Fw: Totlahtol

[Michael McCafferty]

Quoting Michael Swanton <mwswanton at yahoo.com>:

> Michael McCafferty,
> I believe you are conflating different issues. One?s choice of
> orthography is different from erroneous grammatical interpretations.
> Regardless of what orthography one uses, it is possible to make
> mistakes in grammar, etymology and translation. This makes your
> dismissal of Launey?s Introduction based on erroneous, but
> unspecified, grammatical interpretations seem gratuitous when
> addressing a question about orthography.

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply gratuity. I meant to say that both his 
orthography and his grammar misinterpretations both detracted from the 
English translation of his Nahuatl grammar, which I presume is going to 
be used for the most part by English-speaking students, which probably 
includes Americans, I imagine.

>
> It is also, I believe, quite mistaken. I have taught Classical
> Nahuatl at Leiden University for several years before moving to
> Mexico and I found the French version of the Introduction to be quite
> valuable. Una Canger has used the Introduction for many years in her
> classes in Denmark. While all works can be improved?there are
> certainly some errata that need to be noted (especially in the
> translated versions of his book) and I have different interpretations
> of certain grammatical phenomena (particularly the passive)?Launey?s
> Introduction for me and many others continues to be the best, most
> accessible and overall reliable initiation to the language. [Full
> disclosure: I studied with Launey in Paris years ago].


The problem is that Launey had the book translated into English but did 
not vet it for its thirty-year-old errors, some of which are quite 
shocking, as you will see when the review appears. He simply handed the 
thing over to his translator, who added some items of his own, and 
wiped his hands of the whole affair.

So, what Launey has done is given the world an out-of-date grammar. 
Launey's English translation of his Nahuatl grammar is itself a 
historical document as it stands today.

Michael McCafferty



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