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I decided to rework the page entirely so as to avoid the confusion between modern and classical Nahuatl. Now the page only deals with "Nahuatl" and Classical and Nahuatl Dialects have each their own entry which I will proceed to develop futher. In the process I had to rework the phonological representation as it was a bastardised version halfway in between a normative orthography for modern dialects and a descriptive phoneme inventory for Classical.
Magnuspharao 00:31, 25 Jul 2005 (UTC)
I've stricken the paragraph mentioning that "some of the essential nature of classical nahuatl has been lost in all of them" This I have done for the following reasons.
1. It implies that the modern dialects as a whole are derived form Classical Nahuatl. This is not the case Classical Nahuatl was it self a dialect spoken only in the valley of Mexico (and as a trade language). Modern dialects from other places are not derived from classical Nauatl but form the older version of Nahuatl spoken in that area at the time of the conquest and earlier. Classical Nahuatl is an innovatory dialect and many of th peripehery dialects are coservative, many o th changes invented in Tenochtitlan never made it to the outer rims of the nahuatlspeaking area of Mexico. Bibliography: Canger, Una 1988 Nahuatl Dialectology: A survey and some suggestions. IJAL vol 54
2. I know of no sound linguistic arguments that may conclude anything about the "essential nature" of a language.
3. Point of view. It expresses a purist attitude, which is not scientifically justifiable. There is no reason to measure the modern dialects by Classical Nahuatl. Magnuspharao 00:31, 24 Jul 2005 (UTC)
I have gone through and have added some information and have added references to the works sited. I have also made some grammatical corrections in order to improve the flow. Caju 18:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, this is the most appropriate place for my question. (My Spanish) is not so good. Seguro should mean for sure or guaranteed to happen, stable.Doesn't it? In the Philippines, it means --Maybe-- (quizas). How about in Mexican?-- Jondel 00:31, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Who's "proposing" this? There's no reference to it outside Wikipedia [and mirrors], so it looks awfully like original research. Either cite a source, use real Nahuatl spellings, or remove "proposed" if it really is standard.
BTW, if Nahuatl is really several languages (as Ethnologue believes) the page should make it clearer what statements refer to Classical Nahuatl, which statements refer to Nahuan languages in general, and which statements refer to the Nahuan language family as a whole. As it stands, it's really hard to tell. — Muke Tever 01:39, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would like to point out that the Ministry of Education of Mexico (Secretaría de Educación Pública), has been, since its creation, the institution in charge of regulating the spelling and writing system for contemprary náhuatl and in fact has established a system for today's nahuatl. Some sounds of the nahuatl language of the 16th century have disappeared, and this system takes that into account.
This system is widely used in the bilingüal primary schools in rural indigenous communities in Mexico, and in different publications (like recently translated Bibles into some náhuatl dialects), and it is fact the system used in the Wikipedia in Náhuatl.
Therefore, I would suggest presenting this system in the article as well. (The historical classic system which is only used in some academic programs in universities when studying classical náhuatl, and not contemporary náhuatl).
Having experienced Nahuatl bilingual education firsthand in several communities (not as a student of course)I will add that I have not seen any single standard orthography in use, but many. And many very inadequate. How should one orthography be put into use for hundreds of dialects some of which are mutually unintelligible? Also: There are no sounds from classical Nahuatl that have disappeared: there are some sounds which existed in Classical Nahuatl that doesn't exist or have never existed in some modern dialects, but none that have disappeared in all of them. Also Classical Nahuatl is not the ancestor of the modern dialects (except for a few of the central dialects spoken in the valley of Mexico). -Magnuspharao-
Many of the rules that have been proposed don't work very well everywhere. The SEP (Ministry of Education) standards would have the /w/ sound written with a 'u', for instance. This works OK for variants which have no /u/ (which is, to be sure, a lot of them), but not so well for variants where there is a /u/ phoneme, or where the /w/ phoneme is often or even usually pronounced [v] or [β]. In any case it looks like a vowel and not a consonant to those trained in Spanish orthography. Not everyone likes 'ku' for the /kw/ phoneme, and especially syllable-final it is awkward (nekutli 'honey' or tekutli 'lord' are two-syllable words but don't look it.) Many native speakers, having learned to read in Spanish, prefer c/qu to k. Others prefer to make things look like Classical Nahuatl, with spellings antiquated by modern Spanish spelling standards. (The comment above which implies it is only used in academic and historical contexts is not really true.) And so on.
For something like the English Wikipedia there doesn't seem to be any easy way out: there simply is no standard to adhere to. One can probably best just use whatever orthography is most common or handiest for the variant being cited, and perhaps add an IPA rendering where that is relevant.
For the Nahuatl Wiki, well, I suppose somebody could try to impose a standard, but it would be kind of arbitrary, and could stop people from contributing who don't like that orthography. The same of course would go for lexical and grammatical forms; if you get enforce a prescriptive standard you are likely to stop people from writing, which would be a pity. If you can persuade them to adopt it, that would be different.
-- Lavintzin 04:15, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
These are several languages, so it should be moved to Nahuatl languages. Nahuatl is not a linguistic entity. Sarcelles 18:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what this means. If Nahuatl is not a linguistic entity, neither is Romance, Spanish isn't, English isn't, and so on. What does "entity" mean? No language, dialect, language family, etc. is monolithic, and the criteria for recognizing or naming divisions in them are almost bound to be controversial. If you mean that Nahuatl is not as unified or tightly knit a linguistic entity as (say) Spanish is, that is arguably but not undeniably correct—some Spanish variants are significantly different as well. In any case all the Nahuatl languages/variants are strikingly similar to each other, despite significant differences and definite difficulties of intelligibility or understandability that those differences produce. There is a coherence to this group of variants that makes it quite reasonable to call Nahuatl a linguistic entity. Whether or not that means the article should be moved to Nahuatl Languages, I don't know. It would depend, I would think, on what precedent is established for other similar situations. Is Zapotec one entry? The Zapotecan languages show considerably greater variation than the Nahuatl ones. Same goes for Mixtec. Are Lacandón, Chol, Tzeltal and Tzotzil listed as separate languages? They are considerably closer linguistically than some of the Nahuatl variants; they just happen to be blessed, or cursed, with different common names. It is going to be hard to be consistent. -- Lavintzin 03:53, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm skeptical about the authenticity of the name Nahuatlahtolli listed as a native language name for the language. I don't know as much as I should about the history of the thing, but I have been told by some that should know that the name was never used until the 19th century and that it was almost certainly coined by a linguist type rather than arising as the standard term for the language within any of the dialects. (I would be glad to find a clear and authoritative citation on this.) Be that as it may, it is now clearly the standard term and thus "correct" for Spanish and English and therefore world-wide usage, and that's OK. However, I know of no variant of the language itself where Nahuatl or some variant of it (e.g. nahuatlahtolli) is the standard term used by all speakers, particularly by those who have not been to school. I have had contact with speakers from a number of different areas, and have asked many who use such a term whether their parents and grandparents used the term, and the answer has universally been "no"; many readily say they never heard it as a kid but learned in school or some political-type meeting that it was the name to use. In other words, it is in most cases a relatively recent borrowing from Spanish. In any case, names such as totlahtol 'our word', or mēxihkātlahtōl 'Mexican word', or mela'tāhtol 'straight/true word', or māsēwalli/māsēwallahtōlli 'indigenous (word)' are much more common and in some variants standard for all speakers.
-- Lavintzin 08:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
There had been wording which said some of the Catholic priests were responsible for burning thousands of manuscripts but noted that others translated them and preserved a few. A recent edit simply left the priests, apparently en masse and without exception, as the culprits of this "devastating" loss. (The subject certainly calls forth emotions, but the language seems a bit more emotional than necessary for an encyclopedia. This is true of the other places in the article as well. ) Of course it was not only the priests or the Church that were behind the destruction of so much that was worthwhile in the Aztec and other indigenous cultures of Mexico; the secular government, the military, and greedy private individuals also played their part. And it is true that we owe to some of the priests the preservation of much that has survived. It seemed simplest to me to avoid the issues, which are after all peripheral to the Nahuatl article, with a general reference to the Spanish.
-- Lavintzin 14:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Not sure who changed it (and I don't have time to wade through the history), but ['nawal] is *not* the correct pronunciation of the name Nahuatl. The tl is not spelled l for a reason! It is an affricate, not a liquid, a voiceless alveolar stop released laterally into a voiceless l [IPA ɬ]. ['nawal] would correspond to the pronunciation for the (very few) variants that have changed the tl phoneme into an l. Anyway, I changed it back to what it should be, more or less what it was before.
-- Lavintzin 22:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
i've never even really heard of this language. shows you how culturally rich the American school system is. it seems to me this language would be a good study for the creation of fake languages for fantasy stories, not to say that nahuatl is fake but that the apparent ease of creating new words that fit within the logical structure of the language is interesting. 204.95.67.67 04:23, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that the long list of dialect codes in the infobox will only be a distraction to most readers. It would be a lot better to say something like "ISO 639-3: See article on Nahuatl Dialects" (with the appropriate link.) But I do not understand the infobox structure very well here. (e.g. I can't find the word "various", so I suppose it is put in as part of the Infobox structure.) Could somebody (Magnuspharao?) with the smarts to do so fix this? -- Lavintzin 17:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that language codes should be at the dialect page. If they even should be there. They're not really useful for any purposes. -- Someoneelse 22:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Anybody know where the page on Nahuatl dialects went?
-- Lavintzin 20:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
-- Lavintzin 16:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
The information box to the right of the page indicates that Nahuatl is spoken in various regions of Mexico. Is this list meant to be exhaustive? There are certainly small pockets fo Nahuatl speakers in El Salvador, and I imagine others through Mesoamerica. Gershonw 18:13, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
A lot of pre-Columbian Nahuatl names are popping using the accent, such as Tezozómoc and Ixtlilxóchitl in the Huitzilíhuitl article.
My problem with this is (a) it's harder for me to edit articles with accent marks strewn about, and (b) it's not very historical, if only because Tezozómoc and Ixtlilxóchitl I never spelled their name with the Latin alphabet (of course).
Thoughts, anyone? Madman 20:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
P.S. User:Lavintzin recently reverted this article after someone put the "á" in Náhuatl.
Let me narrow the discussion down to one of the more widely-known Nahuatl names: Nezahualcoyotl. In Spanish, this is usually but not always written: Nezahualcóyotl. The Nahuatl Wikipedia does have an entry for him: nah:Nezāhualcōyotl (with horizontal accents over the vowels). However, there seem to be very few English Google entries which use accent marks. The Encyclopedia Britannica article has no accents, fr'instance. I would suggest that we should either use the two vertical accents (as per Nahuatl Wikipedia) or none at all. I would completely disagree with the idea of following the Spanish example since Nezahualcoyotl was not Spanish in any way and this is not a Spanish language dictionary. Madman 14:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The only time accent marks are necessary in classical nahuatl is when used to mark the vocative which has stress on the ultimate syllable. All other wordforms always have stress on the penult. This rule is so clear and simple that spanish speakers should be able to abstract from their ative stress and learn it. I would recommend striking all accent marks on the words and instead mark length which is actually phonemic i the language.-- Someoneelse 22:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Even though the previous question I posted is still being discussed I thought I'd raise another question to perplex and amaze us. : )
The way I understand it, the Nauhuatl suffix -tzin is an honorific, perhaps comparable to "Lord" in the general sense of the word (perhaps). Should we be using -tzin as part of that person's name? For example, check out Cacamatzin and compare it to this Facts on File article, which is entitled simply Cacama. I had a similar question with Techotlala, an article (stub really) that I added last month. I had originally entitled it Techotlalatzin, but recently decided to drop the -tzin after finding out that it was an honorific. Right now Techotlalatzin redirects to Techotlala. Did I make the right decision??
Any insight, folks?? Madman 18:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering how this article was rated an A. My impression of the rating system was that it had to be rated a Good Article before it could be rated A. (Not that I dispute the rating -- this is one of the best written articles in the Mesoamerican area -- but I was wondering nonetheless).
Curiously yours, Madman 02:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
considering how good the nahuatl language page is becoming I think there are some sections that should be removed. I don't think that the list of words borrowed form nahuatl into english and spansih is necessary nor encyclopedic. And if it is then not on this page. Also the section of native orthography seems curiously out of place. Could we remove them? -- Maunus 01:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
The following text is in the intro...
Often the term Nahuatl is used specifically with reference to the language called Classical Nahuatl, which was the administrative language of the Aztec empire. However, it was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures, such as the Tepanceca, Acolcuah, Tlaxcalteca, Xochimilc, and possibly was one of the languages spoken in Teotihuacan.
What's point is the second sentence trying to make? Specifically, what does "it" refer to? To say that "Nathuatl was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures" makes no sense. So, are we trying to say "the Aztec empire was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures"? That makes sense but then the second clause "and possibly was one of the languages..." doesn't make sense because "the Aztec empire" wasn't "one of the languages". So "it" must refer to the "Nahuatl language".
These two sentences need to be cleaned up so that the meaning is clear.
-- Richard 21:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the toltecs from above mentioned nahua speaking cultures. This I have done because apart from being a semimythological ethnia there is no nonspeculative evidence pointing towards what language they might have spoken. I have also mentioned this on the toltec page to but have receivd no response. -- Maunus 00:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
The article currently gives the following genealogy (in part):
This strikes me as so incomplete as to be quite unhelpful, and in some ways just plain wrong. Pipil is not that different from the rest of Nahuatl; there is certainly more to Nahuatl than just the Huastecan varieties; SE, E and W Huasteca Nahuatl are not separate entities on a level with the peripheral dialects; and the peripheral dialects in turn do not consist (solely) of La Huasteca (which of course actually includes the closely related SE, E and W varieties.) (And where are the central dialects?)
The dialect situation is actually quite confusing: Lastra de Suárez, in the conclusion of the most thorough study I know of, says (1986:189) "las isoglosas rara vez coinciden. Se puede, entonces, dar mayor o menor importancia a un rasgo y hacer la división que se juzgue conveniente." ['The isoglosses rarely coincide. As a result, one can give greater or lesser importance to a feature and make the [dialectal] division that one judges appropriate/convenient.'] Lastra comes up with and carefully documents the following list (her pages 189-233), which would fit in under the "General Aztec" heading (i.e. all of this is coordinate with Pochutec):
She immediately follows this with the caveat: "Se insiste en que esta clasificación no es satisfactoria" ['We insist that this classification is not [entirely] satisfactory']. It's a lot better than what's in the article now, however. Should we put it in? (I'd vote yes.)
Or would the whole thing go better on the Nahuatl Dialects page?
-- Lavintzin 00:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
My opinion is that there is not really any solid foundation for claiming any dialectological boundaries beyond central peripheral and pochutec. Since we can't put up original research, we'll just have to wait till someone does a better job at making a finer classification. Meanwhile I think you should put it on the dialecs page. Where you could also mention the difficulties of establishing a fine grained dialectology. Maunus 00:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Lavintzin 01:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Im not arguing against lastras classification, but she herself have doubts and say that it is a question of which isoglosses to stress. I dont think intelligibillity rates are good to classify from but rather that isoglosses and actual historical shared innovations is the basis for a dialectology. As does Lastra and Canger. For example People from Hueyapan (which I speak)almost understand nothing of Tetelcingo which is dilectologically extremely close to the Hueyapn and other central nuclear dialects except from the particular vowel soundchanges that have happened there. My point is that the development of the dialectal features is so poorly understood that any classification beyond central and peripheral that we give will be largely based on arbitrary traits such as geography and intelligibillity and will only say little about the actual development of the dialects. Another example: -lo is used for plural subject in durango, jalisco in the extreme northwest but also in tabasco in the extreme south east, a notable shared feature although intelligibillity between the dialects are probably low. Would that be a basis for classifying them together or not? Lets use Lastras classification as is on these pages but lets at least mention that the classification is more descriptive than it actually demonstrates knowledge about historical developments.
I certainly think that highlevel classifications are closer to being useful than the lower ones. But thats just me. Also I think that there is a limit to the degree of detail that we should show on these pages. I appreaciate your wish to show the scope of diversity between the dialects, but I think that this is better explained verbally than by a branching diaram in the case of nahuatl, since many of the crucial developments are poorly understood and others superficial and/or very rcent.
-- Maunus 01:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Lavintzin 03:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Fine by me Lavintzin, I certainly won't change it until something serious happens in the dialectology research. As for Hueyapan yes they have as comlex reverentials as in Tetelcingo and according to Johansson (JOHANSSON, Patrick. 1989. El sistema de expresion reverencial en Hueyapan, Morelos. Tlalocan XI. 149-162) )even more complex. I personally think they are almost the same as in Tetelcingo though and that he exaggerates a bit. Only old people use them and mid-aged speakers normally dont use them unless speaking to their parents generation. Following Dakin and Ryesky the only community in Morelos that has no reverential forms at all is Cuentepec, and that lack is a little weird in fact.-- Maunus 02:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Magnus removed the "Tolteca" from the list of groups speaking Nahuatl, saying there was no evidence for this. I'm no expert on it, and I understand that there are different kinds of Toltecs (probably should have said so): the whole Tolteca-Chichimeca-Nonoalca history certainly references Tollan as an important place that many Nahuatl speakers came from. (Whether that was present-day Tula in Hidalgo state is still debated, I understand. Andrés Hasler Hangert 1996:25 ["El náhuatl de Tehuacán-Zongolica"] thinks it is.) Maybe we should say Nahuatl was spoken in Tollan, rather than that the Toltecas spoke it?
-- Lavintzin 01:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Problem is that almost all mesoamerican cultures site "tollan" as the city of origin of their culture (quiché and mixtecs for example). It is a mythological place not an actual place. Tula Hidalgo was most likely built by Huastecs and has just been connected to this mythical toltec culture and called tollan for that reason. some use Tolteca (Una Canger in 1988 for xample) as an over term for the nahua speaking peoples living in the valley of Mexico before the arrival of the aztecs-in spe.
Also toltec in classical nahuatl was a term referring not to an ethnia but to all artesans, because artesanry was related to tollan just as many other cultural concepts. +
Searching for Tollan and Toltecs is as futile as trying to identify aztlan or tamoanchan or chicomoztoc. It is more productive to understand them as a reference to a mythical cultural origin.
-- Maunus 01:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I think there is more but I cant refer to any article claiming it . I do think that someone has argued it in a published article though. I just cant remember who nor where.-- Maunus 01:43, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
That geogrphical distribution area needs expanding or merging with a larger area before this can be green-lighted for a good article. Also, the lead is a little long.-- Esprit15d 20:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Is there a word 'panique' meaning bat? We have these in Philippine languages.-- Jondel 04:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
The article has made substantial improvements. There are a huge number of references, it covers all the major categories of language (including origin and influence), the charts are well formatted and informative, the pictures all have correct liscensure, and the article's linked to other wikiprojects. I would improve the article further by having in-line citations (this is mandatory for featured article status), expand the history and especially literature section some (since this is the backbone of a language's history), and move the history section up below the overview section, as I think that follows a better natural progression for the readers (since wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a language instruction tool). Otherwise, you all have done a good job! Congrats!-- Esprit15d 18:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been trying to look for a definition to a saying that I think is Nahuatl "Mexica tiahui amotihuihui amo maca mo maceualtis in tlein tiq elehuia." if it is or even if it is another Chicano saying can we have it defined and cited on an appropriate page. I'm a native to San Diego of European descent. I know the saying, but I can only connect it to the people always move forward. I'd appreciate any assisitance in defining it. Thanks FOK SD OA 05:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
For a time, the Nahuatl wikipedia gave the name of their own language as 'Nawatl', so I assumed that was the correct Nahuatl spelling. Now I see that that wikipedia's article title has been changed to 'Nahuatl' since then; can someone more knowledgeable about this language explain if there is any different nuance to the spelling? Thanks! ፈቃደ ( ውይይት) 22:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I decided to rework the page entirely so as to avoid the confusion between modern and classical Nahuatl. Now the page only deals with "Nahuatl" and Classical and Nahuatl Dialects have each their own entry which I will proceed to develop futher. In the process I had to rework the phonological representation as it was a bastardised version halfway in between a normative orthography for modern dialects and a descriptive phoneme inventory for Classical.
Magnuspharao 00:31, 25 Jul 2005 (UTC)
I've stricken the paragraph mentioning that "some of the essential nature of classical nahuatl has been lost in all of them" This I have done for the following reasons.
1. It implies that the modern dialects as a whole are derived form Classical Nahuatl. This is not the case Classical Nahuatl was it self a dialect spoken only in the valley of Mexico (and as a trade language). Modern dialects from other places are not derived from classical Nauatl but form the older version of Nahuatl spoken in that area at the time of the conquest and earlier. Classical Nahuatl is an innovatory dialect and many of th peripehery dialects are coservative, many o th changes invented in Tenochtitlan never made it to the outer rims of the nahuatlspeaking area of Mexico. Bibliography: Canger, Una 1988 Nahuatl Dialectology: A survey and some suggestions. IJAL vol 54
2. I know of no sound linguistic arguments that may conclude anything about the "essential nature" of a language.
3. Point of view. It expresses a purist attitude, which is not scientifically justifiable. There is no reason to measure the modern dialects by Classical Nahuatl. Magnuspharao 00:31, 24 Jul 2005 (UTC)
I have gone through and have added some information and have added references to the works sited. I have also made some grammatical corrections in order to improve the flow. Caju 18:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, this is the most appropriate place for my question. (My Spanish) is not so good. Seguro should mean for sure or guaranteed to happen, stable.Doesn't it? In the Philippines, it means --Maybe-- (quizas). How about in Mexican?-- Jondel 00:31, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Who's "proposing" this? There's no reference to it outside Wikipedia [and mirrors], so it looks awfully like original research. Either cite a source, use real Nahuatl spellings, or remove "proposed" if it really is standard.
BTW, if Nahuatl is really several languages (as Ethnologue believes) the page should make it clearer what statements refer to Classical Nahuatl, which statements refer to Nahuan languages in general, and which statements refer to the Nahuan language family as a whole. As it stands, it's really hard to tell. — Muke Tever 01:39, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would like to point out that the Ministry of Education of Mexico (Secretaría de Educación Pública), has been, since its creation, the institution in charge of regulating the spelling and writing system for contemprary náhuatl and in fact has established a system for today's nahuatl. Some sounds of the nahuatl language of the 16th century have disappeared, and this system takes that into account.
This system is widely used in the bilingüal primary schools in rural indigenous communities in Mexico, and in different publications (like recently translated Bibles into some náhuatl dialects), and it is fact the system used in the Wikipedia in Náhuatl.
Therefore, I would suggest presenting this system in the article as well. (The historical classic system which is only used in some academic programs in universities when studying classical náhuatl, and not contemporary náhuatl).
Having experienced Nahuatl bilingual education firsthand in several communities (not as a student of course)I will add that I have not seen any single standard orthography in use, but many. And many very inadequate. How should one orthography be put into use for hundreds of dialects some of which are mutually unintelligible? Also: There are no sounds from classical Nahuatl that have disappeared: there are some sounds which existed in Classical Nahuatl that doesn't exist or have never existed in some modern dialects, but none that have disappeared in all of them. Also Classical Nahuatl is not the ancestor of the modern dialects (except for a few of the central dialects spoken in the valley of Mexico). -Magnuspharao-
Many of the rules that have been proposed don't work very well everywhere. The SEP (Ministry of Education) standards would have the /w/ sound written with a 'u', for instance. This works OK for variants which have no /u/ (which is, to be sure, a lot of them), but not so well for variants where there is a /u/ phoneme, or where the /w/ phoneme is often or even usually pronounced [v] or [β]. In any case it looks like a vowel and not a consonant to those trained in Spanish orthography. Not everyone likes 'ku' for the /kw/ phoneme, and especially syllable-final it is awkward (nekutli 'honey' or tekutli 'lord' are two-syllable words but don't look it.) Many native speakers, having learned to read in Spanish, prefer c/qu to k. Others prefer to make things look like Classical Nahuatl, with spellings antiquated by modern Spanish spelling standards. (The comment above which implies it is only used in academic and historical contexts is not really true.) And so on.
For something like the English Wikipedia there doesn't seem to be any easy way out: there simply is no standard to adhere to. One can probably best just use whatever orthography is most common or handiest for the variant being cited, and perhaps add an IPA rendering where that is relevant.
For the Nahuatl Wiki, well, I suppose somebody could try to impose a standard, but it would be kind of arbitrary, and could stop people from contributing who don't like that orthography. The same of course would go for lexical and grammatical forms; if you get enforce a prescriptive standard you are likely to stop people from writing, which would be a pity. If you can persuade them to adopt it, that would be different.
-- Lavintzin 04:15, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
These are several languages, so it should be moved to Nahuatl languages. Nahuatl is not a linguistic entity. Sarcelles 18:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what this means. If Nahuatl is not a linguistic entity, neither is Romance, Spanish isn't, English isn't, and so on. What does "entity" mean? No language, dialect, language family, etc. is monolithic, and the criteria for recognizing or naming divisions in them are almost bound to be controversial. If you mean that Nahuatl is not as unified or tightly knit a linguistic entity as (say) Spanish is, that is arguably but not undeniably correct—some Spanish variants are significantly different as well. In any case all the Nahuatl languages/variants are strikingly similar to each other, despite significant differences and definite difficulties of intelligibility or understandability that those differences produce. There is a coherence to this group of variants that makes it quite reasonable to call Nahuatl a linguistic entity. Whether or not that means the article should be moved to Nahuatl Languages, I don't know. It would depend, I would think, on what precedent is established for other similar situations. Is Zapotec one entry? The Zapotecan languages show considerably greater variation than the Nahuatl ones. Same goes for Mixtec. Are Lacandón, Chol, Tzeltal and Tzotzil listed as separate languages? They are considerably closer linguistically than some of the Nahuatl variants; they just happen to be blessed, or cursed, with different common names. It is going to be hard to be consistent. -- Lavintzin 03:53, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm skeptical about the authenticity of the name Nahuatlahtolli listed as a native language name for the language. I don't know as much as I should about the history of the thing, but I have been told by some that should know that the name was never used until the 19th century and that it was almost certainly coined by a linguist type rather than arising as the standard term for the language within any of the dialects. (I would be glad to find a clear and authoritative citation on this.) Be that as it may, it is now clearly the standard term and thus "correct" for Spanish and English and therefore world-wide usage, and that's OK. However, I know of no variant of the language itself where Nahuatl or some variant of it (e.g. nahuatlahtolli) is the standard term used by all speakers, particularly by those who have not been to school. I have had contact with speakers from a number of different areas, and have asked many who use such a term whether their parents and grandparents used the term, and the answer has universally been "no"; many readily say they never heard it as a kid but learned in school or some political-type meeting that it was the name to use. In other words, it is in most cases a relatively recent borrowing from Spanish. In any case, names such as totlahtol 'our word', or mēxihkātlahtōl 'Mexican word', or mela'tāhtol 'straight/true word', or māsēwalli/māsēwallahtōlli 'indigenous (word)' are much more common and in some variants standard for all speakers.
-- Lavintzin 08:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
There had been wording which said some of the Catholic priests were responsible for burning thousands of manuscripts but noted that others translated them and preserved a few. A recent edit simply left the priests, apparently en masse and without exception, as the culprits of this "devastating" loss. (The subject certainly calls forth emotions, but the language seems a bit more emotional than necessary for an encyclopedia. This is true of the other places in the article as well. ) Of course it was not only the priests or the Church that were behind the destruction of so much that was worthwhile in the Aztec and other indigenous cultures of Mexico; the secular government, the military, and greedy private individuals also played their part. And it is true that we owe to some of the priests the preservation of much that has survived. It seemed simplest to me to avoid the issues, which are after all peripheral to the Nahuatl article, with a general reference to the Spanish.
-- Lavintzin 14:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Not sure who changed it (and I don't have time to wade through the history), but ['nawal] is *not* the correct pronunciation of the name Nahuatl. The tl is not spelled l for a reason! It is an affricate, not a liquid, a voiceless alveolar stop released laterally into a voiceless l [IPA ɬ]. ['nawal] would correspond to the pronunciation for the (very few) variants that have changed the tl phoneme into an l. Anyway, I changed it back to what it should be, more or less what it was before.
-- Lavintzin 22:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
i've never even really heard of this language. shows you how culturally rich the American school system is. it seems to me this language would be a good study for the creation of fake languages for fantasy stories, not to say that nahuatl is fake but that the apparent ease of creating new words that fit within the logical structure of the language is interesting. 204.95.67.67 04:23, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that the long list of dialect codes in the infobox will only be a distraction to most readers. It would be a lot better to say something like "ISO 639-3: See article on Nahuatl Dialects" (with the appropriate link.) But I do not understand the infobox structure very well here. (e.g. I can't find the word "various", so I suppose it is put in as part of the Infobox structure.) Could somebody (Magnuspharao?) with the smarts to do so fix this? -- Lavintzin 17:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that language codes should be at the dialect page. If they even should be there. They're not really useful for any purposes. -- Someoneelse 22:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Anybody know where the page on Nahuatl dialects went?
-- Lavintzin 20:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
-- Lavintzin 16:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
The information box to the right of the page indicates that Nahuatl is spoken in various regions of Mexico. Is this list meant to be exhaustive? There are certainly small pockets fo Nahuatl speakers in El Salvador, and I imagine others through Mesoamerica. Gershonw 18:13, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
A lot of pre-Columbian Nahuatl names are popping using the accent, such as Tezozómoc and Ixtlilxóchitl in the Huitzilíhuitl article.
My problem with this is (a) it's harder for me to edit articles with accent marks strewn about, and (b) it's not very historical, if only because Tezozómoc and Ixtlilxóchitl I never spelled their name with the Latin alphabet (of course).
Thoughts, anyone? Madman 20:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
P.S. User:Lavintzin recently reverted this article after someone put the "á" in Náhuatl.
Let me narrow the discussion down to one of the more widely-known Nahuatl names: Nezahualcoyotl. In Spanish, this is usually but not always written: Nezahualcóyotl. The Nahuatl Wikipedia does have an entry for him: nah:Nezāhualcōyotl (with horizontal accents over the vowels). However, there seem to be very few English Google entries which use accent marks. The Encyclopedia Britannica article has no accents, fr'instance. I would suggest that we should either use the two vertical accents (as per Nahuatl Wikipedia) or none at all. I would completely disagree with the idea of following the Spanish example since Nezahualcoyotl was not Spanish in any way and this is not a Spanish language dictionary. Madman 14:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The only time accent marks are necessary in classical nahuatl is when used to mark the vocative which has stress on the ultimate syllable. All other wordforms always have stress on the penult. This rule is so clear and simple that spanish speakers should be able to abstract from their ative stress and learn it. I would recommend striking all accent marks on the words and instead mark length which is actually phonemic i the language.-- Someoneelse 22:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Even though the previous question I posted is still being discussed I thought I'd raise another question to perplex and amaze us. : )
The way I understand it, the Nauhuatl suffix -tzin is an honorific, perhaps comparable to "Lord" in the general sense of the word (perhaps). Should we be using -tzin as part of that person's name? For example, check out Cacamatzin and compare it to this Facts on File article, which is entitled simply Cacama. I had a similar question with Techotlala, an article (stub really) that I added last month. I had originally entitled it Techotlalatzin, but recently decided to drop the -tzin after finding out that it was an honorific. Right now Techotlalatzin redirects to Techotlala. Did I make the right decision??
Any insight, folks?? Madman 18:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering how this article was rated an A. My impression of the rating system was that it had to be rated a Good Article before it could be rated A. (Not that I dispute the rating -- this is one of the best written articles in the Mesoamerican area -- but I was wondering nonetheless).
Curiously yours, Madman 02:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
considering how good the nahuatl language page is becoming I think there are some sections that should be removed. I don't think that the list of words borrowed form nahuatl into english and spansih is necessary nor encyclopedic. And if it is then not on this page. Also the section of native orthography seems curiously out of place. Could we remove them? -- Maunus 01:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
The following text is in the intro...
Often the term Nahuatl is used specifically with reference to the language called Classical Nahuatl, which was the administrative language of the Aztec empire. However, it was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures, such as the Tepanceca, Acolcuah, Tlaxcalteca, Xochimilc, and possibly was one of the languages spoken in Teotihuacan.
What's point is the second sentence trying to make? Specifically, what does "it" refer to? To say that "Nathuatl was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures" makes no sense. So, are we trying to say "the Aztec empire was preceded by other Nahuatl-speaking cultures"? That makes sense but then the second clause "and possibly was one of the languages..." doesn't make sense because "the Aztec empire" wasn't "one of the languages". So "it" must refer to the "Nahuatl language".
These two sentences need to be cleaned up so that the meaning is clear.
-- Richard 21:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the toltecs from above mentioned nahua speaking cultures. This I have done because apart from being a semimythological ethnia there is no nonspeculative evidence pointing towards what language they might have spoken. I have also mentioned this on the toltec page to but have receivd no response. -- Maunus 00:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
The article currently gives the following genealogy (in part):
This strikes me as so incomplete as to be quite unhelpful, and in some ways just plain wrong. Pipil is not that different from the rest of Nahuatl; there is certainly more to Nahuatl than just the Huastecan varieties; SE, E and W Huasteca Nahuatl are not separate entities on a level with the peripheral dialects; and the peripheral dialects in turn do not consist (solely) of La Huasteca (which of course actually includes the closely related SE, E and W varieties.) (And where are the central dialects?)
The dialect situation is actually quite confusing: Lastra de Suárez, in the conclusion of the most thorough study I know of, says (1986:189) "las isoglosas rara vez coinciden. Se puede, entonces, dar mayor o menor importancia a un rasgo y hacer la división que se juzgue conveniente." ['The isoglosses rarely coincide. As a result, one can give greater or lesser importance to a feature and make the [dialectal] division that one judges appropriate/convenient.'] Lastra comes up with and carefully documents the following list (her pages 189-233), which would fit in under the "General Aztec" heading (i.e. all of this is coordinate with Pochutec):
She immediately follows this with the caveat: "Se insiste en que esta clasificación no es satisfactoria" ['We insist that this classification is not [entirely] satisfactory']. It's a lot better than what's in the article now, however. Should we put it in? (I'd vote yes.)
Or would the whole thing go better on the Nahuatl Dialects page?
-- Lavintzin 00:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
My opinion is that there is not really any solid foundation for claiming any dialectological boundaries beyond central peripheral and pochutec. Since we can't put up original research, we'll just have to wait till someone does a better job at making a finer classification. Meanwhile I think you should put it on the dialecs page. Where you could also mention the difficulties of establishing a fine grained dialectology. Maunus 00:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Lavintzin 01:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Im not arguing against lastras classification, but she herself have doubts and say that it is a question of which isoglosses to stress. I dont think intelligibillity rates are good to classify from but rather that isoglosses and actual historical shared innovations is the basis for a dialectology. As does Lastra and Canger. For example People from Hueyapan (which I speak)almost understand nothing of Tetelcingo which is dilectologically extremely close to the Hueyapn and other central nuclear dialects except from the particular vowel soundchanges that have happened there. My point is that the development of the dialectal features is so poorly understood that any classification beyond central and peripheral that we give will be largely based on arbitrary traits such as geography and intelligibillity and will only say little about the actual development of the dialects. Another example: -lo is used for plural subject in durango, jalisco in the extreme northwest but also in tabasco in the extreme south east, a notable shared feature although intelligibillity between the dialects are probably low. Would that be a basis for classifying them together or not? Lets use Lastras classification as is on these pages but lets at least mention that the classification is more descriptive than it actually demonstrates knowledge about historical developments.
I certainly think that highlevel classifications are closer to being useful than the lower ones. But thats just me. Also I think that there is a limit to the degree of detail that we should show on these pages. I appreaciate your wish to show the scope of diversity between the dialects, but I think that this is better explained verbally than by a branching diaram in the case of nahuatl, since many of the crucial developments are poorly understood and others superficial and/or very rcent.
-- Maunus 01:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Lavintzin 03:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Fine by me Lavintzin, I certainly won't change it until something serious happens in the dialectology research. As for Hueyapan yes they have as comlex reverentials as in Tetelcingo and according to Johansson (JOHANSSON, Patrick. 1989. El sistema de expresion reverencial en Hueyapan, Morelos. Tlalocan XI. 149-162) )even more complex. I personally think they are almost the same as in Tetelcingo though and that he exaggerates a bit. Only old people use them and mid-aged speakers normally dont use them unless speaking to their parents generation. Following Dakin and Ryesky the only community in Morelos that has no reverential forms at all is Cuentepec, and that lack is a little weird in fact.-- Maunus 02:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Magnus removed the "Tolteca" from the list of groups speaking Nahuatl, saying there was no evidence for this. I'm no expert on it, and I understand that there are different kinds of Toltecs (probably should have said so): the whole Tolteca-Chichimeca-Nonoalca history certainly references Tollan as an important place that many Nahuatl speakers came from. (Whether that was present-day Tula in Hidalgo state is still debated, I understand. Andrés Hasler Hangert 1996:25 ["El náhuatl de Tehuacán-Zongolica"] thinks it is.) Maybe we should say Nahuatl was spoken in Tollan, rather than that the Toltecas spoke it?
-- Lavintzin 01:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Problem is that almost all mesoamerican cultures site "tollan" as the city of origin of their culture (quiché and mixtecs for example). It is a mythological place not an actual place. Tula Hidalgo was most likely built by Huastecs and has just been connected to this mythical toltec culture and called tollan for that reason. some use Tolteca (Una Canger in 1988 for xample) as an over term for the nahua speaking peoples living in the valley of Mexico before the arrival of the aztecs-in spe.
Also toltec in classical nahuatl was a term referring not to an ethnia but to all artesans, because artesanry was related to tollan just as many other cultural concepts. +
Searching for Tollan and Toltecs is as futile as trying to identify aztlan or tamoanchan or chicomoztoc. It is more productive to understand them as a reference to a mythical cultural origin.
-- Maunus 01:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I think there is more but I cant refer to any article claiming it . I do think that someone has argued it in a published article though. I just cant remember who nor where.-- Maunus 01:43, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
That geogrphical distribution area needs expanding or merging with a larger area before this can be green-lighted for a good article. Also, the lead is a little long.-- Esprit15d 20:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Is there a word 'panique' meaning bat? We have these in Philippine languages.-- Jondel 04:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
The article has made substantial improvements. There are a huge number of references, it covers all the major categories of language (including origin and influence), the charts are well formatted and informative, the pictures all have correct liscensure, and the article's linked to other wikiprojects. I would improve the article further by having in-line citations (this is mandatory for featured article status), expand the history and especially literature section some (since this is the backbone of a language's history), and move the history section up below the overview section, as I think that follows a better natural progression for the readers (since wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a language instruction tool). Otherwise, you all have done a good job! Congrats!-- Esprit15d 18:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been trying to look for a definition to a saying that I think is Nahuatl "Mexica tiahui amotihuihui amo maca mo maceualtis in tlein tiq elehuia." if it is or even if it is another Chicano saying can we have it defined and cited on an appropriate page. I'm a native to San Diego of European descent. I know the saying, but I can only connect it to the people always move forward. I'd appreciate any assisitance in defining it. Thanks FOK SD OA 05:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
For a time, the Nahuatl wikipedia gave the name of their own language as 'Nawatl', so I assumed that was the correct Nahuatl spelling. Now I see that that wikipedia's article title has been changed to 'Nahuatl' since then; can someone more knowledgeable about this language explain if there is any different nuance to the spelling? Thanks! ፈቃደ ( ውይይት) 22:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)