Nahuatl language

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Categories: Agglutinative languages | Languages of Mexico | Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica | Uto-Aztecan languages | Nahuatl | Indigenous languages of Mesoamerica

Nahuatl, Mexicano (Nahuatlahtolli, Māsēwallahtōlli)
Spoken in: Mexico
Region: Mexico (state), Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Guerrero, Morelos, and Oaxaca
Total speakers: >1.5 million
Ranking: Not in top 100
Genetic classification: Uto-Aztecan

 Aztecan
  General Aztec
   Nahuatl

Official status
Official language of: —
Regulated by: Secretaría de Educación Pública, of Mexico:
Language codes
ISO 639-1nah
ISO 639-2nah
SILNAI
See also: Language – List of languages

Nahuatl (pronounced in two syllables, NA-watl ['na.watł]) is a term applied to some members of the Aztecan or Nahuan sub-branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, indigenous to central Mexico.

Often the term Nahuatl is used specifically with reference to the language called Classical Nahuatl, which was the language of the Aztec empire and therefore used as a lingua franca in much of Mesoamerica from the 7th century AD until the late 16th century, at which time its prominence and influence was interrupted by the Spanish conquest of the New World.

However, it also serves to identify a number of modern Nahuatl dialects (linguistic variants, some of them mutually unintelligible) that are still spoken by at least 1.5 million people in what is now Mexico. All of these dialects show influence from the Spanish language to various degrees, some of them much more than others. No modern dialects are identical with Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to Classical Nahuatl than are peripheral ones.

Contents

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Overview

Nahuatl is the most widely spoken group of Native American languages in Mexico. As is the case with most other Mexican indigenous languages, many of the speakers of Nahuatl are bilingual, having a working knowledge of the Spanish language. In the past, a significant number of the Nahuatl speakers outside the Valley of Mexico were bilingual in languages other than Spanish, speaking both Nahuatl and, as their mother tongue, some other indigenous language. A famous example of bilingualism was Malintzin ("La Malinche"), the native woman who translated between Nahuatl and a Mayan language (and who later learned Spanish as well) for Hernán Cortés.

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Classification

Sometimes a distinction is made among Nahuan languages between Nahuatl (variants with the characteristic tl phoneme), Nahuat (variants which have t in its place), and Nahual (variants which have l instead). Although the classification implied by emphasizing these differences is currently not given as much weight as in the past, the terms are still used. Sometimes Nahuan is used for the family as a whole; others use the term Aztecan for the family, or Nahua for the family and in any context where one does not want to specify the tl/t/l differences. Most commonly, however, Nahuatl is used as a generic name for the family or any variant of it.

Nahuatl is related to the languages spoken by the Hopi, Comanche, Paiute or Ute, Pima, Shoshone, Tarahumara, Yaqui, Tepehuán, Huichol and other peoples of western North America, as they all belong to the Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock or language family. This is a grouping on the same order as Indo-European, including a number of language families such as the Aztecan or Nahuatl family.

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Genealogy

  • Uto-Aztecan 5000 BP*
    • Shoshonean (Northern Uto-Aztecan)
    • Sonoran**
    • Aztecan 2000 BP (a.k.a. Nahuan)
      • Pochutec — Coast of Oaxaca
      • General Aztec
        • Pipil (a.k.a Nawat, Southern Nahuan) — Pacific coast of Chiapas, Guatemala, El Salvador
        • Nahuatl
          • Central dialects
          • Peripheral dialects
            • La Huasteca

*Estimated split date by glottochronology (BP = Before the Present).
**Some scholars continue to classify Aztecan and Sonoran together under a separate group (called variously "Sonoran", "Mexican", or "Southern Uto-Aztecan"). There is increasing evidence that whatever degree of additional resemblance that might be present between Aztecan and Sonoran when compared with Shoshonean is probably due to proximity contact, rather than to a common immediate parent stock other than Uto-Aztecan.

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Geographic distribution

Image:Nahuatl in Mexico.png
Distribution of Nahuatl speakers per state.

A range of Nahuatl lects are currently spoken in an area stretching from the northern Mexican state of Durango to Tabasco in the south. Pipil, a language closely related to the Nahuatl lects, is spoken as far south as El Salvador.

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Phonology of Nahuan languages

The phonemic inventories of the different Nahua dialects and languages do not vary greatly. The table below shows a standardised phonemic inventory based on the inventory of Classical Nahuatl. Many modern dialects lack some of these or include others.

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Consonants

Table of Nahuatl consonants

  Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stops p t   k / kʷ ʔ
Fricatives   s ʃ    
Affricates    tɬ / ts tʃ   
Approximants w l j    
Nasals m n      
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Vowels

Table of Nahuatl vowels

  front central back
  long short long short long short
high i: i
mid e: e o: o
low a: a
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Grammar

The Nahuatl languages are agglutinative, polysynthetic languages that make extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. Many have a very well developed system of honorific forms, and of deixis. A Nahuatl word often consists of one or more prefixes, followed by root morphemes, followed by one or more suffixes. Many one-syllable root morphemes can be compounded to form a word, so some Nahuatl words are very long. This also means that new words can be created on the fly.

The typology of Nahuatl has, by a minority of linguists, been regarded as oligosynthetic. This was first proposed in the early 20th Century by Benjamin Whorf, but was largely dismissed by the linguistic community by the mid-1950s.

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Vocabulary

See the list of Nahuatl words and list of words of Nahuatl origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia’s sibling project.
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Words loaned to other languages

Main article: words of Nahuatl origin

Nahuatl has provided the English language with some words for indigenous animals, fruits, vegetables, and tools. The two most prominent are undoubtedly chocolate and tomato, but there are others, such as coyote and avocado and chile or chili. The brand name Chiclets is also derived from Nahuatl. Most of these borrowings are at second-hand, coming first through Spanish.

Due to extensive Mexican-Philippine contacts, there are an estimated 250 words of Nahuatl origin in the Tagalog language. Some of them are: kamote (sweet potato), sayote (chayote), tiyangge (seasonal market), tatay (tatle, father), nanay (nantle, mother), guava (guayaba), tsokolate (chocolate), tsonggo (monkey), and the village of Zapote in Las Piñas City, Philippines.

Nahuatl has been an exceedingly rich source of words for the Spanish language, as the following samples show. Some of them are restricted to Mesoamerica, but others are common to all the Spanish dialects:

acocil, aguacate, ajolote, amate, atole, ayate, cacahuate, camote, capulín, chamagoso, chapopote, chayote, chicle, chile, chipotle, chocolate, cuate, comal, copal, coyote, ejote, elote, epazote, escuincle, guacamole, guachinango, guajolote, huipil, hule, jacal, jícara, jitomate, malacate, mecate, mezcal, milpa, mitote, mole, nopal, ocelote, ocote, olote, paliacate, papalote, pepenar, petaca, petate, peyote, pinole, piocha, popote, pulque, quetzal, tamal, tianguis, tiza, tomate, tule, zacate, zapote, zopilote.
Many well-known toponyms also come from Nahuatl, including Mexico (mëxihco) and Guatemala (cuauhtëmallan).
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Writing system

At the time of the Spanish conquest, Aztec writing used mostly pictographs supplemented by a few ideograms. When needed, it also used syllabic equivalences; Father Durán recorded how the tlacuilos could render a prayer in Latin using this system, but it was difficult to use. This writing system was adequate for keeping such records as genealogies, astronomical information, and tribute lists, but could not represent a full vocabulary of spoken language in the way that the writing systems of the old world or of the Maya civilization could.

The Spanish introduced the Roman script, which was then utilized to record a large body of Aztec prose and poetry, a fact which somewhat mitigated the devastating loss of the thousands of Aztec manuscripts which were burned by the Spanish. (See Nahuatl transcription.) Important lexical works (e.g. Molina's classic Vocabulario of 1571) and grammatical descriptions (of which Carochi's 1645 Arte is generally acknowledged the best) were produced using variations of this orthography.

The classical orthography was not perfect, and in fact there were many variations in how it was applied, due in part to dialectal differences and in part to differing traditions and preferences that developed. (The writing of Spanish itself was far from totally standardized at the time.) Today, although almost all written Nahuatl uses some form of Latin-based orthography, there continue to be strong dialectal differences, and considerable debate and differing practices regarding how to write sounds even when they are the same. Major issues are whether to follow Spanish in writing the [k] sound sometimes as c and sometimes as qu or just to use k, how to write [kw], and what to do about the [w] sound, which varies considerably from place to place and even within a single dialect. There are a number of other issues as well, such as whether and how to represent vowel length, or to what extent writing in one variant should be adapted towards what is used in other variants.

The Secretaría de Educación Pública (Ministry of Public Education) has adopted an alphabet for its bilingual education programs in rural communities in Mexico in which k is used and [w] is written as u, and this decision has been influential. The recently established (2004) "Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas" (INALI) will also be involved in these issues.

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History

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Literature

Nahuatl literature is extensive (probably the most extensive of all Amerindian languages), including a relatively large corpus of poetry (see also Nezahualcoyotl); the Nican Mopohua is an excellent early sample of transcribed Nahuatl.

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Bibliography

  • de Arenas, Pedro: Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y mexicana. [1611] Reprint: México 1982
  • Campbell, Joe and Frances Karttunen, Foundation course in Nahuatl grammar. Austin 1989
  • Carochi, Horacio: Arte de la lengua mexicana: con la declaración de los adverbios della. [1645] Reprint: Porrúa México 1983
  • Canger, Una, 1980. "Five Studies inspired by Nahuatl Verbs in -oa." Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague
  • Dakin, Karen, 1982. "Evolución Fonológica del Protonáhuatl." UNAM, Mexico
  • Garibay, Angel María : Llave de Náhuatl. México 19??
  • Garibay, Angel María, Historia de la literatura náhuatl. México 1953
  • Garibay, Angel María, Poesía náhuatl. vol 1-3 México 1964
  • Hill, Jane and Kenneth Hill, Speaking Mexicano: dynamics of syncretic language in Central Mexico. Tucson 1986
  • von Humboldt, Wilhelm (1767–1835): Mexicanische Grammatik. Paderborn/München 1994
  • Jiménez, Doña Luz (?–1965): Life and Death in Milpa Alta. Norman 1972
  • Karttunen, Frances, An analytical dictionary of Nahuatl. Norman 1992
  • Karttunen, Frances, Between worlds: interpreters, guides, and survivors. New Brunswick 1994
  • Karttunen, Frances, Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period. Los Angeles 1976
  • Launey, Michel : Introduction à la langue et à la littérature aztèques. Paris 1980
  • Launey, Michel : Introducción a la lengua y a la literatura Náhuatl. UNAM, México 1992
  • de León-Portilla, Ascensión H.: Tepuztlahcuilolli, Impresos en Nahuatl: Historia y Bibliografia. Vol. 1-2. México 1988
  • León-Portilla, Miguel : Literaturas Indígenas de México. Madrid 1992
  • Lockhart, James (ed): We people here. Nahuatl Accounts of the conquest of Mexico. Los Angeles 1993
  • de Molina, Fray Alonso: Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana. [1555] Reprint: Porrúa México 1992
  • de Olmos, Fray Andrés: Arte de la lengua mexicana concluído en el convento de San Andrés de Ueytlalpan, en la provincia de Totonacapan que es en la Nueva España. [1547] Reprint: México 1993
  • del Rincón, Antonio: Arte mexicana compuesta por el padre Antonio del Rincón. [1595] Reprint: México 1885
  • de Sahagún, Fray Bernardino (1499–1590): Florentine Codex. General History of the Things of New Spain (Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España). Eds Charles Dibble/Arthr Anderson, vol I-XII Santa Fe 1950–71
  • Siméon, Rémi: Dictionnaire de la Langue Nahuatl ou Mexicaine. [Paris 1885] Reprint: Graz 1963
  • Siméon, Rémi: Diccionario de la Lengua Nahuatl o Mexicana. [Paris 1885] Reprint: México 2001
  • Sullivan, Thelma D.: Compendium of Nahuatl Grammar. Salt Lake City 1988
  • The Nahua Newsletter: edited by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the University of Indiana (Chief Editor Alan Sandstrom)
  • Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl: special interest-yearbook of the Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas (IIH) of the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM), Ed.: Miguel Leon Portilla
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See also

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Specific Nahuatl ISO/Ethnologue codes

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External links

Image:Wikipedia-logo.png
Nahuatl language edition of Wikipedia
Image:Wikibooks-logo-en.png
Wikibooks Nahuatl has more about this subject:

cs:Nahuatl da:Nahuatl de:Nahuatl es:Náhuatl eo:Naŭatla lingvo fr:Nahuatl it:Lingua nahuatl nah:Nawatl nl:Nahuatl ja:ナワトル語 oc:Nahuatl pl:Język nahuatl pt:Língua nahuatl simple:Nahuatl language fi:Nahuatl sv:Nahuatl wa:Nawatl zh:納瓦特爾語