Nahuatl

NAHUATL: LANGUAGE OF THE GODS

By CR

Quin ōctlamati noyōllo
niccaqui in cuīcatl,
niquitta in xōchitl
¡Māca in cuetlahuia in Tlālticpac!

At last I understood my heart
I listen the chant
I see the flowers
I do not want them to whiter in the Earth!

Nezahualcoyotl, the Poet King

Nahuatl, alanguage that was considered high-ranked and prestigious, among my ancestors, is slowly dying. With its death, a part of the Mexican soul and heart is close to succumb into the darkness. How could we communicate again with our gods? What do my lord Nezahualcoyotl, the Great Poet King, would say if he knew that his gift to his beloved people has been condemned to death?
In this post, we willanalyze the story of Nahuatl and its importance to national and international environments, and the multiple efforts that require to revitalize a spoken treasure.

NAHUATL: HISTORY

The Nahuatl language is a branch that belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family language. Nahuatl has been spoken in Central Mexico since at least the 7th century AD1, and its importance increased once the Aztecs arrived tothe Anahuac valley, which is nowadays Mexico City metropolitan area. The Aztecs became the dominant indigenous group, above all the other tribes that were settled along the shores of the Texcoco Lake, and therefore, Nahuatl became the dominant and a prestigious language among the population.

In ancient times, a more formal type of Nahuatl, denominated “Classical” was the language used forpoetry, chronic, administrative documents and codices, but in contemporary days, no variety of Nahuatl is identical to the one that used to be spoken at that time.3

Nahuatl literature, including poetry, several chronics and codices (printed indigenous records) were written once the Latin alphabet was introduced2. Nowadays, different varieties of Nahuatl are spoken in rural dispersed communities.As in other languages, there are considerable differences among the varieties of Nahuatl that are spoken throughout the country, and all of them have been subjected to different influence levels of Spanish through the years.

The Nahuatl language has a complex morphology, characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination, allowing with this the construction of long words with complex meanings.Nahuatl hasn’t been the exception of a language that has been influenced by other Mesoamerican languages throughout the centuries, thus, changing its original form. Mexican Spanish has been greatly influenced by Nahuatl, and from there, the borrowed words have been disseminated to hundred of other languages.

PROCEDENCE

Regarding the geographic precedence, some linguists agreed that theUto-Aztecan family was originated in the South West of the United States.4There exists evidence related to archeology that also supports the thesis of the diffusion of the family to the South, and specifically that the Nahuatl speakers, called “Nahuas” migrated from the north part of the Mexican deserts, to the Anahuac Valley. However, this evaluation has been recently questioned by Jane H. Hill, who isan American anthropologist and linguist who has worked extensively with Native American languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. She proposed that the diffusion of the Uto-Aztecan families was the other way around, originating from the Anahuac Valley, and going up to the South West of the United States. 5,6

NAHUATL-SPEAKING PEOPLE

Regarding the Nahuatl speakers, the Nahuas, aresupposed to have originated in what is now the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. They split off from the other Uto-Aztecan peoples and migrated into central Mexico at some point around 500 CE. They settled in and around the Basin of Mexico and spread to become the dominant people in central Mexico valley. As a matter of fact, the inhabitants belonging to the Nahua people still call...