One more thing about honorifics
Frances Karttunen
karttu at nantucket.net
Tue Feb 8 03:16:12 UTC 2000
One directs honorifics to others. If a man politely addresses a person
named Yaoxochitl, for instance, he uses the -tzin and also the vocative
suffix -e: So a man would say Yaoxochitzine or the contracted form
Yaoxochitze.
If a woman addresses the same Yaoxochitl, she would use the -tzin, but not
the locative -e, because the -e vocative was restricted to men's speech.
But if a woman reports that a man has politely addressed this Yaoxochitl,
she would report that the man said "Yaoxochitzine." It's not that women
were prohibited from saying -tzine. Women just did the vocative part for
themselves by intonation instead of with -e.
The big prohibition is using the honorific in reference to oneself.
Yaoxochitl should never refer to himself as Yaoxochitzin.
Adding a -tzin to one's own name is a gaffe that will usually provoke a lot
of laughter and teasing.
Of course speaking respectfully about a person or people in the third person
(like the Blessed Virgin as Teotl inantzin) is always proper.
The difference between the BVM and Coatlicue, by the way, is that the Virgin
is Teotl inantzin 'God's reverend mother' and the Aztec mother deity is
Teteoh innantzin 'the reverend mother of the gods.'
This little essay on Mexica politeness has two aims. One is grammatical,
and the other is a gentle reminder to listeros that the Mexica were very,
VERY polite, and we should humbly follow their example.
Enough said.
More information about the Nahuat-l
mailing list