Classical Nahuatl

Classical Nahuatl
Classical Nahuatl
Nāhuatlahtōlli
Pronunciation	[naːwat͡ɬaʔˈtoːlːi]
Native to	Mexico
Region	Aztec Empire. Postclassic Mesoamerica
Era	14th to 16th century, during the Late Postclassic and after Conquest of Mexico in the Early Colonial Period
Language family	Uto-Aztecan languages Nahuan languages Nahuatl Central Nahuatl languages Nuclear Nahuatl Classical Nahuatl; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nci
Glottolog	clas1250
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Classical Nahuatl (also known simply as Aztec or Nahuatl) is any of the variants of Nahuatl spoken in the Valley of Mexico and central Mexico as a lingua franca at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. During the subsequent centuries, it was largely displaced by Spanish and evolved into some of the modern Nahuan languages in use today (other modern dialects descend more directly from other 16th-century variants). Although classified as an extinct language,^[1] Classical Nahuatl has survived through a multitude of written sources transcribed by Nahua peoples and Spaniards in the Latin script.

Classification

Classical Nahuatl is one of the Nahuan languages within the Uto-Aztecan family. It is classified as a central dialect and is most closely related to the modern dialects of Nahuatl spoken in the valley of Mexico in colonial and modern times. It is probable that the Classical Nahuatl documented by 16th- and 17th-century written sources represents a particularly prestigious sociolect. That is to say, the variety of Nahuatl recorded in these documents is most likely to be more particularly representative of the speech of Aztec nobles (pīpiltin), while the commoners (mācēhualtin) spoke a somewhat different variety.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i, iː	o, oː
Mid	e, eː	o, oː
Open	a, aː

Consonants

	Labial	Dental		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
	Labial	central	lateral	Palatal	plain	labial	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p	t			k	kʷ	ʔ
Affricate		ts	tɬ	tʃ
Fricative		s		ʃ
Approximant			l	j		w

Accent

Stress generally falls on the penultimate syllable. The one exception is the vocative suffix (used by men) -é, which is added to the end of a word and is always stressed, e.g. Cuāuhtliquetzqui (a name, meaning "Eagle Warrior"), but Cuāuhtliquetzqué "O Cuauhtliquetzqui!"

When women use the vocative, the stress is shifted to the final syllable without adding any suffix. Oquichtli means "man", and oquichtlí means "O man!"

Phonotactics

Maximally complex Nahuatl syllables are of the form CVC;^[2] that is, there can be at most one consonant at the beginning and end of every syllable. In contrast, English, for example, allows up to three consonants syllable-initially and up to four consonants to occur at the end of syllables (e.g. strengths) (ngths = /ŋkθs/).^[3] Consonant clusters are only allowed word-medially, Nahuatl uses processes of both epenthesis (usually of /i/) and deletion to deal with this constraint.

For such purposes, tl /tɬ/, like all other affricates, is treated as a single sound, and not all consonants can occur in both syllable-initial and syllable-final position.

The consonants /l/ and /w/ are devoiced in syllable-final position. Likewise, /j/ is also devoiced and merged into /ʃ/ in syllable-final position.^[4]

Grammar

Writing system

At the time of the Spanish conquest, Aztec writing used mostly pictograms supplemented with a few ideograms. When needed, it also used syllabic equivalences^{[citation needed]}; Diego Durán recorded how the tlacuilos could render a prayer in Latin using this system but it was difficult to use. The writing system was adequate for keeping such records as genealogies, astronomical information, and tribute lists, but it could not represent a full vocabulary of spoken language in the way that the writing systems of the Old World or the Maya civilization's script could.

The Spanish introduced the Latin script, which was then used to record a large body of Aztec prose and poetry, which somewhat diminished the devastating loss caused by the burning of thousands of Aztec codices by the Spanish authorities.

Classical Nahuatl Romanisation schemes
Phoneme	IPA	Romanisation scheme
Phoneme	IPA	Michel Launey^[5]
a	[a]	a
e	[e]	e
i	[i]	i
o	[o]	o
u	[u]	o
a	[aː]	ā
e	[eː]	ē
i	[iː]	ī
o	[oː]	ō
u	[uː]	ō
p	[p]	p
t	[t]	t
k	[k]	qu (before i and e) c (in all other cases)
c	[ts]	tz
č	[tʃ]	ch
λ	[tɬ]	tl
kw	[kʷ]	cu (before vowels) uc (in all other cases)
m	[m]	m
n	[n]	n
s	[s]	c (before e and i) z (in all other cases)
š	[ʃ]	x
y	[j]	y
w	[w]	hu (before vowels) uh (in all other cases)
l	[l]	l
ll	[lː]	ll
ʼ	[ʔ]	◌̀ (on the preceding vowel within word) ◌̂ (on the preceding vowel at the end of a word)
ʼ	[h]	◌̀ (on the preceding vowel within word) ◌̂ (on the preceding vowel at the end of a word)

Literature

Nahuatl literature is extensive (probably the most extensive of all Indigenous languages of the Americas), including a relatively large corpus of poetry (see also Nezahualcoyotl). The Huei tlamahuiçoltica is an early sample of literary Nahuatl.

A bilingual dictionary with Spanish, Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y mexicana, was first published in 1611 and is "the most important and most frequently reprinted Spanish work on Nahuatl," according to the World Digital Library.^[6]

References

^ "Ethnologue summary for Classical Nahuatl". Archived from the original on 2013-02-18. Retrieved 2006-06-09.
^ Aguilar 2013, citing Andrews 2003, Bedell 2011, Brockway 1963, and Goller, Goller & Waterhouse 1974
^ Aslam, Mohammed; Kak, Aadil Amin (2011). "4 - English Syllable Structure". Introduction to English Phonetics and Phonology. Foundation Books. pp. 60–68. doi:10.1017/UPO9788175968653.005. ISBN 9788175968653.
^ Launey 2011, p. 8.
^ Launey, Michel (1992). Introducción a la lengua y literatura náhuatl [Introduction to Nahuatl Language and Literature]. Mexico City, Mexico: Institute of Anthropological Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. p. 13-14. ISBN 978-9-683-61944-0.
^ "Manual Vocabulary of the Spanish and Mexican Languages: In Which are Contained the Words, Questions, and Answers Commonly and Usually Found in the Treatment and Communication Between Spaniards and Indians". World Digital Library. Retrieved 2013-05-23.

Sources

Aguilar, Andrés Ehecatl (2013). Phonological description of Huasteca Nahuatl from Chicontepec, Veracruz (Thesis). California State University, Northridge. p. 25. hdl:10211.2/3997.
Andrews, J. Richard (2003). Introduction to classical Nahuatl (Rev. ed.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3452-9.
Arenas, Pedro de: Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y mexicana. [1611] Reprint: México 1982
Bedell, George (2011). "The Nahuatl Language" (PDF). Language in India. 11. Retrieved October 5, 2021.
Brockway, Earl (1963). "The Phonemes of North Puebla Nahuatl". Anthropological Linguistics. 5 (2): 14–18. ISSN 0003-5483. JSTOR 30022406.
Carochi, Horacio: Arte de la lengua mexicana: con la declaración de los adverbios della. [1645] Reprint: Porrúa México 1983
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Garibay, Angel María, Poesía náhuatl. vol 1–3 México 1964
Goller, Theodore R.; Goller, Patricia L.; Waterhouse, Viola G. (1974). "The Phonemes of Orizaba Nahuatl". International Journal of American Linguistics. 40 (2): 126–131. doi:10.1086/465295. S2CID 142992381.
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