Nahuatl status - rumors from California

[Robert G. Comegys]

Dear nauhuateros and Leonel especially,

Take heart, the Nahuatl may be growing in the underworld.

I have no personal knowledge of this, but my brother who teaches at a junior high
school in the small agricultural town of Madera north of Fresno reports the local
Mexican Mafia gang members are starting to learn nahuatl.

Madera,  like many other small towns in California's central valley, is a terminus
for drugs brought in from Mexico and further south. Fresno and the surrounding
area (including Madera) is traditionally reputed to be neutral territory between
the Los Angeles and San Francisco organized crime syndicates. Last I heard, drugs
in the area are controlled by what we call the Mexican Mafia.

By analogy with the use of gaelic by the IRA and others during the late Irish
rebellion, I would speculate that in a generation or two we may anticipate endowed
chairs in Nahuatl at major universities.

I looked around on the web for evidence of Nahuatl being used by gangs. What I
found was the following: "Pepici kluci pytlici" (accent mark on first i in
pytlici) This heading was followed by or in response to "I want to get high on
mota rica". The message may be found at http://www.cypressonline.com/bbs.htm
I found it by running   "Mexican Mafia" and aztec language  on a search engine.

Anyone want to try their hand at this? Judging by the English and Spanish these
young gangsters use I doubt if it would be in a dictionary. I believe this may be
evidence of what Leonel referred to as Nahuatl's "facility to form new words".

All the best,

John Comegys

Leonel Hermida wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm afraid the silence to my query indicates the situation of Nahuatl
> is perhaps worse than I foresaw ....

> A language which has a 'classical' literature and such a facility to form new
> words would perhaps do better than most can which have no such ability, in
> creating its own modern vocabulary!

> The discussion of the means by which that can be done are off-topic and
> cannot be discussed here.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Leonel