christian text in nahuatl

[r. joe campbell]

   I don't have the address and telephone number of the Summer Institute
of Linguistics at hand, but I assume that someone out there does.

   They have published at least:

In Yancuic Mononotzalistli ica Totecohtzin Jesucristo
 (El Nuevo Testamento de nuestro Sen~or Jesucristo
  en nahuatl del norte de Puebla)

Ilajtulisli Yancuic toTata Jesucristo
 (El Nuevo Testamento de nuestro Sen~or Jesucristo
  en el nahuatl de Michoaca'n)

Ya Ni Nopa Yancuic Tlajtoli Tlen Toteco Toca Mocajtoc
 (El Nuevo Testamento de Nuestro Sen~or Jesucristo
  en nahuatl de la Huasteca Oriental y en espan~ol)

   None of them uses 'wa' for phonetic [wa]; they instead all use what
corresponds to Modern Spanish (and Carochi's) orthography: 'hua'.

   Here is a probably incomplete (and possibly incorrect) summary I
derived from a quick examination of their texts.

   phonetic       orthography

   [k]            c, qu
   [s]            s
   [h]            j
   "sh"           x
   [w]            hu
   [ts]           tz

One irregularity among the three is that in the Norte de Puebla (dialect
of Naupan), [w] after 'l' is spelled without the 'h'
(i.e., [okinilwilok] = "oquiniluiloc").  Further, what at first glance
might appear to be an irregularity in orthography is that syllable-final
'h' appears where the other dialects have 'j'.  However, the 'j'
represents phonetic [h] (roughly similar to the Spanish "jota"), but the
'h' of the Norte de Puebla represents a glottal stop ("saltillo"), similar
to the commented dialects of the Sixteenth Century.

   If I had my druthers, modern dialects would be transcribed more closely
to the "Carochi" model; if some of my friends had their druthers, 'k' and
'w' would abound.  But I suppose that we are all stuck with the task of
making our eyes and our minds work flexibly, matching varying
orthographies to our single mental word images.


Joe


On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Matthew Montchalin wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, David Sanchez wrote:
> |I am looking for christian text in nahuatl languages, can someone help me?
>
> Speaking of which, a copy of the New Testament in Nahuatl would really
> help me get into the language.  I have a grammar book, and a dictionary,
> and it *is* a fascinating language, do you know of a source for the
> New Testament in Nahuatl?  (I would prefer its observing the spelling
> convention where the letters 'wa' are used instead of 'hua,' for that
> matter.)
>
>
>