Nahuatlan?

[Michael Mccafferty]

what is u?



On Fri, 20 Oct 2000 War14655 at aol.com wrote:

> look at u, labeling the so-called ancient "aztec" language or so-called
> classical language as "extinct."  I think it's high-time that you rid
> yourself of that practice.  Even Joe Campbell admonishes that, "Scholars of
> Nahuatl are accustomed to talk about 'classical Nahuatl' and what is spoken
> today; yet the people who speak Nahuatl today are the desecndants of the
> people who spoke it five centuries ago.  The practice of isolating classical
> Nahuatl is rather like calling the English of Shakespeare's time "Classical
> English" while referring to English as it is spoken today in various places
> around the world as "the modern dialects."  It is not technically wrong, but
> if we don't do it for English, we should be wary of doing so for
> Nahuatl"(Campbell and Karttunen p2).  If this is a listserve of so-called
> scholars and a lowly undergrad student, like me, can see the error in this
> kind of mislabeling, then surely u guys see it too...
>