Talk:Nahuatl/Archive 1

message: 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)
thread_title: Reworking the page

message: 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)
thread_title: Minor edits

message: 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)
thread_title: Mexican Spanish->Tagalog

message: 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).
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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-
----
: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)
thread_title: Writing System for Contemporary Nahuatl

message: 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)
thread_title:  Suggestion to move this article to Nahuatl languages 

message: 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)
thread_title: The name ''Nahuatl'' itself as a Nahuatl word

message: 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)
thread_title:  Burning the manuscripts 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: Anybody know where the page on Nahuatl dialects went?
--Lavintzin 20:29, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I found it. Somebody had put an accent on the link, which broke it.
--Lavintzin 16:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What happened to the Dialects page? 

message: 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)
thread_title: Only in Mexico?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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 referred 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)
replies: text: In English-language publications he is referred to as "Cacama".--Rockero 17:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text:  "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)
thread_title:  ''-tzin'' 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Confused about intent of two sentences in the intro 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Tolteca? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  I expanded the Geographal distribution part.--Maunus 14:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: GA nomination

message: Is there a word 'panique' meaning bat? We have these in Philippine languages.--Jondel 04:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no such word in nahuatl, nor is there any reason there should be since all influence between Philippine languages and Nahuatl has gone through Spanish.--Maunus 18:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Panique

message: 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)
thread_title:  Sayings