is it zin or tzin??

[Amapohuani at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/8/00 3:24:04 PM, karttu at nantucket.net writes:

<< It's been an intriguing idea for a very, very long time, but the peculiar 
distribution of Spanish diminutive -ito/a in the Americas is much broader
than the formerly Nahuatl-speaking areas of core Mesoamerica.

Still, I feel (as everyone else does) that the difunditos/muertitos usage of
Mexico parallels the Nahuatl use so closely that it's hard to convince
oneself that they have nothing to do with each other.  The only
quasi-first-person use of honorific -tzin that Jim Lockhart and I found in
the hundreds of colonial Nahuatl documents we read was in the case of a
woman dictating her testament and making provisions for her corpse to lie
before the altarof her local church before burial.  Referring to herself
after death, she used the honorific.

Fran Karttunen >>

Listeros:

There are also a few (very few) occurrences in colonial Nahuatl 
ecclesiastical texts of first person use of -tzin. I am reminded of this 
because (literally) today I came across one while working on the Nahuatl 
drama YN ANIMASTIN YHVAN ALBACEASME (part of the Nahuatl Theater Series 
Louise Burkhart and I are working on). Occurs almost two thirds of the way 
through.  Towards the end of a response to Saint Mary, Christ at one point 
says "auh in nehuatzin." My vague memories of the other occurrences is that 
they involve God the Father speaking. 

Of course, the trouble with such materials is the uncertain extent to which 
native and non-native speakers of Nahuatl contributed to such texts. However 
in many respects this play and others like them have so many indications of 
direct Nahua intervention in their writing and/or translation from 
Spanish/Latin models that it is difficult to automatically ascribe this usage 
to a well-meaning (if not fully informed and fluent) Hispanic/Hispanized 
priest or layperson. 

Ye ixquich.
Barry D. Sell