Classical Nahuatl was once the dominant language of central Mexico. Committed to Roman letters shortly after the Spanish arrival, Classical Nahuatl boasts a wealth of texts of late Aztec and early Colonial life in Mexico, from deeds and wills to poems and letters, from the Tale of Quetzalcoatl to the account of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In general at most sessions we swot our way through a bit of Nahuatl text, translation in hand, trying to see how the Nahuatl can possibly mean what the translators interpret it as meaning, and in theory gradually picking up a sense of how Nahuatl works in its own terms. Over the course of time we use a wide range of texts differing in difficulty, subject matter, and style. Or Aunt Minnie.
Newcomers are always welcome.
The Project in Progress We have just begun a text that purports to teach us how to eat like civilized people. So far we have learned that we should not scratch and slobber and grunt or stuff all the food in our mouths at the same time and should remember to chew. And we should not with snot dripping from our noses or turn the soup bowls over on our heads just for fun. The gods, in congress assembled at Teotihuacan, had been cursing the darkness and had decided to create the sun and the moon, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Buttons, probably imagining they meant this metaphorically, agreed, and by general acclaim, and with enough knowing winks that he should have suspected something was amiss, Buttons was made CEO of Sun Enterprises.