Talk:Nahuatl language

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Contents

[edit] Reworking the 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)

[edit] Minor edits

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 gramatical corrections in order to improve the flow. Caju 18:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mexican Spanish->Tagalog

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)

[edit] "proposed Nahuatl Standard Transcription" ?

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 do believe the same scheme (they call it "ortografía moderna") is used over at the Nahuatl wikipedia. --Circeus 14:43, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
Maybe. But in that case it doesn't belong to Classical Nahuatl but modern Nahuatl, and should say so... btw, what kind of Nahuatl *are* they using at nah: ? It doesn't seem to be Classical or Istmo-Mecayapan. —Muke Tever
No idea. I have little actual working knowledge of the language. They just happen to discuss on the talk pages mosly in Spanish. --Circeus 17:35, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
It's a pitiful and highly puristic version of classical nahuatl using a modernised orthography. No native nahuatl speakers that I know are able to understand it. I think you must have been a collaborator o that wiki from the start to keep up with their neologisms. Someoneelse 22:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Writing System for Contemporary Nahuatl

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 univeristies 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 dissapeared: 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 dissapeared 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-

It is entirely correct that there is not one established modern orthographic standard that all the writers in all the Nahuatl variants adhere to. There are ongoing meetings regarding the issue, but they have not produced consensus even among those at the meetings, and of course such a consensus were it to be reached would take time to be adopted by all. The new National Institute for Indigenous Languages (INALI) may in time be a factor making for greater uniformity, but that remains to be seen, and its director is aware of the pitfalls of trying to legislate uniformity.

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)

[edit] Suggestion to move this article to Nahuatl langauges

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)

[edit] The name Nahuatl itself as a Nahuatl word

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)


[edit] Burning the manuscripts

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)

[edit] Pronunciation

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)

[edit] good informative article that deserves strong collaboration

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)

Every language lets you invent new forms "that fit within the logical structure of the language", and most let you invent new words. (In some languages that have only short words it is not as easy, but those languages use phrases to do the same work. English is sort of in the middle on this.) Mexico alone has dozens of languages that are, in and of themselves, as fascinating and complex as Nahuatl (much as I love Nahuatl), and yes, it is a shame the American school system ignores all this. I once saw a high-school textbook that devoted all of 30 pages (more or less, as I remember) to American indigenous cultures, covering both North and South America. About 25 of those pages were devoted to the high status of women in Iroquois society. You could tell the authors had an axe to grind about the status of women, and were not really interested in presenting anything resembling a balanced coverage of the whole topic. Anyway, if you want to invent fake languages for fantasy stories, study some linguistics!
--Lavintzin 15:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removing dialect codes from the infobox

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)

That's somewhat problematic though. Those aren't dialect codes, but codes for subdivisions of Nahuatl that SIL has determined are individual languages—they don't have dialect codes in ISO 639-3. The purpose of having ISO codes in the infobox is for reference as to what they are—and I don't think you could justify removing them unless, say, you moved the page to Aztecan languages and removed the whole infobox, letting the individual languages have their own pages and making this one more parallel to Romance languages or Tocharian languages or whatever (as it already seems to be—there is very little language-specific stuff on this page now). —Muke Tever talk 21:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, languages codes or dialect codes or whatever. I still find them awkward and distracting.
It is *exceedingly* difficult to decide for oneself what to call linguistic divisions of this sort, and quite impossible to come up with a definition that everyone will be happy with. And it's typically a political as much as or more than a linguistic question; the user's purposes, criteria and habits are ultimately the main factor. (The Ethnologue discussion of this problem is not bad.) Certainly Nahuatl is a whole language family on the order of Romance or Tocharian, not a unitary language even on the order of Spanish (many variants though Spanish has). For the Ethnologue's purposes, and consequently for ISO 639-3, they are languages, then. But for most political purposes these have been considered dialects. (The strong negative connotations or even denotations of "dialecto" in Spanish are a big issue here in the case of Mexican languages. Some, incl SIL in Mexico, try to use the more neutral term "variants".) It is probably for that reason that the companion article was entitled "Nahuatl dialects" rather than "Nahuatl languages". In any case, under whatever name, the same subdivisions are dealt with more thoroughly in the "Nahuatl dialects" article, and I still find them awkward in this infobox. We already encourage each subdivision to have its own page, but see how many red vs. blue "dialects" are listed on the Nahuatl dialects page....
--Lavintzin 22:14, 2 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)

[edit] What happened to the Dialects page?

Anybody know where the page on Nahuatl dialects went?

--Lavintzin 20:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I found it. Somebody had put an accent on the link, which broke it.

--Lavintzin 16:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Only in Mexico?

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)

  • If you have information that Nahuatl is spoken in El Salvador, please add it to the infobox! Madman 23:11, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
    • you should also count the number of speakers and send it to SIL. They are currently counting with only 20 speakers of Pipil all older adults. Some sources state than even 20 is exaggerated.~~—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.152.31.56 (talk • contribs).
      • There are also large numbers of speakers in California and New York and probably Texas. Don't know if this should be mentioned. --Someoneelse 22:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About the accent marks . . .

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.

(1) We get the names from Spanish, where they are (usually/often) accented, and English rules about how to write accented Spanish words are not consistent. Generally, the more "anglicized" a word is, the less likely it is to preserve the accents. But it is "historical" in some sense to include the accents. (If you want to base it on how Tesosomok et al. actually wrote their names, you'd have to leave all the letters out, too, wouldn't you?) However,
(2) Spanish got the names from Nahuatl, written in latin letters and generally according to Spanish orthography rules. One exception, however, was the accents: since stress is so predictably antepenultimate (always next to last syllable) in (central, including Classical) Nahuatl, it is unnecessary to write it and it usually has not been marked.
(3) Nevertheless for Spanish speakers it is a good idea to accent the words which need it by Spanish canons (i.e. every word that does not end in a vowel, s or n, because otherwise Spanish speakers will naturally pronounce them wrong, with stress on the final syllable.
(4) One could therefore argue for omitting the accents so as to conform to common Nahuatl orthographical practice, or for keeping it to look like Spanish, or for omitting it to look like English (the language we are writing in, after all).
(4) The name Nahuatl is well established in English (can be found in dictionaries, for instance) without the accent. An argument can be made for keeping the accent anyway since it does help English speakers achieve a more reasonable pronunciation (if they even know to stress the syllable with the written accent).
(5) In the other cases, the unaccented form is not so well established, so the case for retaining the accent might be stronger.
(6) fwiw I reverted things because the article was inconsistent and confusing the way it was. The title of the whole thing didn't have the accent, as I remember; whoever put the accents in did it in a thoughtless way that broke a lot of links, people fixing the links put the unaccented form back in, and it seemed better to just be consistent the way the dictionaries do it and what also made the links work.
--Lavintzin 05:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I posted some thoughts on the accents here a few days ago: Talk:Tezozomoc.
Rbraunwa 12:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

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)

Just to note: the "horizontal accents" mark vowel length, not stress. They are *not* equivalent to or interchangeable with the acute accents Spanish uses. (Length was often not written for Classical Nahuatl, though it was definitely there; it is often written incorrectly as well. For instance, 'coyotl' ‘coyote’, the last element in Nezahualcoyotl's name, should be 'coyōtl' rather than 'cōyotl'. Also, the 'z' in the name should be 'tz'.
--Lavintzin 22:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Very interesting. So, you're saying that the accent marks are really of Spanish origin??
And I just noticed, Lavintzin, that your User Name has a -tzin at the end. Very very interesting. Madman 02:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC) (P.S. It takes me a while sometimes!!)
Yes, of course the accent marks are really of Spanish origin, just like the shape of the letters, the left-to-right reading order, etc. And not necessarily any the worse for it. It's always a judgment call at what point to abandon Spanish conventions which are not necessary or which may actually be unhelpful in a Nahuatl context. Accents are not necessary for most variants of Nahuatl (stress is not, or is only marginally, phonemic), but Spanish speakers will mispronounce Nahuatl words if they're left out.
Yes, my username has the -tzin, which in some modern variants is equivalent to don or señor in Spanish or mister in English: i.e. a fairly mild, almost standard courtesy honorific. I included it to make a user name long enough for some uses where a name must be longer than 5 letters.--Lavintzin 05:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The only time accent marks are neccesary 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 reccommend 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)

[edit] -tzin

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)

Yes it is correct. "tzin" was used as an honorific term or/and as familiar term. For example, Motecuzomatzin is something like "my lord Motecuzoma". But also Nanahuatl,( considered the most humble and poor of the gods) was refered as Nanahuatzin, but in this case it would be "My dear Nanahuatl" o "my little Nanahuatl". The only problem is to remember that you should not infer the original name just droping the suffix. For example the correct original of Cacamatzin is "Cacamatl". Nanahuatzin 06:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
In English-language publications he is referred to as "Cacama".--Rockero 17:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
That is how it was written by the Spaniard, so i thinks it´s ok. In some variants of the nahuatl "tl" sounds very soft... But in mexican history book you will find both "Cacamatl" and Cacama... A bit confusing isn´t it? .. Have fun Nanahuatzin 01:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it's very confusing. : ) I myself haven't seen "Cacamatl" in any English language document but "Cacama" is used often. Madman 02:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Just for fun... search for Cacamatl in this nahuatl poem and it notes ... http://www.fullbooks.com/Ancient-Nahuatl-Poetry2.html http://www.fullbooks.com/Ancient-Nahuatl-Poetry3.html Nanahuatzin 08:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
"cacama" makes no sense as a nahuatl word. Nouns, including proper nouns (except a small class of irregular nouns) must take a suffix in order to be part of a sentence. This suffix can be an absolutive suffix -tli/-tl or reverential -tzin or reverenial plural -tzitzintin or plural -tin/-meh or possessive -w or possessive plural -wān. Without one of these suffixes a noun is not distinguishable as such. Therefore Cacamatl or Cacamatzin should be preferred. --Someoneelse 22:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How did this get rated an A?

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)

Yeah, I was just wondering the same thing. I have demoted it to "B-class" but also nominated it for GA status. Let's see what an objective third-party assessment concludes. --Richard 17:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


I'd rated it A in the initial pass of assigning ratings, on the principle that once a sufficient number of project-related articles had been initially assessed, it would be easier to then compare similarly-rated articles to see if there were any that looked 'out-of-place'. As you note, this is one of the best-written and more comprehensive articles on meso/aztec topics we have at the moment, although there's ample scope for more detail to be added. In comparison with the rest it seemed to at least have a claim to be A.
Although A comes 'higher' in the quality rating scale than GA, I don't think this means it has to go thru GA before reaching A. There's no formal process for determining an A rating, unlike for GA & FA, other than the Project deciding its merits. To me, A means "all major aspects are detailed, the prose is quite good, it's well-structured and referenced; with a little more tweaking and expansion here and there, it could be nominated for FA". Fine for it to be put up for GA nom, tho'.
Perhaps now the aztec & meso projects have assessed most of these, we could revisit the criteria and see if they can be made any more explicit & 'objective'.--cjllw | TALK 02:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
My interpretation of A-class is closer to Madman2001's interpretation. To me, an A-class article should be substantially better than a GA article and approaching candidacy to be FA. The major difference between an A-class article and an FAC is that the A-class article hasn't been submitted for FAC and may still be deficient in one or two of the FA criteria.
This sort of interpretation addresses the criticism that was seen over on WP:CATHOLIC. In essence, someone was claiming that the ratings are not "objective" and we were claiming that GA and FA are relatively objective processes. A-class is between GA and FA and B-class is something less than GA.
--Richard 06:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't disagree, and certainly assigning an A ranking implies that the article ought to pass for GA, were it to be nominated. But it's not a prerequisite to have actually passed a GA nom before an article can reach A, if you see what I mean. The GA process is a comparatively recent development, and as I understand it originally conceived for shorter articles on perhaps more concise topics- ie those for which it may be very difficult to ever bring to FA status, by virtue of their comparative brevity and narrower scope. The GA system does seem however to have expanded to also assess longer articles. GA is also disparaged in some quarters as a "poor-man's FA", but that need not concern us here. Anyway, let's see how the GA nom pans out.--cjllw | TALK 14:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I would think it should pass GA. As noted, it is one of the best Mesoamerica articles (although honestly a little on the detailed-and-dry side). I am happy with the A rating. Madman 14:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] suggestion of removals

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 list of words borrowed is pretty standard. While not the most academically useful part of the page, the reason it is standard is because it gives the reader (who speaks English, probably not Spanish, and almost certainly not Nahuatl) a point of connection between the topic of the article and their world, a sort of "how does this effect me?". I see no reason why the subject of orthography would be off-topic at all for an article on a language.--Prosfilaes 05:11, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Prosfilaes. Please leave those sections in the article.
--Richard 12:11, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confused about intent of two sentences in the intro

The following text is inthe 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)

Clearly, the author meant something like what I've just substituted for these sentences. Feel free to improve my wording, of course. Note that the spellings of several of those groups were wrong, so I have fixed them. --Lavintzin 23:48, 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)

[edit] Genealogy

The article currently gives the following genealogy (in part):

    • 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
          • Southeastern Huasteca Nahuatl
          • Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl
          • Western Huasteca Nahuatl
          • Peripheral dialects
            • La Huasteca

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):

  • Western periphery
    • West coast
    • Western Mexico state
    • Durango-Nayarit
  • Eastern Periphery
    • Sierra de Puebla
    • Isthmus
    • Pipil
  • Huasteca [She could have called this the "Northern periphery"]
  • Center
    • Nuclear sub-area
    • Puebla-Tlaxcala
    • Xochiltepec-Huatlatlauca
    • Southeastern Puebla
    • Central Guerrero
    • Southern Guerrero

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)

Your version is certainly better than the original. But as you and Lastra comments it is difficult to see exactly how to make a finegrained dialectology here.

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)

It's not really all that fine-grained. And it was put forward in a fairly authoritative work. (I know others, including Çanger, have differed from it, but I don't know that their proposals have become completely accepted. Çanger includes Zongolica, which I actually speak, with the eastern periphery. I can certainly say that I and native speakers I've worked with can understand stuff from the central area a *lot* better than stuff from the Sierra de Puebla or (especially) the Isthmus. The little bit of Pipil I've ever heard I could understand considerably better than Isthmus, though of course there were *lots* of differences too.)
Of course the boundaries are not clear: that is the nature of this sort of thing. But the differences are real, and worth trying to reference somehow.
One possibility would be to include Lastra's higher-level divisions. But it would be less than helpful because they are rather vague without the lower-level divisions under them. Anyway, how does that idea strike you?

--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 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)

I'm happy with what you say to use Lastra's classification but mention the complexity of the situation and the caveats.
Yes, the -lo thing is striking. Given that it's a passive suffix in the center, one could argue two scenarios that would not require it to be a mark of close relatedness between Durango and Tabasco: either (1) it was originally plural but developed into passive in the (innovative) center, or (2) it was originally passive but independently developed the plural meaning in two places (e.g. "it was said" > "they said it"). In Tetelcingo and other places it is an honorific, but that is presumably a development from the passive meaning ("it was said" > "someone I prefer not to mention (out of respect) said it").
--Lavintzin 02:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Maunus said "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."
In a sense I don't disagree at all, and if undoing a single straightforward (set of) changes leaves you with something quite intelligible that is an important fact to consider. Those bizarre vowel changes are certainly a case in point. (Do the Hueyapan people have the extensive and complex honorifics that Tetelcingo has? My recollection is that those I spoke to did not, but I never investigated in any depth.) Still, intelligibility rates tend to vary inversely with the number of isogloss lines crossed. The problems of Orizaba/Zongolica speakers understanding Isthmus speakers are not just the t/tl thing (though that is a significant problem) but a pileup of intonational, phonological, grammatical (e.g. the inclusive/exclusive thing) and lexical differences. So intelligibility is a useful index, though not an exact one. Isoglosses based on surveys, on the other hand, I have also learnt to distrust in some degree. It is amazing, for instance, how often if you follow up a survey that shows a difference you find out that actually it is a matter of preference, and that in fact both groups understand both ways of speaking just fine, and it may even depend on which speakers you happen to survey which way things go. So they also are not necessarily best swallowed whole taken completely at face value.
In part it's a matter of what you're after with your dialectal classifications. Is it history? Even that is hugely complex: where your ancestors came from is certainly a factor, but so is who you and your more recent ancestors have been talking to over the centuries since. If it is the current situation, then intelligibility is a much more important factor, I think. A linguistic descent tree is a somewhat misleading, but still potentially useful, method of display in either case

--Lavintzin 03:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

How about: The upper levels of Lastra's classification on this page, and reference from there to the whole thing on the Nahuatl dialects page?
--Lavintzin 03:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I think I'll go ahead and do it; You all can change it if you don't like it. --Lavintzin 03:28, 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)

[edit] Tolteca?

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)

While adding links, I also toned down the claim the "Nahuatl was probably one of the languages in use at Teotihucan". Is there any scholarly evidence to support this?? Madman 01:36, 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)

[edit] GA nomination

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)

I shortened the lead by merging the 2nd and 3rd lead paragraphs down into the ==Overview== section. Hope this works for you. Madman 02:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I expanded the Geographal distribution part.--Maunus 14:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Panique

Is there a word 'panique' meaning bat? We have these in Philippine languages.--Jondel 04:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no such word in nahuatl, nor is there any reason there should be since all influence between Phillipine languages and Nahuatl has gone through Spanish.--Maunus 18:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good article!

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 would like to second the inline citation request, the GA rules have recently been changed concerning it, and this article may need them very soon. Homestarmy

[edit] Sayings

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 apprecaite any assisitance in defining it. Thanks FOK SD OA 05:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nawatl?

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)

There is no one correct spelling that all agree on. There is discussion currently ongoing at many levels and in many places on what orthography(ies) to use, and things are being published in a number of different orthographies. 'hu' is the traditional spelling, and has a lot going for it. 'w' is not terribly widely used at present, but has the advantage of being more transparent for English readers at least ('hu' is a 'w' sound, though many mistakenly pronounce it 'hw', which would be 'ju' in the Spanish-based orthography.) If the Nahuatl wikipedia adopts an alphabet using 'w', then the proper spelling for that context would be 'Nawatl'; if they used 'u' the proper spelling would be 'Nauatl'. But neither is generally used enough to be unquestionably right. (Another classical spelling could be "Naoatl", but I don't see anyone advancing that idea!)
--Lavintzin 04:15, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
"Náhuatl" is simply the convention that is most widely used in Mexico and outside and therefore it is most likely that someone conducting a search on wikipedia is familiar with that spelling form. Google gives: Nawatl - 736 hits, Nahuatl - 4.450.000, Naoatl - 3 hits.

Maunus 07:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language prehistory

Having another look at this article my attention was caught by the Language Prehistory subsection. I notice that it only refers to, and draws information from, T. Kaufman's article. Having read that article, I was wondering just how reliable its conclusions are. Please note that I am not asking this as a way of attacking the article or its author. I am not a specialist on the history of Nahuatl and I lack sufficient criteria to take a stand myself. Perhaps my question would be better worded as: "What is the standing of this article (which is now quite old, so it must have one) according to current academic opinion in the field?" (By the way, although the Wikipedia article refers to it as K's 2001 article, the latter is based on his work from as early as 1989, and 2001 only being the latest of several revision dates given given at the beginning of the text.) I cannot evaluate the data in the article, except to say that it looks interesting, but as a "lay" reader, the assertions in the article about the prehistory of Nahuatl strike me as being built on a rather longish chain of mutually dependent, unproven conjectures, which is not a crime either, but in contrast with the apparently spectulative nature of that content, I find the tone of the article unexpectedly self-confident. Also not a crime, but if I am right about all these assessments, then the conclusion would be that although Kaufman says A = B, Wikipedia may be better off leaving it as "it has been suggested that A = B". Which it does, I admit, but I was wondering if either (a) the hypotheses mentioned are backed by other scholars (and we could then say so in our article) or (b) there are alternative viewpoints which might be added, so that this section does not hang on the conjectures of one scholar. Any thoughts from those of you who know your way around this subject better than I? Please do correct/educate me if I'm just wrong to think this!

Also: shouldn't the article by Kaufman be listed in the bibliography as well as referenced in the notes? --A R King 11:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I added the linguistic prehistory section last week and I must admit that I understand what you mean. Kaufman is always very confident about his own conjectures. And most of this article is conjecture. However he is also one of the most thorough and knowing scholars working with mesoamerican languages today and his guesswork does have some merit, also no other scholars that I know of work so exclusively with precolumbian contact linguistics in mesoamerica. His other work on the linguistic prehistory and contact linguistics of Mesoamerica is without a doubt among the most influential and respected scholarship in that field (CAMPBELL, LYLE R., and TERRENCE S. KAUFMAN. 1976, A Linguistic Look at the Olmec. American Antiquity 41(1):80-89., Campbell, Lyle and Terrence Kaufman. 1981. On Mesoamerican linguistics. American Anthropologist 82:850-857., Kaufman, Terrence. 1990. Language History in South America: What we know and how to know more. In David L. Payne, ed. Amazonian Linguistics, pp.13-74. Austin: University of Texas Press., Meso-America as a Linguistic Area Lyle Campbell, Terrence Kaufman, Thomas C. Smith-Stark Language, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), pp. 530-570, Mayan Linguistics: Where are we Now? Lyle Campbell, Terrence Kaufman Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 14, 1985 (1985), pp. 187-198)
I added the article for three reasons mainly: 1. it is the only article I know of that systematically deals with nahuan prehistory. 2. It substantiates, elaborates and supports the conclusions and ideas of nahuan prehistory advanced by other scholars (e.g. Canger and Campbell) and it doesn't contradict them. It would be great to be able to include more viewpoints and refereences but I don't know of other articles that are so explicit about it's conclusions on the linguistic prehistory of Nahuan.(although maybe Campbells work on the linguistic prehistory of Pipil has some information to add? I don't have it present) 3. The information and conclusions that are drawn in the paper are so interesting that I think they deserve mention here.
Also the material that I have added from the article is not really so controversial, the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area is a welldocumented sprachbund so contact phenomeena in the languages of the area are to be expected - Kaufman just maps them out. The more unexpected conclusions that he makes in the article such as the fall of Teotihuacan caused by Krakatoa, the presence of Mixe-Zoque speakers in central mexico, the exact migration routes etc I don't think we need to put in here (although I personally find most of his conjecture quite convincing).
If you want to tone down the conclusions that is quite alright by me, and it can only gain by having references to and viewpoints from works by other scholars. If I find some I will certainly add them.Maunus 12:28, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I was just wondering, mainly, and also curious to know what somebody knowledgeble as you are actually thought about this. I don't know as much as you about Terence Kaufman, although I'm familiar with Campbell, Kaufman & Smith-Stark, "Meso-American as a Linguistic Area" in Language 62:3, 1986, pp. 530-570 which I have consulted many times. Maybe Kaufman is the kind of writer who is so very knowledgeable that he tends to make leaps that make perfect sense to him but leave some humbler readers behind who can't keep up with him because we simply lack access to (or the capacity to process?) the immense data feed that is actually sustaining his thesis. If so, that doesn't make him wrong, it just makes the rest of us bewildered! I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt (perhaps he deserves it), but as they stand on the page, sometimes one seems to be asked to take too much on faith. For example, on purely linguistic grounds and with the data that he supplies, I feel he is running too fast in his conclusions about which morphological affixes in historically attested Nahuatl "must" have developed from clitics. I am perfectly willing to concede that they may come from clitics, but how it is that he knows they do escapes me, as I seem to be able to imagine other possible explanations - perhaps through sheer ignorance on my part, but how can I know that unless the author explains himself? So all in all I'm left wondering, on the basis of the text as such, how methodologically trustworthy his conclusions are. (I mention the clitics example because it's in an area I can at least begin to get my teeth dug into, as opposed to Krakatoa and all that, which is all Martian to me!

I do have Campbell's Pipil book, so if you need to know anything specifically just ask me. He has several pages of discussion of theories about the origins of the Pipils (as I'm sure you know). Cheers, --A R King 15:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I think your idea about what kind of scientist Kaufman is is probably pretty accurate. As far as I know he is extremely reluctant to publish stuff,I'm told he just can't be bothered, he is only interested in drawing his own conclusions based on hugee aamounts of data. I suspect that is why almost all of his published articles are coauthored. I also think he uses the same kind of linguistic intuition that Sapir was so famous for, and that is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it comes up with ideas that nobody else has thought of and a curse because we need to do so much more brainwork to arrive at the same conclusions - and when the author at the same time is reluctant to make his deductions explicit that makes it even more difficult. Anyway this article by Kaufman is clearly problematic in its pretty large leaps from data to conclusions that areen't possible to double check - his style is "Now I'll tell you how it is ..." and don't ask so many questions (a rather unorthodox and borthersome style to read indeed). As for the clitics I think Dakin reaches a similar conclusion in her articles about the morphological development of protonahuan - but I can't say that other explanations aren't possible. (another book of Kaufman's that I can recommend is the book "Language contact, creolization and geenetic linguistics" coauthoreed with Sara Thomason - in this one the thoroughness of his methods is brought to light in the analysis of contact phenomena in english dialects based on a really big material)Maunus 20:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
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