Standardization of Nahuatl

[John Schwaller]

While the Inquisition was charged with monitoring the activity, it was Church policy that the Bible only be in Latin, the Vulgate.  Scripture was not translated into any local language, Spanish, English, Chinese, etc. 


Sent from my iPad
John Schwaller
Professor of History
University at Albany

> On Jun 12, 2014, at 10:00 PM, Edward Polanco <e.a.polanco at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> The Inquisition censored the translation of Scripture into indigenous
> languages in the late 16th century (1580s). High probability for
> mistranslation and thus heterodoxy was used as a justification for this
> decree. Sahagún and Molina were both consulted on the matter by the Holy
> office in Mexico.
> 
> Regards,
> Edward
> Sent from a wireless device
> El jun 12, 2014 8:53 PM, "seth wolitz" <slwolitz at earthlink.net> escribió:
> 
>> Dear John: Your main position ia of course well taken and I support it
>> fully but frankly you did not make a strong case. You needed to present it
>> with a point by point logical linearity that eschews the clearly
>> colonialist misguided persuasion of the Church to create a nahuatl mass in
>> some concocted standard nahuatl.. It is astounding that there is no copy of
>> the mass in nahautal form the 16th century when they were so busy
>> prosetyzing? Can this be? Check on that! In any case, you have your hands
>> full here and a clear polemic i before you. Good Luck!
>> Seth
>>> On Jun 12, 2014, at 6:32 PM, John Sullivan wrote:
>>> 
>>> Notequixpoyohuan,
>>>      The importante thing is not to create a standard version of
>> Nahuatl. Rather, we need to promote communication among native speakers of
>> all variants. A standardized orthography for all variants across space and
>> time would go a long way toward facilitating this. Carochi is a good
>> staring point here, but his system has been improved by
>> Andrew/Campbell/Karttunen.
>>>      As native speakers communicate across variants, they will begin to
>> understand each other and slowly share words and structures with each
>> other. A small, multi-variant manual of common words and structures would
>> also promote inter variant communication.
>>>      There is no such thing as a variant called Classical Nahuatl.
>> This. There were at least as many variants in the past as there are now.
>> Classical Nahuatl refers to the corpus of documents composed in Nahuatl
>> using alphabetic writing during the colonial period (which in turn doesn´t
>> make too much sense because the writing continued after Mexican
>> Independence). As we progress in our study of this corpus we become more
>> and more aware of these varietal differences. So….. Classical Nahuatl is
>> not what the four tlahtoqueh you speak of spoke. And even if they did,
>> would this justify their variant substituting for all others? I hope we
>> understand today that multilingualism/multiculturalism (read
>> multi-variant-ism) is good for humanity: ethnocide is not.
>>>      I heard this argument (that Classical Nahuatl be used as a modern
>> lingua franca) proposed by a European friend of Miguel León Portilla a few
>> years ago at the 50th anniversary of his seminario, and it sounded as
>> ridiculous then as it does now. And even if it had any academic merits,
>> Nahuas themselves would not accept it, and they should´t. It would be
>> viewed as the most recent in a long tradition of impositions by outsiders.
>>>      Hmm, notequixpoh Adrián, ¿por qué deberíamos consultar a tres
>> académicos no-nativohablantes de náhuatl para poder traducir la misa? Y por
>> último, ¿por qué crees tan importante traducir la misa al náhuatl? Ya
>> estuvo con el trabajo misionero (y eso que soy católico), ¿no crees?
>>> John
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jun 12, 2014, at 19:49, Juan Adrián Pérez Rivera <
>>> jadrian.perezr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 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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