Intelligibility between Nahuatl dialects

[David Wright]

Regarding Anthony Appleyard's query:

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"With apologies for asking a novice question, but: how mutually comprehensible 
are the various dialects of Nahuatl? If someone went to a modern Nahuatl 
speaking area, knowing only classical Tenochtitlanian Nahuatl learned from a 
textbook, how much would he and the local people understand each other?"
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It's hardly a novice question!

The people who have looked hardest at the question of intelligibility between dialects of languages in Mexico are the researchers associated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Since one of their goals is to translate the Bible and other educational materials into as many languages as possible on a world-wide level, they are very focused on whether or not people from a given town would understand material written for those from another town or region. They devised a method of testing this question, which consists of recording a text in each of the two places to be compared, then formulating ten questions in each place, concerning the content of the recording. The recording is played for ten individuals in each of the two places (as well as playing each recording in the place it was recorded, as a control); then each of the participants is asked the ten questions. The results are averaged, giving the percentage of intelligibility between the two places. The critical percentage to guarantee adequate comprehension is set at 80%, although this can vary, depending on social factors and other considerations. (See Jorge A. Suárez, The Mesoamerican Indian Languages, Cambridge University Press, 1983, section 2.2, and the "Introduction" in Ethnologue, Languages of the World, 13th ed., Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1996.)

Ethnologue has the results of these studies. Twenty-seven varieties of náhuatl, most with internal divisions or "dialects", are listed. Intelligibility ranges from 94% (Pajapan, Ver./Oteapan, Ver.) to 0% (Morelos/Mecayapan, Ver.), with everything in between. The Epiclassic and Postclassic expansion of the Nahua speakers is responsible for a rather chaotic linguistic panorama, with some varieties showing high intelligibility in spite of a large geographic separation, and others showing low intelligibility in spite of being quite close. (Compare this situation to the Otomi languages, which have much deeper roots in Central Mexico than Nahuatl, and thus a greater correspondence between linguistic and geographic proximity.)

Ethnologue can be consulted in its entirety on-line at http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/.

Classical Nahuatl is listed, but it wasn't compared with any other, being an extinct language.

I would guess that intelligibility between Classical Nahuatl and any modern variety would be fairly low.

I'm sorry this is so long; I was just looking at this question and I have a pile of note cards with pertinent information on my desk.

Un saludo,

David Wright
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