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Nahuatl language

Encyclopedia : N : NA : NAH : Nahuatl language

Nahuatl (also sometimes spelled with an accent, as in Spanish, Náhuatl, or with a w, Nawatl, and in any case pronounced in two syllables, NA-watl ['na.watɬ]) is a term applied to some members of the Aztecan or Nahuan sub-branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, indigenous to central Mexico. Under the "Law of Linguistic Rights" it is recognized as a "national language" along with 62 other indigenous languages and Spanish which have the same "validity" in Mexico [link].

Often the term Nahuatl is used specifically with reference to the language called Classical Nahuatl, which was the administrative language of the Aztec empire but it was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures, like the Tepanceca, Acolcuah, Tlaxcalteca, Xochimilc, etc. and possibly was one of the languages spoken in Teotihuacan. As the Nahua groups became predominant, It was used as a lingua franca in much of Mesoamerica from the 12th century AD until the late 16th century, at which time its prominence and influence were interrupted by the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

However, it also serves to identify a number of modern Nahuatl varieties (some mutually unintelligible) of the Nahuatl dialect complex 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 that of Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more-closely related to it than are peripheral ones.

Contents

Overview

Nahuatl is the most widely-spoken group of Native American languages in Mexico or in North America as a whole. 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.

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 consisting of 61 individual languages. This is a grouping on the same order as Indo-European, including a number of language families such as the Aztecan or Nahuatl family.

Genealogy

*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.

Distribution of Náhuatl speakers per state.
Enlarge
Distribution of Náhuatl speakers per state.

Geographic distribution

A range of Nahuatl dialects are currently spoken in an area stretching from the northern Mexican state of Durango to Tabasco in the south. Pipil, a Nahuatl dialect which happens to have its own name, is spoken as far south as El Salvador.

Phonology of Nahuan languages

The Nahuan subgroup of Uto-Aztecan is classified partly by a number of shared phonological changes from reconstructed proto Uto-Aztecan to the attested Nahuan languages. The changes shared between the Nahuan languages are the basis for the reconstruction of the intermediate stage of proto Nahuan. Some of these changes shared by all Nahuan languages are:

The table below presents some of the changes that are reconstructed from Proto Uto-aztecan to Proto Nahuan.

Table of reconstructed changes from proto Uto-aztecan to proto Nahuan
PUA proto Nahuan
**ta:ka "man" *tla:ka-tla "man"
**pahi "water" *a:-tla "water"
**muki "to die" *miki "to die
**pu:li "to tie" *ilpi "to tie"
**nɨmi "to walk" *nemi "to live, to walk"

From the changes common to all Nahuan languages the subgroup has diversified somewhat and giving a complete overview of the phonologies of Nahuan languages is not suitable here. However, the table below shows a standardised phonemic inventory based on the inventory of Classical Nahuatl. Many modern dialects have undergone changes from proto Nahuan that have resulted in different phonemic inventories.

Consonants

Table of Nahuatl consonants
  Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stops  
Fricatives      
Affricates      
Approximants    
Nasals      

Vowels

Table of Nahuatl vowels

  front central back
  long short long short long short
high
mid
low

Grammar

The Nahuatl languages are agglutinative, polysynthetic languages that make extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed. Very long verbal forms or nouns created through incorporation and accumulation of prefixes are not uncommon in literary works. This also means that new words can be created at a moment's notice.

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.

Vocabulary

See the and at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia’s sibling project.

Words loaned to other languages

Main article: words of Nahuatl origin
Nahuatl has been an exceedingly rich source of words for the Spanish language, as the following examples show. Some of them are restricted to Mexico or Mesoamerica, but others are common to all the Spanish-speaking regions in the world and a number of them have made their way into many other languages via Spanish.

achiote, acocil, aguacate, ajolote, amate, atole, axolotl, ayate, cacahuate, camote, capulín, chamagoso, chapopote, chayote, chicle, chile, chipotle, chocolate, cuate, comal, copal, coyote, ejote, elote, epazote, escuincle, guacamole, guachinango, guajolote, huipil, huitlacoche, hule, jacal, jícama, jícara, jitomate, malacate, mecate, metate, metlapil, mezcal, mezquite, milpa, mitote, molcajete, mole, nopal, ocelote, ocote, olote, paliacate, papalote, pepenar, petaca, petate, peyote, pinole, piocha, popote, pozole, pulque, quetzal, tamal, tianguis, tiza, tomate, tule, zacate, zapote, zopilote.
(The persistent -te or -le endings on these words are Spanish reflexes of the Nahuatl 'absolutive' ending -tl, -tli, or -li, which appears on (most) nouns when they have no other affixes.)
Nahuatl has provided the English language with some words for indigenous animals, fruits, vegetables, and tools. Most of these borrowings are second-hand, coming first through Spanish. The two most prominent are undoubtedly chocolate (from xoco(l)atl, 'chocolate drink', perhaps literally 'bitter-water') and tomato (from (xi)tomatl), but there are others, such as coyote (coyotl), avocado (ahuacatl) and chile or chili (chilli). The brand name Chiclets is also derived from Nahuatl (tziktli 'sticky stuff, chicle'). Other English words from Náhuatl are: Aztec, (aztecatl); cacao (cacahuatl 'shell, rind'); mesquite (mizquitl); ocelot (ocelotl).

As a result of 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 (from tata, familiar vocative of tahtli 'father'), nanay (from nana, familiar vocative of nantli 'mother'), guava 'guava, guayaba', tsokolate 'chocolate', tsanggo 'monkey', and the village of Zapote in Las Piñas City, Philippines.

Many well-known toponyms also come from Nahuatl, including Mexico (mēxihco) and Guatemala (cuauhtēmallan).

Writing systems

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 (codex painters) 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 Aztec writing was not meant to be read, but to be told; the elaborate codices were essentially pictographic aids for teaching, and long texts were memorized.

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 and Aztec codices.) 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

There are a number of other issues as well, such as 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.

Aztec>The Aztec world
Aztec society
Nahuatl language
Aztec philosophy
Aztec calendar
Aztec religion
Aztec mythology
Aztec entheogenic complex
Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
History of the Aztecs>Aztec history
Aztlán
Aztec army
Aztec codices
Aztec Triple Alliance
Spanish conquest of Mexico
Siege of Tenochtitlan
La Noche Triste
Hernán Cortés
Hueyi Tlatoani
Tenoch (1325–1376)
Acamapichtli (1376–1395)
Huitzilíhuitl (1395–1417)
Chimalpopoca (1417–1427)
Itzcóatl (1427–1440)
Moctezuma I (1440–1469)
Axayacatl (1469–1481)
Tízoc (1481–1486)
Auitzotl (1486–1502)
Moctezuma II (1502–1520)
Cuitláhuac (1520)
Cuauhtémoc (1520–1521)

History

Nahuatl is often referred to as the Aztec language, or (especially in Spanish) as the Mexican language, because it was the language of the Mexica, i.e. the Aztecs. It was not spoken only by the Mexica, however, but by many other groups, including such predecessors and contemporaries of the Mexica as the Colhua, the Tepanec, the Acolhua, various Chichimeca groups, and the famous Toltecs in one interpretation of the term. Increasingly, suggestions have been appearing, from several diverse fields of Mesoamerican research, that Nahuatl may have been one of the languages spoken at the legendary Teotihuacan.

Literature

Nahuatl literature is extensive (probably the most extensive of all Amerindian languages), including a relatively large corpus of poetry (see also Nezahualcoyotl); the Huei tlamahuiçoltica is an example of literary Nahuatl from the seventeenth century. Examples from the time immediately following the conquest include at least one census from the 1540s. The two largest collections of poetry, the Cantares mexicanos and the Romances de los señores de la Nueva España, were in all likelihood copied down in the 1560s or somewhat later. The mammoth encyclopedia of Aztec culture known as the Florentine Codex was compiled by the Franciscan Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun, with the assistance of tri-lingual students from the Colegio de Santacruz Tlatelolco at about the same time.

Bibliography

See also

External links

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Chicano Languages

Chicano Spanish | Nahuatl language | Spanish language | List of Chicano Caló words and expressions | Chicano English | New Mexican Spanish | Spanish in the United States | Ladino | Spanish profanity | Spanglish

 

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