stereotypes: nahuatl

[mario]

Here I go jumping into a "politically correct" battle......

Although the india maria character is a stereotype,  I have always been amused and astonished at how she mimics EXACTLY  my grandmother's and uncles Spanish. My family is from a small town in the State of Hidalgo, and my grandmother claims we are "Azteca-Otomi"  or better said "nahuatl -
~Na~nu"

I believe that the "indito" sing song form of speech (as it is disparagingly called by most mestizos)  is definitely ...and defiantly.... based on indigenous language prototypes.  Whether it is based on Nahuatl roots, or perhaps  tonal differences that make up individual languages (as in
Mixteco and other languages) is unknown to me.

>"To me they seem in many ways insulting to indigenous people" ...... To many danzantes (and that is the extent of my interactions with indigenous and "indigenous-thinking" mestizos) I have talked to, they see la India Maria as a Native American Island of identity in a vast sea of Blond
haired- wannabes, those vast majority of people that  dominate Mexican and Latin-American media.

Of course, through our more politicized eyes, we see a more negative image.

mario



rmedinagarcia at quepasa.com wrote:

> I have seen some movies with the "India Maria." To me they seem in many ways insulting to indigenous people but to what degree do you guys think that her pronunciation of Spanish words are influenced by Nahuatl? I think her substitution of "o", "u" seem derived from Nahuatl.  Is this true?
> Her phonetic pronunciation of Spanish seems like the stereotypical view of indigenous people's pronunciation.  Does anybody else detect any other language phonetic influence, in the India Maria's pronunciation?
>
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