Nahuatl course at Yale

[Jonathan Amith (by way of "John F. Schwaller" <schwallr@selway.umt.edu>)]

<bold>Nahuatl Summer Language Institute II

at the Yale Summer Language Institute

</bold>


The Nahuatl Summer Language Institute at Yale will offer an intensive
course and seminars in Nahuatl for a second year, from 21 June to 13
August 1999. This year the course will focus on intensive language
training in Classical, colonial, and modern Nahuatl, offering students 3
hours per day, 5 days per week, of language instruction during an
eight-week period. In an effort to provide the broadest-based training to
potential scholars in many disciplines, the institute will place special
emphasis on the diversity of Nahuatl, thus preparing students for work in
a wide range of textual materials as well as providing them with a basic
grasp of the language that will facilitate learning of any of the
dialects spoken today.=20


<bold>Course structure

</bold>The material that will be used in the course includes a text
developed especially for this course and a computer-based lexicons of
modern and colonial Nahuatl elaborated by the two instructors, Jonathan
Amith (Yale) and Una Canger (Univ. of Copenhagen). Special sessions will
also be held on the utilization of the Copenhagen Nahuatl Dictionary
Project (CoNDiP), a computerized lexicon for the study of colonial texts.
Also to be used will be a preliminary version of an on-line dictionary of
modern Nahuatl [visit http://www.yale.edu/nahuatl (click on Dictionary)].
Weekly translation workshops will be held during the latter part of the
course for direct experience with historical documents.


During the second half of the institute, specialists in the field of
Nahuatl language and culture will give seminars to complement the
material covered in class. Michel Launey (Univ. de Paris), a
world-renowned scholar in the field of Classical Nahuatl, will give a
special one-week afternoon seminar. Two-day intensive workshops will be
conducted by Luise Burkhart (SUNY-Albany) on religious texts and the
translation of European concepts into the Nahuatl language, by Andrea
Mart=EDnez (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropolog=ED=
a
Social, Mexico City) on the "Actas de Tlaxcala," and by Susan Schroeder
(Loyola University of Chicago) on the genre of Nahuatl-language annals
and native-language texts that record an indigenous historical
perspective.


<bold>Application procedure

</bold>The Nahuatl Summer Language Institute, which will be held on the
Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut, is a course approved for FLAS
summer language grants. It is open to undergraduates, graduates, and
other scholars, who will receive six hours of course credit from Yale
University Summer Programs. The tuition is $2,500; an accommodation and
meal plan is available. Admissions are rolling and space is limited; the
application deadline is May 30.


For application materials and further information, contact Nahuatl Summer
Language Institute, Council on Latin American Studies, Yale University,
P. O. Box 208206, New Haven, CT  06520-8206; call 203/432-3197; or
contact the coordinator at jonathan.amith at yale.edu


<bold>Website

</bold>Additional information is available at our website, which may be
visited at http://www.yale.edu/nahuatl. During the following months some
of the material that will be used in the course (grammars, exercises,
lexicons, sound files) will be posted (click on Lessons and Exercises). A
preliminary version of the Analytic Dictionary of Ameyaltepec Nahuatl
(containing about 20% of the total entries) can be visited at the same
page by clicking on Dictionary.



Co-sponsored by the Yale University Summer Language Programs and Council
on Latin American Studies, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Latin American
Studies Consortium of New England.