Dialect of Pomero info/key sentances

Tue Mar 23 23:19:05 UTC 1999

At 11:55 AM -0600 3/23/99, Art Ludwig wrote:

>Supposedly the Pomero indians (southwestern Michuacan, on the coast) are
>the largest group of Nahuatl speakers there is. In the interior Nahuatl
>is strong, but on the coast (where I'll be working) fluency in Nahuatl
>is a bit sketchy.

I wouldn't agree with the demographics you cite... The area you're speaking
of is PomAro, MichOacan, and it consists of approximately 3,000 Nahuatl
speakers per Mexico's 1990 census. There are vastly greater concentrations
of Nahuatl speakers in central Mexico and on the gulf coast (120,000 in the
Orizaba region of Veracruz; 125,000 in the Zacapoaxtla area of northern
Puebla, 130,000 in the Tehuacan area of southern Puebla, and within my own
state of Oaxaca there are 9,000 speakers --1,400 monolinguals-- in the
northern border of the state with Puebla, in the area of Teotitlan del
Camino to Coxcatlan).

>1) Does anyone have suggestions for resources which could help us, as a
>backup to the help I'll be recieving from native speakers?  I have not
>being able to locate anything specific to this dialect.  Most helpfull
>would be an extensive word list, ideally Spanish-Nahuatl.

If you're collaborating with local folks then I'd say that is one of the
key ingredients. However, because of some of the questions and comments in
your note I'd recommend the participation of a linguist in your project,
even if that person takes part in only a peripheral way (as a reviewer, for
instance). What I'd recommend is the following. The Summer Institute of
Linguistics (SIL) has a large number of folks who work with the native
languages of the world. They have a particularly large operation within
Mexico, and Nahuatl has been one of their areas of concentration. Their
original, and still principal, aim is to learn enough about these native
languages to be able to write competent translations of the bible in Latin
script (much of what we have on "classic Nahuatl," and other Mesoamerican
languages from the time of European contact we have for the same reason, as
it was produced by friars who worked with native informants in order to
facilitate proselitizing). The important thing is that the SIL has its own
systematic survey of the languages and dialects spoken throughout Mexico,
and I cite their summary for your variant of interest following:

---
NAHUATL, MICHOACAN (MICHOACAN NAHUAL, MICHOACAN AZTEC) [NCL] 3,000 (1990
census). Michoacan near the coast around Pomaro. Uto-Aztecan, Southern
Uto-Aztecan, Aztecan, General Aztec, Aztec. 35% literate. Typology: SVO,
VSO, long words, affixes. Levels of bilingualism in Spanish are 0:0%, 1:0%,
2:0%, 3:45%, 4:50%, 5:5%. Mountain slope. Sedentary pastoralists, swidden
agriculturalists. Altitude: 200 meters. NT in press (1996). Bible portions
1964-1996.
---

Note the last two fields of this record. These denote that SIL has
linguist-missionaries working in the Pomaro dialect. I'd contact SIL to
find out who these folks are and then inquire whether they would have the
time/interest to assist you, as I suggested earlier, at the very least as
reviewers-paid consultants. Whatever else one might think about the mission
of SIL folks, my personal experience with them is that they are highly
competent and careful linguists, and persons with high ethical standards.
However, they are also usually overburdened and obsessed with their life's
work (it is not unusual for them to spend 3 to 4 decades in order to learn
enough to feel comfortable in rendering the Bible in the dialect of their
specialization). I mention this to emphasize that you cannot take for
granted that these folk will be able to assist you, but I'm certain that if
you were fortunate enough to enlist their assistance, or advice, your
project would be enhanced, both in terms of properly forming your prose as
well as benefitting from someone else's solutions to the perennial problem
of how to wedge somebody else's body of sounds into your alphabet.

You can consult the SIL website at:  http://www.sil.org/. Note in
particular their entry on Mexico, within which you'll find an index to a
body of resources on Nahuatl that they are slowly but steadily putting on
line. This includes native stories, technical papers, grammars, courses,
doctoral dissertations and the like:

    http://www.sil.org/americas/mexico/nahuatl/familia-nahuatl.htm

>2) Can anyone help me with translations for the following specific key
>phrases?

What you are asking for represents a lot of work. I can offer only a few
general pointers.

>I don=EDt know.
>  Amo nigmate
=2E..
>Ah! now I understand!
>  Si nigmate

The "g" is not a Nahuatl sound. In the central dialects with which I am
familiar it is common for a Spanish-speaking neophyte to confuse a term
like "nicmati" with "nigmati," as you've written it. However, knowing
nothing first-hand about Pomaro Nahuatl I can't attest for certain that
this variant has not in fact turned "cm" into "gm," only tell you that I
think you should check it out carefully. To a native speaker, it would
obviously make a big difference.

In some of the statements you've written (cf. "Si chile opce huelta") you
are employing syncretic Nahuatl/Spanish terms. This is particularly
difficult territory. Should this in fact represent the local vernacular
then your use would of course be effective. However, if it represents the
effort of a native speaker with marginal fluency to render your statement
or question in the best Nahuatl they know, then this might obviously cause
problems for the population with higher fluency (BTW, I note from the SIL
demographic information, which I trust far more than I trust Mexican census
data --that is a different topic--, that your target population --as
defined by literate speakers of the language-- cannot possibly be more than
1000 individuals). The advice here would be to not be satisfied just that
you've found a local informant or collaborator, but to establish what the
general level of syncretism of the language is, make certain that you find
an informant or informants who speak at the desired/effective level of
fluency required, and for this I can think of no better advisors than the
linguists I've recommended before. This last topic is an important one.
Think how you might be impressed by a poorly rendered translation into your
native language, and of the nuances that are implicit when what you regard
as "slang" or "borrowed terms" are included in a piece of prose. As much
derives from HOW you speak a language as well as from the simple fact that
you know a language.

=46or more general recommendations on learning the language, see the page on
this mailing list's web site, and in particular note the Campbell and
Karttunen short course materials, which I recommend in particular for the
serious learner:

    http://www.umt.edu/history/nahuatl/hotlinks.htm
    http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rjsalvad/scmfaq/nahuatl.html

Hasta moztla.

Ricardo J. Salvador         E-mail: mailto:salvador at iastate.edu
1126 Agronomy Hall        Voice: 515.294.9595
Iowa State University    Fax: 515.294.8146
Ames IA 50011-1010          WWW: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rjsalvad