<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There is precedent for using orthographic -h for saltillo from the 16th-century, although it was not used systematically. The convention was adopted by J. Richard Andrews, who does use it systematically, and I carried it on in <font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><i>An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl</i></span></font>.<div><br></div><div>My preference for -h was/is two-fold. First, I wanted to avoid proliferation of conventions and for the dictionary to be compatible with the Andrews grammar.</div><div><br></div><div>Second, what we call "saltillo" functions as a consonant in Nahuatl, no matter whether its phonetic realization is a glottal stop (in some central dialects) or as an aspiration that would be represented as phonetic [h] (not to be confused with Spanish orthographic -h, which--thanks to historical sound change--has no phonetic realization at all).</div><div><br></div><div>When an accent mark over a vowel is used to indicate that that vowel is followed by saltillo, it implies that saltillo is a quality of the vowel rather than a consonant following the vowel. It is true that the saltillo does affect the quality of the preceding vowel, but from the point of view of the systematic phonology of Nahuatl, it is crucial to understand that syllables that end in saltillo function like syllables that end in the other consonants of Nahuatl and not like open syllables.</div><div><br></div><div>Understanding and accepting the phonological contrast of open and closed syllables (and hence, stems that end in vowels versus stems that end in consonants) makes sense of Nahuatl morphology, which otherwise has the appearance of being dauntingly arbitrary.</div><div><br></div><div>Frances Karttunen</div></body></html>