Talk:Nahuatl language

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[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)

[edit] Words lent/loaned to other languages

Lent is the past of lend. Except for dialectal use, I believe loan as a VERB (synonym of lend; past and participle: loaned) is a distinctive feature of US English. I have lived in both Britain and the US, but to me the use of loan as a verb just sounds/looks stylistically inappropriate in a text in "encyclopedic" register, i.e. too vernacular. In any case, loaned and lent would be synonyms. But the fact is that, if I am not mistaken, in linguistics, when talking about words from one language being adopted in another language it is not usual in English to employ either lend OR loan as a VERB, but rather borrow. Loan IS used as a noun, however. Therefore we either speak of Loan(word)s from Nahuatl in other languages or or Words borrowed from Nahuatl in other languages. --A R King 08:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I have a pretty distinct feeling that I have never seen "lent" regarding loanwords. I also have a feeling that I have read "borrowed from" but "loaned to" in most linguistic contexts. But I'll leave this to native speakers of English to judge.Maunus 11:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that "lent" and "loaned" are both grammatically correct (but of the two, "loaned" is more markedly colloquial), but that neither of these are as common in linguistic contexts as "borrowed". --A R King 13:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. You're the man Alan. ;)Maunus 23:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with A R King - as far as I'm aware, "loan" is, in standard English usage, only a noun - not a verb. I see that "lent" has been changed back to "loaned" - I agree that "lend" is not commonly used in the linguistic sense. I am going to change this to "Words borrowed from Nahuatl in other languages", as A R King suggests. Aiwendil42

American Heritage dictionary, 1978 edition, lists _loan_ as a transitive verb (meaning "to lend") and says: "_Loan_ has long been established as a verb, especially in business usage. _Lend_ is considered by many to be preferable to _loan_ in general usage, however, and particularly in formal writing. More than 70 per cent of the Usage Panel express such a preference for _lend_ " in two particular examples involving lending/loaning money to a friend or lending/loaning someone a pencil. So nearly 30% did *not* think loan less preferable even in (at least one of) those contexts. Certainly, when talking about linguistic loans, I have often heard and used "loaned", and don't recall ever seeing "lent" (until whoever changed it in this Nahuatl article). I find _loaned from Nahuatl_ perfectly acceptable and find "borrowed from N in other languages" to be a tad awkward. ("into other lgs"? "by other lgs"?)
I don't much like the commercial metaphor here anyway: why not "migrant words"/"words crossing borders"? But that's a completely different sort of issue. For better or worse, the "borrowing/loaning" metaphor is the standard way to talk about it.
btw, I haven't been involved in any of the changes in the article this discussion is all about.

--Lavintzin 04:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Like Lavintzin, I also declare for what it's worth that I haven't been involved in any changes in the article either.

And for what it's worth, I still think I'm right about this, based on both my general competence in English and my experience reading linguistic texts in English. Probably the most reliable way to resolve the doubt (other than just reaching a consensus here) would be through an empirical corpus survey, but to do this systematically is probably not practical or economical. We can, however, look at appropriate texts and locate examples, and I shall pull a few off the nearest bookshelf as I write. Before I start quoting, I remind you that I am suggesting that common usage in such contexts includes the following possibilities: (a) as a noun: "loan" or "loanword" (I have also come across "borrowing", actually); (b) as a verb: "borrow". As regards the verbs "lend" and "loan", I repeat that while both exist in English, "lend" is more appropriate in formal style; but I am also saying that as linguistic terms, neither of these is commonplace (but if I had to use one, it would definitely be "to lend", not "to loan").

Okay, for my random survey I have chosen the book on my shelf that looks like it's most likely to contain discussion of the concept in question and which constitutes, I think, an impeccable specimen of a "prestige linguistic textbook", and this turns out to be Historical Linguistics by Theodora Bynon, published by Cambridge University Press in the Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics series in 1977, but mine is the revised and corrected edition of 1983. The first observation is that in the book's Index, there are entries for "loan-words" (also for "loan translation") and for "borrowing", but none for "lending" or ??"loaning". I have followed up index references and quote sentences containing any of the terms relevant to this discussion, which I shall put in bold. Unfortunately time limitations have not allowed me to do this exhaustively for all the indexed references in the book, so I've just copied as many as I could in the time available.

pp. 180-1:

Conversely the Low German dialects of the north all have some words with High German
consonantism, which are clearly loans. It is these loan-words from High
German...

p. 217:

We are not here immediately concerned with the procedure whereby words are identified
by the linguist as loans, but rather with the pehnomena associated with the
transfer of lexical material across language boundaries as known from the study
of loan-words after these have been established as such. We may however briefly
say at this point that these words are considered to be borrowed from Latin
because they are innovations in both Old English and Old High German... Their
identification as loans from Latin...

p. 219:

In the case of German some of the words must have been borrowed early enough
for...

same page:

...it would appear that Kitte must have been borrowed while the initial
consonant was still a [k]...

and:

The reflexes... could then be accounted for in the same way as being due
to borrowing at different periods...

p. 220:

...its source word must have been borrowed before this took place.

p. 221:

These changes can be explained as due to the word stress having been shifted during
the borrowing process...

and:

We may therefore postulate for these loan-words...

and:

It will be seen from the above examples that where loan-words are concerned...

On the other hand, I am forced to admit (with slight embarrassment) that the book also says this (p. 217):

For our first example of "loaning", or "borrowing", we will take...


There is a footnote reference following the word "borrowing" here which discusses the practice of using these terms in linguistic texts, which makes two points: first, that neither of the words is really strictly accurate, but "these are the established terms" nevertheless; and secondly, that the term "loan-word" originated as a loan-translation from German Lehnwort. But I will still stick to my guns because I suspect that the observed usage of the author herself speaks more loudly than this metalinguistic comment with regard to the actual use or not of "loaning", which I don't believe anybody actually writes in linguistics texts, apart from this reference. But if somebody can show I'm wrong, go ahead! --A R King 07:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

How about we write "Loanwords from Nahuatl in other languages"?Maunus 09:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Sounds okay to me. --A R King 20:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image of the historic distribution of náhuatl

I've made this image trying to show the extent of nahuatl in modern and historical times - the yelow colour shows the approximate area where classical nahuatl is thought to have been used as a lingua franca or a prestige language spoken by the ruling classes. The orange area is the places where there is known to have been nahuatl speaking populations at the time of the conquest. And the red areas is where nahuatl is spoken now. The map has the drawback that it is quite impressionistic because we obviously don't know the exact boundaries of nahuatl populations or lingua franca use before the conquest. I think it illustrates well the decline of the nahuatl languages - but I am uncertain if that is enough to weigh up the probable inaccuracies. Do you think it is useful enough to warrant inclusion? Maunus 09:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it is quite a good piece of work. One question, though: Are you sure about Nahuatl having been spoken around 1521 in the western half of Hidalgo and on the northern and western rims of Oaxaca? Unoffensive text or character 13:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No I am not, those part are impressionist. I have merely extended the borders of the places where modern nahuatl speakers live in Oaxaca and Hidalgo a bit farther to coincide more or less with the boundaries of areas conquered by the Aztecs. In order to create the map in a completely waterproof version I'd have to do OR and check up the relaciones Geogrficas from the entire central mexico to pinpoint Nahuatl speaking areas.Maunus 22:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course I have not read the relaciones geograficas either. But I think that in the areas I mentioned, there are other indigenous languages than Nahuatl spoken today. From this I guessed that in 1521 Nahuatl probably wasn't spoken there either. But that is only a suggestion. Unoffensive text or character 11:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
You are absolutely right - other languages were and are spoken within the "nahuatl speaking areas" and this is a problem for all kinds of linguistic maps of Mesoamerica. The main problem is that in Mesoamerica neither states/polities or linguistic or ethnic groups conform to coherent geographical areas as in Europe - one town might speak one language and the next another. I think you are right that the map is more confusing than helpful.Maunus 12:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I am sorry, Maunus, if I conveyed the impression that I find the map confusing. I like it, but I would change it in one or two places.Unoffensive text or character 14:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Largest Population? Language or Language Family, Power of the Name

(Copied over from User talk:Lavintzin)

Your recent change to Nahuatl - Most populous indigenous languages

I think that your recent edit [8 Feb] although warranted because what the article was saying was untrue, obscured an important point, namely that Nahuatl, when counted as one language rather than a group of languages, is the amerindian language with most speakers along with Quechua and Guaraní. K'iche maya which is the most populous mayan language has only 1,000,000 speakers according to the figures given here - although The mayan language family has more speakers than nahuatl but it is comprised of thirty different languages (it also has more speakers than the combined speaker of Uto-Aztecan languages but that is beside the point). I hope you see my point and that you can think of a way of wording the sentence so that this point isn't lost. Basicaly I am saying that there is no need of adding "along with the mayan languages" to the phrase - but maybe the entire phrase as it is is redundant.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 21:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I hear what you're saying, but the kicker is "when counted as one language rather than a group of languages". I don't speak any Mayan languages but I understand the differences among them are no greater than those among the Nahuatl languages. The fact that they are called by different outsider's names while Nahuatl is (generally) called by the same outsider name, is more a historical accident than anything significant. I have a good friend who grew up speaking a kind of Tzotzil, and he can get along pretty well in Tzeltal and Ch'ol as well as other Tzotziles. If you just lump K'iche and Yucatec Mayan, you've already outstripped Nahuatl. There are a *lot* of Mayan speakers. --Lavintzin 23:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
While you are right there is one problem with this approach. And that is the power of the name: to most people Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec etc are just is single languages with great dialectal diversity whereas the Mayan langauges are seen as separate languages because, for some reason, they are called by different names. The Mexican government for example count around sixty indigenous languages, Nahuatl, Zapotec and Mixtec each count once on that list while some 10 different Mayan languages are counted separately because they have separate names (just like a bunch of different languages, some non-related, are also counted together under the term Popoluca). It is simply customary to count nahuatl as a single language but Mayan as many.

In the article we describe nahuatl as one language with dialectal diversity - in the article on mayan languages we describe them (in accordance to the views of most Mayan peoples as expressed throuhg the ALMG) as disctinct languages. That means that the comparison of Nahuatl to Mayan is not justified by what we write in the articles. I think that maybe the most populous language comment is better left out altogether.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 10:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the power of the name is a real thing. I recently saw a very beautiful and expensively made picture book, put out by CDI (the old INI) on Mexico's indigenous groups, and it had about 10 pages of pictures on the Nahuas, and about 10 pages on (would you believe) the Mexicaneros. But the fact that people have this sort of language-induced or language-preserved misperception doesn't mean that we should perpetuate it.
It is also true that the articles currently go along with this standard in their organization. My response would be that maybe the Nahuatl article should be changed in this regard, to emphasize that this is a language *family*, and in that way comparable to Mayan, etc. You may be right that the best solution for the populous language comment is to omit it, but that doesn't seem quite right either. Nahuatl is indeed notable among NA indigenous languages for its huge population, and that is worth saying somehow. But it is not, or at least not clearly, the most populous comparable group, and I don't think it irrelevant or overly distracting to say so.
I think I'll copy these exchanges over to the Nahuatl talk page: it'd be relevant for others to put in their two cents worth.
--Lavintzin 16:13, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tlaxcaltecs in missions

I suggest that the Spanish practice of moving Tlaxcaltecs to missions to help convert various peoples to Christianity resulting in spreading Nahuatl should be mentioned. I was reading tonight about Nahuatl loanwords in Coahuilteco, which is rather on the fringes of the Mesoamerican area. It's interesting that there were non-native Nahuatl bilinguals that far north. – ishwar (speak) 04:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Was it only Tlaxcaltecs? Nahuatl-speakers, anyway. And not only on missions, but in exploring parties and other largely or at least partly secularly-motivated expeditions. I agree that it's worth mentioning. One of the major results is in the placenames that got written down and then used by the Spanish. It is not always clear, though that loanwords came about only or primarily through Nahuatl-speakers who came with the Spaniards, is it? Nahuatl was already pretty widespread, and a useful language to be bilingual in, before the Spanish came. --Lavintzin 06:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'll leave it you specialists to write about. I dont know about what the primary Nahuatl people were, but Rudolph Troike ("A Nahuatl Loan-Word in Coahuilteco", IJAL 27 (2)) mentions only the Tlaxcaltecs. Since some loanwords (īliwat "feast", tiōpa "church", totā¢e "priest") are related to Catholic terms, Troike concludes that the borrowings occurred during post-Conquest times. Of course, it may be different for other peoples in southeastern Texas/northern Mexico. – ishwar (speak) 16:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dialects mutually unintelligible?

If dialects are mutually unintelligible, they should be considered as languages, not dialects.--Ornitorrinco 17:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

For an explanation of this usage read: Mesoamerican languages#Dialects_vs._languages. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Nahuatl?

There's nothing else called Nahuatl that the language would need to be disambiguated from (well, there's Nahua, but "Nahuatl" is not generally used to refer to the people in English), and it would also avoid the language/dialect issue. --Ptcamn 16:50, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of "Nahuatl (['na.watɬ])"

Could somebody please record and upload a pronunciation of "Nahuatl (['na.watɬ])" English doesn't contain the ɬ sound (voiceless alveolar lateral fricative) and I don't think I'm the only person reading this article who is curious as to how to correctly pronounce "Nahuatl". Patiwat 18:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Nawatl (help·info) try this for an approximation.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 21:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Put your tongue in position to say "l". Then, instead of using your voice, simply blow air through the sides of your mouth. If you blow spit droplets a couple of feet you're probably doing it right. That's a voiceless l (voiceless alveolar lateral fricative) Now say "Now watt" a couple of times. At the end of the t make the voiceless l sound. If you do it fast (i.e. not making the voiceless l as long after the t as if it were a separate syllable) you'll be pretty close to the right pronunciation. If the whole thing takes about the same length of time as "Nów watch" (accenting the "now") that would be about right.--Lavintzin 23:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
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