Everything about Classical Nahuatl totally explained
Classical Nahuatl (also known as
Aztec, and simply
Nahuatl) is a term used to describe the variants of the
Nahuatl language that were spoken in the
Valley of Mexico — and central Mexico as a
lingua franca — at the time of the 16th-century
Spanish conquest of Mexico. During the subsequent centuries it was largely displaced by
Spanish and evolved into some of the modern
Nahuatl dialects in use today (other modern dialects descend more directly from other 16th-century variants.) Although classified as an
extinct language, Classical Nahuatl has survived through a multitude of written sources transcribed by
Nahuas and Spaniards in the
Latin alphabet.
Classification
Classical Nahuatl is an
Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan or
Aztecan language. It belongs to the
central dialects 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 (
pipiltin), while the commoners (
mācehualtin) spoke a somewhat different variety.
Sounds
Vowels
Consonants
Prosody
Stress generally falls on the penultimate syllable. The one exception is the
vocative suffix
-e, used only by males, where stress falls on the final syllable, for example
Cuāuhtlequetzqui (a name, meaning
"eagle-warrior"), but
Cuāuhtlequetzqué "Hey, Cuauhtlequetzqui!".
Phonotactics
Unlike
English, which allows up to three
consonants to occur at the start or end of words (for example
sprints), Nahuatl allows only a single consonant at the start or end of a syllable, and up to two consonants word medially across a syllable boundary. Also, there are restrictions on which consonants can occur where.
Grammar
Writing system
At the time of the Spanish conquest, Aztec writing used mostly
pictographs supplemented with a few
ideograms. When needed it also used syllabic equivalences;
Father Durán recorded how the
tlacuilos could render a prayer in Latin using this system, but it was difficult to use. This writing system was adequate for keeping such records as genealogies, astronomical information, and tribute lists, but couldn't represent a full vocabulary of spoken language in the way that the
writing systems of the
Old World or of the
Maya civilization's script could.
The Spanish introduced the
Roman script, which was then utilized to record a large body of Aztec prose and poetry, a fact which somewhat diminished the devastating loss caused by the burning of thousands of
Aztec manuscripts by the
Catholic priests (see
Nahuatl transcription).
On the, the language is written with a modified version of the
Latin alphabet, including four
letters with
macrons or long vowels:
ā,
ē,
ī,
ō. Many other foreign letters such as "b" or "k" are used only in foreign names such as in "" (
France).
The 25-letter alphabet is:
a c ch cu e hu i l* m n o p qu t tl tz x y z ā ē ī ō ll* h*
Notes:¨
- "cu" and "hu" are inverted to "uc" and "uh" when occurring at the end of a syllable.
- These (*) letters have not capital form except in foreign names.
- "h" is used as saltillo.
History
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 excellent early sample of literary Nahuatl.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Classical Nahuatl'.
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