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Nahuatl or '''Nawatl''' (pronounced in two syllables, NA-watl ) 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 without Title} . 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 the New World . 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. 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
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 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 Vowels Table of Nahuatl vowels GRAMMAR The Nahuatl languages are Agglutinative , Polysynthetic languages that make extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different Prefix es and Suffix es 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 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 , (''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 , Philippines. Many well-known toponyms also come from Nahuatl, including ''Mexico'' (''mēxihco'') and ''Guatemala'' (''cuauhtēmallan''). Pictograph s on a Stone Of The Sun ]] WRITING SYSTEMS At the time of the Spanish conquest, Aztec writing used mostly Pictograph s supplemented by a few Ideogram s. 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 .) 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 {Link without Title} 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. HISTORY Also known as Mexican language, or the language of the Mexica (i.e. Aztecs), it was not only spoken by the Aztecs but also their predecessors (the Colhua, Tecpanec, Acolhua, and the famous Toltecs in one interpretation of the term). Recently, there have begun to appear more and more suggestions, from several diverse fields of Mesoamerican research, that Nahuatl might 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 Nican Mopohua is an excellent early sample of transcribed Nahuatl. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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