Standardization of Nahuatl

[Edward Polanco]

Hello Juan,

I agree with your discomfort regarding the Church's attempt to create a
standardized Nahuatl. However, I am uncomfortable privlageing the Nahuatl
spoken in Tenochtitlan. For two reasons. 1) there is evidence of variations
of Nahuatl spoken in the early colonial period, suggesting variation
pre-contact. 2) Like any language, Nahuatl has evolved over the last 495
years, and it would be unfair to conceptualize Nahuatl from the valley as
the "original"  or more correct variant of Nahuatl.

I think consulting scholars would be fantastic, but consulting macehualmeh
would be even better. That would make any translation less problematic,
although it would be far from perfect.

Regards,
Edward
El jun 12, 2014 4:23 PM, "Juan Adrián Pérez Rivera" <
jadrian.perezr at gmail.com> escribió:

> About the translation of a Nahuatl Catholic Mass and more things
>
> I think it's great for nahuatl to receive attention from Rome. I'm
> catholic, and I think it would be great to translate many catholic
> texts to nahuatl. BUT, I'm afraid I don't like the way things are
> being done.
>
> You talk about create a 'simple' and 'unified nahuatl', in order to
> make a mass that every nahuatl speaker can easily understand. NAHUATL
> doesn't need this kind of changes. If you do this, you would make
> serious damage to this beautiful language.
>
> In my opinion, if you want to make a 'unified nahuatl', you should
> take classical nahuatl as reference. This is the original, the nahuatl
> that Cuauhtemoc, Tlacaelel, Itzcoatl and Motecuhzoma spoke. And in my
> opinion, if someday in the very far future, we have an agreement,
> Classical Nahuatl should be the standard nahuatl. Padre Horacio
> Carochi's grammar is the best book available to settle the nahuatl
> rules and correct writing and meanings and pronunciation. Also, you
> may go to Milpa Alta, in Mexico City. In the town of Santa Ana
> Tlacotenco, they speak a kind of nahuatl that is very close to
> classical nahuatl.
>
> I'm sorry if I sound aggressive, but this is a problem that should be
> consulted with expert people, not with bishops. Many groups around
> Mexico claim to have created their unified nahuatl, and the result is
> that we have dozens of 'correct' nahuatl idioms. I insist, we need to
> consult with people like Dr. León Portilla, Dr. López Austin, Dr.
> Launey, etc. etc. in order to have an excellent translation of
> catholic mass, I would really like that.
>
> If you speak spanish, I recommend this article from the serious
> magazine Estudios de cultura nahuatl:
>
> http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/nahuatl/pdf/ecn42/874.pdf
>
> Here the author recommends to use classical nahuatl as the standard
> and explain the reasons why we should do this.
>
> We need to teach people form little towns the correct grammar of their
> own language, because many of them don't know how to write it
> correctly, and that's why there are many dialects nowadays. Regards.
>
> Achcauhtli
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