Help please

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Roland Trevino wrote:

> Hello, i am new to studying Nahuatl and i have been working extensively with
> Campbell and Karttunen's foundation course books (vols. 1 and 2).  I am
> getting some command of the vocabulary but i am woefully feeble at
> contracting words.
>
> Please help with the following words:
>
> CLOUD JAGUAR -- cloud is Mix (any other words for this?) / jaguar is Ocelotl
> or Tecuani
>     --- so would this word then be Mixocelotl? or Mixtecuani ?  (that just
> seems wrong to me :)

Mixocelotl is perfectly grammatical. *Mixtecuani is odd. I don't know if
you can affix a noun stem to the verb as noun te-cua-ni.

>
> SMOKE BUTTERFLY -- butterfly is Papalotl / smoke is Poctli
>    --- so would this word then be Poctlipapalotl (again, this just seems
> wrong)


Pocpapalotl works grammatically. However, with personal names there is
also the possibility for Poctli papalotl, 'it is smoke, it is a butterly,
written Poctlipapalotl.

Michael



> Thank you,
> ~Roland Trevino, Esq.
>
>
>

"...and cicadas sing
a rare and different tune..."

R. Hunter