ethnohistory supports the thesis of a southward diffusion across the North American continent, specifically that speakers of early Nahuan languages migrated from Aridoamerica into central Mexico in several waves. But recently, the traditional assessment has been challenged by Jane H. Hill, who proposes instead that the Uto-Aztecan language family originated in central Mexico and spread northwards at a very early date.[32] This hypothesis and the analyses of data that it rests upon have received serious criticism.[33][34]
The proposed migration of speakers of the Proto-Nahuan language into the Mesoamerican region has been placed at sometime around AD 500, towards the end of the Early Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.[35][36][37] Before reaching the Mexican Plateau, pre-Nahuan groups probably spent a period of time in contact with the Corachol languages Cora and Huichol of northwestern Mexico (which are also Uto-Aztecan).[38]
The major political and cultural center of Mesoamerica in the Early Classic period was Teotihuacan. The identity of the language(s) spoken by Teotihuacan's founders has long been debated, with the relationship of Nahuatl to Teotihuacan being prominent in that enquiry.[39] While in the 19th and early 20th centuries it was presumed that Teotihuacan had been founded by speakers of Nahuatl, later linguistic and archaeological research tended to disconfirm this view. Instead, the timing of the Nahuatl influx was seen to coincide more closely with Teotihuacan's fall than its rise, and other candidates such as Totonacan identified as more likely.[40] But recently, evidence from Mayan epigraphy of possible Nahuatl loanwords in Mayan languages has been interpreted as demonstrating that other Mesoamerican languages may have been borrowing words from Proto-Nahuan (or its early descendants) significantly earlier than previously thought, bolstering the possibility of a significant Nahuatl presence at Teotihuacan.[41]
In Mesoamerica the Mayan, Oto-Manguean and Mixe–Zoque languages had coexisted for millennia. This had given rise to the Mesoamerican language area (language area refers to a set of language traits have become common among the area's languages by diffusion and not by evolution within a set of languages belonging to a common genetic subgrouping). After the Nahuas migrated into the Mesoamerican cultural zone, their language too adopted some of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.[42] Examples of such adopted traits are the use of relational nouns, the appearance of calques, or loan translations, and a form of possessive construction typical of Mesoamerican languages.
A language which was the ancestor of Pochutec split from Proto-Nahuan (or Proto-Aztecan) possibly as early as AD 400, arriving in Mesoamerica a few centuries earlier than the bulk of speakers of Nahuan languages.[12] Some Nahuan groups migrated south along the Central American isthmus, reaching as far as Nicaragua. The critically endangered Pipil language of El Salvador is the only living descendant of the variety of Nahuatl once spoken south of present-day Mexico.[43]
Beginning in the 7th century, Nahuan speakers rose to power in central Mexico. The people of the Toltec culture of Tula, which was active in central Mexico around the 10th century, are thought to have been Nahuatl speakers. By the 11th century, Nahuatl speakers were dominant in the Valley of Mexico and far beyond, with settlements including Azcapotzalco, Colhuacan and Cholula rising to prominence. Nahua migrations into the region from the north continued into the Postclassic period. One of the last of these migrations to arrive in the Valley of Mexico settled on an island in the Lake Texcoco and proceeded to subjugate the surrounding tribes. This group was the Mexica, who over the course of the next three centuries founded an empire named Tenochtitlan. Their political and linguistic influence came to extend into Central America and Nahuatl became a lingua franca among merchants and elites in Mesoamerica, e.g., among the Maya Kʼicheʼ people.[44] As Tenochtitlan grew to become the largest urban center in Central America and one of the largest in the world at the time,[45] it attracted speakers of Nahuatl from diverse areas giving birth to an urban form of Nahuatl with traits from many dialects. This urbanized variety of Tenochtitlan is what came to be known as Classical Nahuatl as documented in colonial times.[46]
Colonial period
With the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, Nahuatl was displaced as the dominant regional language, but remained important in Nahua communities under Spanish rule. There is extensive colonial-era documentation in Nahuatl for Tlaxcala, Cuernavaca, Culhuacan, Coyoacan, Toluca and other locations in the Valley of Mexico and beyond. Starting in the 1970s, scholars of Mesoamerican ethnohistory have analyzed local-level texts in Nahuatl and other indigenous languages to gain insight into cultural change in the colonial era via linguistic changes, known at present as the New Philology.[47] A number of these texts have been translated and published in part or in their entirety. The types of documentation include censuses, especially a very early set from the Cuernavaca region,[48][49] town council records from Tlaxcala,[50] and testaments of individual Nahuas.[51]
Since the Spanish made alliances with first the Nahuatl speakers from
As a part of their missionary efforts, members of various
In 1570, King Philip II of Spain decreed that Nahuatl should become the official language of the colonies of New Spain to facilitate communication between the Spanish and natives of the colonies.[61] This led to Spanish missionaries teaching Nahuatl to Amerindians living as far south as Honduras and El Salvador. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Classical Nahuatl was used as a literary language, and a large corpus of texts from that period exists today. They include histories, chronicles, poetry, theatrical works, Christian canonical works, ethnographic descriptions, and administrative documents. The Spanish permitted a great deal of autonomy in the local administration of indigenous towns during this period, and in many Nahuatl-speaking towns the language was the de facto administrative language both in writing and speech. A large body of Nahuatl literature was composed during this period, including the Florentine Codex, a twelve-volume compendium of Aztec culture compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún; Crónica Mexicayotl, a chronicle of the royal lineage of Tenochtitlan by Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc; Cantares Mexicanos, a collection of songs in Nahuatl; a Nahuatl-Spanish/Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary compiled by Alonso de Molina; and the Huei tlamahuiçoltica, a description in Nahuatl of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe.[62]
Grammars and dictionaries of indigenous languages were composed throughout the colonial period, but their quality was highest in the initial period.[63] The friars found that learning all the indigenous languages was impossible in practice, so they concentrated on Nahuatl. For a time, the linguistic situation in Mesoamerica remained relatively stable, but in 1696, Charles II of Spain issued a decree banning the use of any language other than Spanish throughout the Spanish Empire. In 1770, another decree, calling for the elimination of the indigenous languages, did away with Classical Nahuatl as a literary language.[61] Until Mexican Independence in 1821, the Spanish courts admitted Nahuatl testimony and documentation as evidence in lawsuits, with court translators rendering it in Spanish.[64]
Modern period
Throughout the modern period the situation of indigenous languages has grown increasingly precarious in Mexico, and the numbers of speakers of virtually all indigenous languages have dwindled. Although the absolute number of Nahuatl speakers has actually risen over the past century, indigenous populations have become increasingly marginalized in Mexican society. In 1895, Nahuatl was spoken by over 5% of the population. By 2000, this proportion had fallen to 1.49%. Given the process of marginalization combined with the trend of migration to urban areas and to the United States, some linguists are warning of impending
From the early 20th century to at least the mid-1980s, educational policies in Mexico focused on the Hispanicization (castellanización) of indigenous communities, teaching only Spanish and discouraging the use of indigenous languages.[67] As a result, today there is no group of Nahuatl speakers having attained general literacy in Nahuatl,[68] while their literacy rate in Spanish also remains much lower than the national average.[69] Even so, Nahuatl is still spoken by well over a million people, of whom around 10% are monolingual. The survival of Nahuatl as a whole is not imminently endangered, but the survival of certain dialects is, and some dialects have already become extinct within the last few decades of the 20th century.[70]
The 1990s saw the onset of a radical change in official Mexican government policies towards indigenous and linguistic rights. Developments of accords in the international rights arena
In particular, the federal Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas ['General Law on the Language Rights of the Indigenous Peoples', promulgated 13 March 2003] recognizes all the country's indigenous languages, including Nahuatl, as national languages and gives indigenous people the right to use them in all spheres of public and private life. In Article 11, it grants access to compulsory, bilingual and intercultural education.[72] Nonetheless, progress towards institutionalizing Nahuatl and securing linguistic rights for its speakers has been slow.[60]
Demography and distribution
Region | Totals | Percentages |
---|---|---|
Federal District
|
37,450 | 0.44% |
Guerrero | 136,681 | 4.44% |
Hidalgo | 221,684 | 9.92% |
State of Mexico | 55,802 | 0.43% |
Morelos | 18,656 | 1.20% |
Oaxaca | 10,979 | 0.32% |
Puebla | 416,968 | 8.21% |
San Luis Potosí | 138,523 | 6.02% |
Tlaxcala | 23,737 | 2.47% |
Veracruz | 338,324 | 4.90% |
Rest of Mexico | 50,132 | 0.10% |
Total: | 1,448,937 | 1.49% |
Today, a spectrum of Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered areas stretching from the northern state of Durango to Tabasco in the southeast. Pipil,[27] the southernmost Nahuan language, is spoken in El Salvador by a small number of speakers. According to IRIN-International, the Nawat Language Recovery Initiative project, there are no reliable figures for the contemporary numbers of speakers of Pipil. Numbers may range anywhere from "perhaps a few hundred people, perhaps only a few dozen".[73]
According to the 2000 census by INEGI, Nahuatl is spoken by an estimated 1.45 million people, some 198,000 (14.9%) of whom are monolingual.[74] There are many more female than male monolinguals, and women represent nearly two-thirds of the total number. The states of Guerrero and Hidalgo have the highest rates of monolingual Nahuatl speakers relative to the total Nahuatl speaking population, at 24.2% and 22.6%, respectively. For most other states the percentage of monolinguals among the speakers is less than 5%. This means that in most states more than 95% of the Nahuatl speaking population are bilingual in Spanish.[75]
The largest concentrations of Nahuatl speakers are found in the states of
Phonology
Nahuan languages are defined as a subgroup of Uto-Aztecan by having undergone a number of shared changes from the
Phonemes
|
- * The glottal phoneme, called the saltillo, occurs only after vowels. In many modern dialects it is realized as a [h], but in others, as in Classical Nahuatl, it is a glottal stop [ʔ].[80]
In many Nahuatl dialects vowel length contrast is vague, and in others it has become lost entirely. The dialect of Tetelcingo (nhg) developed the vowel length into a difference in quality:[81]
Long vowels | Short vowels | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Classical Nahuatl | /iː/ | /eː/ | /aː/ | /oː/ | /i/ | /e/ | /a/ | /o/ |
Tetelcingo dialect | /i/ | /i̯e/ | /ɔ/ | /u/ | /ɪ/ | /e/ | /a/ | /o/ |
Allophony
Most varieties have relatively simple patterns of
Phonotactics
Classical Nahuatl and most of the modern varieties have fairly simple phonological systems. They allow only syllables with maximally one initial and one final consonant.[84] Consonant clusters occur only word-medially and over syllable boundaries. Some morphemes have two alternating forms: one with a vowel i to prevent consonant clusters and one without it. For example, the absolutive suffix has the variant forms -tli (used after consonants) and -tl (used after vowels).[85] Some modern varieties, however, have formed complex clusters from vowel loss. Others have contracted syllable sequences, causing accents to shift or vowels to become long.[cn 5]
Stress
Most Nahuatl dialects have stress on the penultimate syllable of a word. In Mexicanero from Durango, many unstressed syllables have disappeared from words, and the placement of syllable stress has become phonemic.[86]
Morphology and syntax
The Nahuatl languages are
The following verb shows how the verb is marked for subject, patient, object, and indirect object:
ni-
I-
mits-
you-
teː-
someone-
tla-
something-
makiː
give
-lti
-CAUS
-s
-FUT
"I shall make somebody give something to you"[cn 6] (Classical Nahuatl)
Nouns
The Nahuatl noun has a relatively complex structure. The only obligatory inflections are for number (singular and plural) and possession (whether the noun is possessed, as is indicated by a prefix meaning 'my', 'your', etc.). Nahuatl has neither case nor gender, but Classical Nahuatl and some modern dialects distinguish between animate and inanimate nouns. In Classical Nahuatl the animacy distinction manifested with respect to pluralization, as only animate nouns could take a plural form, and all inanimate nouns were uncountable (as the words bread and money are uncountable in English). Now, many speakers do not maintain this distinction and all nouns may take the plural inflection.[88] One dialect, that of the Eastern Huasteca, has a distinction between two different plural suffixes for animate and inanimate nouns.[89]
In most varieties of Nahuatl, nouns in the unpossessed singular form generally take an absolutive suffix. The most common forms of the absolutive are -tl after vowels, -tli after consonants other than l, and -li after l. Nouns that take the plural usually form the plural by adding one of the plural absolutive suffixes -tin or -meh, but some plural forms are irregular or formed by reduplication. Some nouns have competing plural forms.[90]
Singular noun: kojo coyote -tl -ABS "coyote" (Classical Nahuatl) |
Plural animate noun: kojo coyote -meʔ -PL "coyotes" (Classical Nahuatl)
|
Plural animate noun with reduplication:
/koː~kojo-ʔ/
PL~coyote-PL
"coyotes" (Classical Nahuatl)
Nahuatl distinguishes between possessed and unpossessed forms of nouns. The absolutive suffix is not used on possessed nouns. In all dialects, possessed nouns take a prefix agreeing with number and person of its possessor. Possessed plural nouns take the ending -/waːn/.[91]
Absolutive noun: kal house -li -ABS "house" (Classical Nahuatl) |
Possessed noun: no- my- kal house "my house" (Classical Nahuatl)
|
Possessed plural:
no-
my-
kal
house
-waːn
-PL
"my houses" (Classical Nahuatl)
Nahuatl does not have
Uses of relational noun/postposition/locative -pan with a possessive prefix: no-pan my-in/on "in/on me" (Classical Nahuatl) iː-pan its-in/on "in/on it" (Classical Nahuatl) iː-pan its-in kal-li house-ABS "in the house" (Classical Nahuatl)
|
Use with a preceding noun stem: kal-pan house-in "in the house" (Classical Nahuatl)
|
Noun compounds are commonly formed by combining two or more nominal stems or combining a nominal stem with an adjectival or verbal stem.[95]
Pronouns
Nahuatl generally distinguishes three persons, both in the singular and plural numbers. In at least one modern dialect, the
First person plural pronoun in Classical Nahuatl:
|
First person plural pronouns in Isthmus-Mecayapan Nahuat:
|
Much more common is an honorific/non-honorific distinction, usually applied to second and third persons but not first.
Non-honorific forms:
|
Honorific forms
|
Numerals
Nahuatl has a vigesimal (base-20) numbering system. The base values are cempoalli (1 × 20), centzontli (1 × 400), cenxiquipilli (1 × 8,000), cempoalxiquipilli (1 × 20 × 8,000 = 160,000), centzonxiquipilli (1 × 400 × 8,000 = 3,200,000) and cempoaltzonxiquipilli (1 × 20 × 400 × 8,000 = 64,000,000). The ce(n/m) prefix at the beginning means 'one' (as in 'one hundred' and 'one thousand') and is replaced with the corresponding number to get the names of other multiples of the power. For example, ome (2) × poalli (20) = ompoalli (40), ome (2) × tzontli (400) = ontzontli (800). The -li in poalli (and xiquipilli) and the -tli in tzontli are grammatical noun suffixes that are appended only at the end of the word; thus poalli, tzontli and xiquipilli compound together as poaltzonxiquipilli.
Verbs
The Nahuatl verb is quite complex and inflects for many grammatical categories. The verb is composed of a root,
Most Nahuatl dialects distinguish three tenses: present, past, and future, and two aspects:
Most Nahuatl varieties have a number of ways to alter the
The following verbal form has two verbal roots and is inflected for causative voice and both a direct and indirect object:
ni-
I-
kin-
them-
tla-
something-
kwa-
eat-
ltiː-
CAUS-
s-
FUT-
neki
want
"I want to feed them" (Classical Nahuatl)
Some Nahuatl varieties, notably Classical Nahuatl, can inflect the verb to show the direction of the verbal action going away from or towards the speaker. Some also have specific inflectional categories showing purpose and direction and such complex notions as "to go in order to" or "to come in order to", "go, do and return", "do while going", "do while coming", "do upon arrival", or "go around doing".[100][101]
Classical Nahuatl and many modern dialects have grammaticalised ways to express politeness towards addressees or even towards people or things that are being mentioned, by using special verb forms and special "honorific suffixes".[102]
Familiar verbal form: ti-mo-tlaːlo-a you-yourself-run-PRS "you run" (Classical Nahuatl) |
Honorific verbal form: ti-mo-tlaːlo-tsino-a you-yourself-run-HON-PRS "You run" (said with respect) (Classical Nahuatl)
|
Reduplication
Many varieties of Nahuatl have
- /wetsi/ 'he/she falls'
- /we:-wetsi/ 'he/she falls several times'
- /weʔ-wetsi-ʔ/ 'they fall (many people)'[104]
Syntax
Some linguists have argued that Nahuatl displays the properties of a
Michel Launey argues that Classical Nahuatl had a verb-initial basic word order with extensive freedom for variation, which was then used to encode
It has been argued, most prominently by the linguist Michel Launey, that Classical Nahuatl syntax is best characterised by "omnipredicativity", meaning that any noun or verb in the language is in fact a full predicative sentence.[109] A radical interpretation of Nahuatl syntactic typology, this view nonetheless seems to account for some of the language's peculiarities, for example, why nouns must also carry the same agreement prefixes as verbs, and why predicates do not require any noun phrases to function as their arguments. For example, the verbal form tzahtzi means 'he/she/it shouts', and with the second person prefix titzahtzi it means 'you shout'. Nouns are inflected in the same way: the noun conētl means not just 'child', but also 'it is a child', and ticonētl means 'you are a child'. This prompts the omnipredicative interpretation, which posits that all nouns are also predicates. According to this interpretation, a phrase such as tzahtzi in conētl should not be interpreted as meaning just 'the child screams' but, rather, 'it screams, (the one that) is a child'.[110]
Contact phenomena
Nearly 500 years of intense contact between speakers of Nahuatl and speakers of Spanish, combined with the minority status of Nahuatl and the higher prestige associated with Spanish has caused many changes in modern Nahuatl varieties, with large numbers of words borrowed from Spanish into Nahuatl, and the introduction of new syntactic constructions and grammatical categories.[111]
For example, a construction like the following, with several borrowed words and particles, is common in many modern varieties (Spanish loanwords in boldface):
pero
but
āmo
not
tēchentenderoa
they-us-understand-PL
lo
that
que
which
tlen
what
tictoah
we-it-say
en
in
mexicano.[cn 7]
Nahuatl
"But they don't understand what we say in Nahuatl" (Malinche Nahuatl)[112]
In some modern dialects basic word order has become a fixed
ti-ya
you-go
ti-k-wika
you-it-carry
ka
with
tel
you
"are you going to carry it with you?" (Michoacán Nahual)[108]
In this example from
amo
not
wel
can
kalaki-yá
he-enter-PAST
pin
in
kal
house
porke
because
ʣakwa-tiká
it-closed-was
im
the
pwerta
door
"He couldn't enter the house because the door was closed" (Mexicanero Nahuat)[115]
Many dialects have also undergone a degree of simplification of their morphology that has caused some scholars to consider them to have ceased to be
Vocabulary
was called tōmatl; the latter is the source for the English word tomato.Many Nahuatl words have been borrowed into the Spanish language, most of which are terms designating things indigenous to the Americas. Some of these loans are restricted to Mexican or Central American Spanish, but others have entered all the varieties of Spanish in the world. A number of them, such as chocolate, tomato and avocado have made their way into many other languages via Spanish.[117]
For instance, in English, two of the most prominent are undoubtedly chocolate
Writing and literature
Writing
Traditionally, Pre-Columbian Aztec writing has not been considered a true writing system, since it did not represent the full vocabulary of a spoken language in the way that the writing systems of the Old World or the
However, epigrapher Alfonso Lacadena has argued that by the eve of the Spanish invasion, one school of Nahua scribes, those of Tetzcoco, had developed a fully syllabic script which could represent spoken language phonetically in the same way that the Maya script did.[121] Some other epigraphers have questioned the claim, arguing that although the syllabicity was clearly extant in some early colonial manuscripts (hardly any pre-Columbian manuscripts have survived), this could be interpreted as a local innovation inspired by Spanish literacy rather than a continuation of a pre-Columbian practice.[122]
The Spanish introduced the
When Nahuatl became the subject of focused linguistic studies in the 20th century, linguists acknowledged the need to represent all the phonemes of the language. Several practical orthographies were developed to transcribe the language, many using the Americanist transcription system. With the establishment of Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas in 2004, new attempts to create standardized orthographies for the different dialects were resumed; however to this day there is no single official orthography for Nahuatl.[124] Apart from dialectal differences, major issues in transcribing Nahuatl include:
- whether to follow Spanish orthographic practice and write /k/ with c and qu, /kʷ/ with cu and uc, /s/ with c and z, or s, and /w/ with hu and uh, or u.[124]
- how to write the saltillo phoneme (in some dialects pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ] and in others as an [h]), which has been spelled with j, h, ꞌ (apostrophe), or a grave accent on the preceding vowel, but which traditionally has often been omitted in writing.[124]
- whether and how to represent vowel length, e.g. by double vowels or by the use of macrons.[124]
In 2018, Nahua peoples from 16 states in the country began collaborating with INALI creating a new modern orthography called Yankwiktlahkwilolli,[129] designed to be the standardized orthography of Nahuatl in the coming years.[130][131] The modern writing has much greater use in the modern variants than in the classic variant, since the texts, documents and literary works of the time usually use the Jesuit one.[132]
Phoneme | IPA | Orthography | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Traditional orthography[133] | Normalization (Michel Launey)[134] | |||||||
a | [a], [aː] | a e sometimes in the sequence /iya/ |
a, ā | |||||
e | [e], [eː] | e ie or ye sometimes |
e, ē | |||||
i | [i], [iː] | i, y, or j | i, ī | |||||
o | [o], [oː] | o u or v often for /o:/, especially in front of m and p |
o, ō | |||||
p | [p] | p | p | |||||
t | [ t ]
|
t | t | |||||
k | [k] | qu (before i and e) c (in all other cases) |
qu (before i and e) c (in all other cases) | |||||
c | [ts] | tz tç (seldom) |
tz | |||||
č | [tʃ] | ch | ch | |||||
λ | [tɬ] | tl | tl | |||||
kw | [kʷ] | cu qu in front of a, |
cu (before vowels) uc (in all other cases) | |||||
m | [m] | m n often before p or m |
m | |||||
n | [ n ]
|
n ◌~ sometimes after a vowel |
n | |||||
s | [s] | z, ç c before /i/ and /e/ |
c (before e and i) z (in all other cases) | |||||
š | [ʃ] | x s sometimes in front of [oː] |
x | |||||
y | [j] | i, y, j Usually omitted between /i/ and a vowel |
y | |||||
w | [w] | u, v, rarely hu uh is used at the end of a syllable |
hu (before vowels) uh (in all other cases) | |||||
l | [ l ]
|
l lh often at the end of a syllable |
l | |||||
ll | [ lː ]
|
ll, l | ll | |||||
ʼ | [ʔ], [h] | h between vowels or occasionally at the end of a word Otherwise usually not written or sporadically indicated by ◌̀ |
◌̀ (on the preceding vowel within word) ◌̂ (on the preceding vowel at the end of a word) |
Literature
Among the indigenous languages of the Americas, the extensive corpus of surviving literature in Nahuatl dating as far back as the 16th century may be considered unique.[135] Nahuatl literature encompasses a diverse array of genres and styles, the documents themselves composed under many different circumstances. Preconquest Nahua had a distinction between tlahtolli 'speech' and second cuicatl 'song', akin to the distinction between "prose" and "poetry".[136][137]
Nahuatl tlahtolli prose has been preserved in different forms. Annals and chronicles recount history, normally written from the perspective of a particular
One of the most important works of prose written in Nahuatl is the twelve-volume compilation generally known as the
This work is like a dragnet to bring to light all the words of this language with their exact and metaphorical meanings, and all their ways of speaking, and most of their practices good and evil.[140]
Nahuatl poetry is principally preserved in two sources: the Cantares Mexicanos and the Romances de los señores de Nueva España, both collections of Aztec songs written down in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some songs may have been preserved through oral tradition from pre-conquest times until the time of their writing, for example the songs attributed to the poet-king of Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl. Karttunen & Lockhart (1980) identify more than four distinct styles of songs, e.g. the icnocuicatl ('sad song'), the xopancuicatl ('song of spring'), melahuaccuicatl ('plain song') and yaocuicatl ('song of war'), each with distinct stylistic traits. Aztec poetry makes rich use of metaphoric imagery and themes and are lamentation of the brevity of human existence, the celebration of valiant warriors who die in battle, and the appreciation of the beauty of life.[141]
Stylistics
The Aztecs distinguished between at least two social registers of language: the language of commoners (macehuallahtolli) and the language of the nobility (tecpillahtolli). The latter was marked by the use of a distinct rhetorical style. Since literacy was confined mainly to these higher social classes, most of the existing prose and poetical documents were written in this style. An important feature of this high rhetorical style of formal oratory was the use of parallelism,[142] whereby the orator structured their speech in couplets consisting of two parallel phrases. For example:
- ye maca timiquican
- 'May we not die'
- ye maca tipolihuican
- 'May we not perish'[143]
Another kind of parallelism used is referred to by modern linguists as difrasismo, in which two phrases are symbolically combined to give a metaphorical reading. Classical Nahuatl was rich in such diphrasal metaphors, many of which are explicated by Sahagún in the Florentine Codex and by Andrés de Olmos in his Arte.[144] Such difrasismos include:[145]
- in xochitl, in cuicatl
- 'The flower, the song' – meaning 'poetry'
- in cuitlapilli, in atlapalli
- 'the tail, the wing' – meaning 'the common people'
- in toptli, in petlacalli
- 'the chest, the box' – meaning 'something secret'
- in yollohtli, in eztli
- 'the heart, the blood' – meaning 'cacao'
- in iztlactli, in tencualactli
- 'the drool, the spittle' – meaning 'lies'
Sample text
The sample text below is an excerpt from a statement issued in Nahuatl by Emiliano Zapata in 1918 to convince the Nahua towns in the area of Tlaxcala to join the Revolution against the regime of Venustiano Carranza.[146] The orthography employed in the letter is improvised, and does not distinguish long vowels and only sporadically marks saltillo (with both ⟨h⟩ and acute accent).[147]
Tlanahuatil Panoloani |
Message to be passed around |
See also
- Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y mexicana (a Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary)
- Vocabulario trilingüe (dictionary of Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl)
Notes
Content notes
- absolutive -tl ) is thought to mean "a good, clear sound".[9] This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl (the standard spelling in the Spanish language),[10] Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, and Nawatl. In a back-formationfrom the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua.
- ^ By the provisions of Article IV: Las lenguas indígenas...y el español son lenguas nacionales...y tienen la misma validez en su territorio, localización y contexto en que se hablen. ("The indigenous languages ... and Spanish are national languages ... and have the same validity in their territory, location and context in which they are spoken.")
- ^ "General Aztec is a generally accepted term referring to the most shallow common stage, reconstructed for all present-day Nahuatl varieties; it does not include the Pochutec dialect Campbell & Langacker (1978)." Canger (2000:385(Note 4))
- ^ Such as the 1996 adoption at a world linguistics conference in Barcelona of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, a declaration which "became a general reference point for the evolution and discussion of linguistic rights in Mexico" Pellicer, Cifuentes & Herrera (2006:132)
- ^ Sischo (1979:312) and Canger (2000) for a brief description of these phenomena in Nahual of Michoacán and Durango respectively
- ^ All examples given in this section and these subsections are from Suárez (1983:61–63) unless otherwise noted. Glosses have been standardized.
- ^ The words pero, entender, lo que, and en are all from Spanish. The use of the suffix -oa on a Spanish infinitive like entender, enabling the use of other Nahuatl verbal affixes, is standard. The sequence lo que tlen combines Spanish lo que 'what' with Nahuatl tlen (also meaning 'what') to mean (what else) 'what'. en is a preposition and heads a prepositional phrase; traditionally Nahuatl had postpositions or relational nouns rather than prepositions. The stem mexihka, related to the name mexihko, 'Mexico', is of Nahuatl origin, but the suffix -ano is from Spanish, and it is probable that the whole word mexicano is a re-borrowing from Spanish back into Nahuatl.
- ^ While there is no real doubt that the word chocolate comes from Nahuatl, the commonly given Nahuatl etymology /ʃokolaːtl/ 'bitter water' no longer seems to be tenable. Dakin & Wichmann (2000) suggest the correct etymology to be /tʃikolaːtl/ – a word found in several modern Nahuatl dialects.
- ^ The Mexica used the word for the Kaqchikel capital Iximche in central Guatemala, but the word was extended to the entire zone in colonial times; see Carmack (1981:143).
Citations
- ^ "Mexikatlahtolli/Nawatlahtolli (náhuatl)". Secretaría de Cultura/Sistema de Información Cultural (in Spanish). Retrieved 20 June 2022.
- ^ "9. Nahoas | Territorio Indígena y Gobernanza". Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
- ^ "Nicarao".
- ^ "Do you know the origin of the word Guanacaste". 25 July 2018.
- ^ Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020 INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.
- ^ "General Law of Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples" (PDF) (in Spanish). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2008.
- ^ "Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas homepage".
- ^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh
- ^ Andrews 2003, pp. 578, 364, 398.
- ^ "Náhuatl" (in Spanish). rae.es. Retrieved 6 July 2012.
- ^ "Nahuatl Family | SIL Mexico". mexico.sil.org. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
- ^ a b Suárez (1983:149)
- ^ Canger 1980, p. 13.
- ^ Canger 2002, p. 195.
- ^ Canger 1988.
- ^ "Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas" (PDF). Diario Oficial de la Federación (in Spanish). Issued by the Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. 13 March 2003. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2008..
- ^ Pharao Hansen 2013.
- ^ Canger (1988:42–43), Dakin (1982:202), INALI (2008:63), Suárez (1983:149)
- ^ Boas 1917.
- ^ Knab 1980.
- ^ Canger & Dakin (1985:360), Dakin (2001:21–22)
- ^ Dakin (2001:21–22), Kaufman (2001)
- ^ Launey 1992, p. 116.
- ^ Canger 2001, p. 385.
- ^ Hill & Hill 1986.
- ^ a b Tuggy (1979)
- ^ a b Campbell (1985)
- ^ Canger 2001.
- ^ a b Wolgemuth 2002.
- ^ Suárez 1983, p. 20.
- ^ Canger (1980:12), Kaufman (2001:1)
- ^ Hill 2001.
- ^ Merrill et al. 2010.
- ^ Kaufman & Justeson 2009.
- ^ Justeson et al. 1985, p. passim.
- ^ Kaufman 2001, pp. 3–6, 12.
- ^ Kaufman & Justeson 2007.
- ^ Kaufman 2001, pp. 6, 12.
- ^ Cowgill (1992:240–242); Pasztory (1993)
- ^ Campbell (1997:161), Justeson et al. (1985); Kaufman (2001:3–6, 12)
- ^ Dakin & Wichmann (2000), Macri (2005), Macri & Looper (2003), Cowgill (2003:335), Pasztory (1993)
- ^ Dakin (1994); Kaufman (2001)
- ^ Fowler (1985:38); Kaufman (2001)
- ^ Carmack 1981, pp. 142–143.
- ISBN 978-0553384710.
- ^ Canger 2011.
- ^ Lockhart 1992.
- ^ Hinz 1983.
- ^ Cline 1993.
- ^ Lockhart, Berdan & Anderson 1986.
- ^ Cline & León-Portilla 1984.
- ^ Jackson 2000.
- Secretaría de Gobernación. Archived from the originalon 20 May 2007. Retrieved 28 March 2008.. The Tlaxcaltec community remained legally separate until the 19th century.
- ^ Matthew 2012.
- ^ Lockhart (1991:12); Lockhart (1992:330–331)
- ^ Rincón 1885.
- ^ Carochi 1645.
- ^ Canger 1980, p. 14.
- ^ Carochi 2001.
- ^ a b Olko & Sullivan 2013.
- ^ a b Suárez (1983:165)
- ^ Suárez 1983, pp. 140–41.
- ^ Suárez 1983, p. 5.
- ^ Cline, Adams & MacLeod 2000.
- ^ Rolstad 2002, p. passim..
- ^ INEGI 2005, pp. 63–73.
- ^ Suárez 1983, p. 167.
- ^ Suárez 1983, p. 168.
- ^ INEGI 2005, p. 49.
- ^ Lastra de Suárez (1986), Rolstad (2002:passim)
- ^ Pellicer, Cifuentes & Herrera 2006, pp. 132–137.
- ^ INALI [Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas] (n.d.). "Presentación de la Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos". Difusión de INALI (in Spanish). INALI, Secretaría de Educación Pública. Archived from the original on 17 March 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2008.
- ^ IRIN 2004.
- ^ INEGI 2005, p. 35.
- ^ INEGI 2005.
- ^ Flores Farfán 2002, p. 229.
- ^ Sischo 1979, p. passim.
- ^ Amith 1989.
- ^ a b Flores Farfán (1999)
- ^ Pury-Toumi 1980.
- ^ Pittman, R. S. (1961). The Phonemes of Tetelcingo (Morelos) Nahuatl. In B. F. Elson & J. Comas (Eds.), A William Cameron Townsend en el vigésimoquinto aniversario del Instituto Lingüístico de Verano (pp. 643–651). Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
- ^ Launey 1992, p. 16.
- ^ Launey 1992, p. 26.
- ^ Aguilar 2013, citing Andrews 2003, Bedell 2011, Brockway 1963, and Goller, Goller & Waterhouse 1974
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 19–22.
- ^ Canger 2001, p. 29.
- ^ Launey 1999.
- ^ Hill & Hill 1980.
- ^ Kimball 1990.
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 27–28.
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 88–89.
- ^ Hill & Hill (1986) re Malinche Nahuatl
- ^ Launey (1992) Chapter 13 re classical Nahuatl
- ^ Suárez 1977, pp. passim.
- ^ Launey 1999, p. passim.
- ^ Wolgemuth 2002, p. 35.
- ^ Suárez 1983, p. 61.
- ^ Canger 1996.
- ^ Suárez 1983, p. 81.
- ^ a b Suárez (1983:62)
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 207–210.
- ^ Suárez 1977, p. 61.
- ^ Launey 1992, p. 27.
- ^ Peralta Ramírez 1991.
- ^ Baker 1996, p. passim..
- ^ a b c Pharao Hansen (2010)
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 36–37.
- ^ a b Sischo (1979:314)
- ^ Launey (1994); Andrews (2003).
- ^ Launey (1994), Launey (1999:116–18)
- ^ a b Canger & Jensen (2007)
- ^ Hill & Hill 1986, p. 317.
- ^ Hill and Hill 1986:page#
- ^ Suárez 1977.
- ^ Canger 2001, p. 116.
- ^ Hill & Hill 1986, pp. 249–340.
- ^ Haugen 2009.
- ^ Dakin & Wichmann (2000)
- OCLC 43499541. Archived from the original(online version) on 24 August 2007. Retrieved 7 August 2019.
- ^ Lockhart 1992, pp. 327–329.
- ^ Lacadena 2008.
- ^ Whittaker 2009.
- ^ Lockhart 1992, pp. 330–335.
- ^ a b c d e Canger (2002:200–204)
- ^ Smith-Stark 2005.
- ^ Whorf, Karttunen & Campbell 1993.
- ^ McDonough 2014, p. 148.
- ^ Bierhorst 1985, p. xii.
- ^ "Tlahkwiloltlanawatilli (Normas de escritura)".
- ^ "Lingüistas y especialistas coinciden en la importancia de normalizar la escritura de la lengua náhuatl".
- ^ "Nawatl, mexkatl, mexicano (náhuatl)". 21 December 2018.
- ^ "Lectura del Náhuatl. Versión revisada y aumentada" (PDF).
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 379–382.
- ^ Launey 1992, pp. 13–14.
- ^ Canger 2002, p. 300.
- ^ León-Portilla 1985, p. 12.
- ^ Karttunen & Lockhart 1980.
- ^ Bierhorst 1998.
- ^ "Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España por el fray Bernardino de Sahagún: el Códice Florentino – Visor – Biblioteca Digital Mundial". www.wdl.org. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
- ^ Sahagún 1950–1982, pp. part I:47.
- ^ León-Portilla 1985, pp. 12–20.
- ^ Bright 1990, p. passim..
- ^ Bright 1990, p. 440.
- ^ Olmos 1993.
- ^ Examples given are from Sahagún 1950–82, vol. VI, ff. 202V-211V
- ^ Text as reproduced in León-Portilla 1978:78–80
- ^ León-Portilla 1978.
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{{cite book}}
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- Pury-Toumi, S. D. (1980). "Le saltillo en nahuatl". Amerindia. Revue d'Ethnolinguistique Amérindienne Paris. 5: 31–45.
- OCLC 162761360.
- Rolstad, Kellie (2002). "Language death in Central Mexico: The decline of Spanish-Nahuatl bilingualism and the new bilingual maintenance programs". OCLC 1084374.
- OCLC 276351.
- OCLC 35848992.
- Sischo, William R. (1979). "Michoacán Nahual". In OCLC 6086368.
- Smith-Stark, T. C. (2005). "Phonological description in New Spain". In Zwartjes, O.; Altman, C. (eds.). Missionary Linguistics II/Lingüística misionera II: Orthography and Phonology. Selected papers from the Second International Conference on Missionary Linguistics. Vol. 109. John Benjamins Publishing.
- Suárez, Jorge A. (1977). "La influencia del español en la estructura gramatical del náhuatl". Anuario de Letras. Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (in Spanish). 15: 115–164. OCLC 48341068.
- Suárez, Jorge A. (1983). The Mesoamerian Indian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge and New York: OCLC 8034800.
- Sullivan, Thelma D. (1988). Wick R. Miller; Karen Dakin (eds.). Compendium of Náhuatl Grammar. Translated by Thelma D. Sullivan & Neville Stiles (English translation of Compendio de la gramática náhuatl ed.). Salt Lake City: OCLC 17982711.
- Tuggy, David H. (1979). "Tetelcingo Náhuatl". In OCLC 6086368.
- Voegelin, Charles F.; Florence M. Voegelin; OCLC 55576894.
- Whittaker, G. (2009). "The Principles of Nahuatl Writing" (PDF). Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. 16: 47–81.
- S2CID 144639961.
- Wimmer, Alexis (2006). "Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl classique" (online version, incorporating reproductions from Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl ou mexicaine [1885], by Rémi Siméon). Retrieved 4 February 2008. (in French and Nahuatl languages)
- Wolgemuth, Carl (2002). Gramática Náhuatl (melaʼtájto̱l): de los municipios de Mecayapan y Tatahuicapan de Juárez, Veracruz. Sharon Stark and Albert Bickford (online eds.) (2nd ed.). México D.F.: PDFonline edition) on 19 April 2008.
Further reading
Dictionaries of Classical Nahuatl
- de Molina, Fray Alonso: Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana. [1555] Reprint: Porrúa México 1992
- Karttunen, Frances, An analytical dictionary of Náhuatl. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1992
- Siméon, Rémi: Diccionario de la Lengua Náhuatl o Mexicana. [Paris 1885] Reprint: México 2001
Grammars of Classical Nahuatl
- Carochi, Horacio. Grammar of the Mexican Language: With an Explanation of its Adverbs (1645) Translated by James Lockhart. Stanford University Press. 2001.
- Lockhart, James: Nahuatl as written: lessons in older written Nahuatl, with copious examples and texts, Stanford 2001
- Sullivan, Thelma: Compendium of Nahuatl Grammar, Univ. of Utah Press, 1988.
- Campbell, Joe and Frances Karttunen, Foundation course in Náhuatl grammar. Austin 1989
- Launey, Michel. Introducción a la lengua y a la literatura Náhuatl. México D.F.: UNAM. 1992 (Spanish); An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl [English translation/adaptation by Christopher Mackay], 2011, Cambridge University Press.
- Andrews, J. Richard. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl University of Oklahoma Press: 2003 (revised edition)
Modern dialects
- Ronald W. Langacker (ed.): Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar 2: Modern Aztec Grammatical Sketches, Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics, 56. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington, pp. 1–140. ISBN 0-88312-072-0. OCLC 6086368. 1979. (Contains studies of Nahuatl from Michoacan, Tetelcingo, Huasteca and North Puebla)
- Canger, Una. Mexicanero de la Sierra Madre Occidental, Archivo de Lenguas Indígenas de México, No. 24. México D.F.: El Colegio de México. ISBN 968-12-1041-7. OCLC 49212643. 2001 (Spanish)
- Campbell, Lyle. The Pipil Language of El Salvador, Mouton Grammar Library (No. 1). Berlin: Mouton Publishers. 1985. ISBN 0-89925-040-8. OCLC 13433705.
- Wolgemuth, Carl. Gramática Náhuatl (melaʼtájto̱l) de los municipios de Mecayapan y Tatahuicapan de Juárez, Veracruz, 2nd edition. 2002. (in Spanish)
Miscellaneous
- The Nahua Newsletter: edited by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the Indiana University (Chief Editor Alan Sandstrom)
- Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl: special interest-yearbook of the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas (IIH) of the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM), Ed.: Miguel León Portilla
- A Catalogue of Pre-1840 Nahuatl Works Held by The Lilly Library from The Indiana University Bookman No. 11. November 1973: 69–88.
- Collection of Nahuatl of the Sierra Nororiental de Puebla, Mexico of Jonathan Amith, containing recordings in Nahuatl by native speakers and transcriptions, from the Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America.
- Barnstone, Willis (2003). Literatures of Latin America: From Antiquity to Present. Princeton: Prentice Hall.
External links