christian text in nahuatl

[Matthew Montchalin]

On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, r. joe campbell wrote:

|   Here is a probably incomplete (and possibly incorrect) summary I
|derived from a quick examination of their texts.
|
|   phonetic       orthography
|
|   [k]            c, qu
|   [s]            s
|   [h]            j
|   "sh"           x
|   [w]            hu
|   [ts]           tz
|
|One irregularity among the three is that in the Norte de Puebla
|(dialect of Naupan), [w] after 'l' is spelled without the 'h'
|(i.e., [okinilwilok] = "oquiniluiloc").  Further, what at first
|glance might appear to be an irregularity in orthography is that
|syllable-final 'h' appears where the other dialects have 'j'.

Okay.

|However, the 'j' represents phonetic [h] (roughly similar to the
|Spanish "jota"), but the 'h' of the Norte de Puebla represents a
|glottal stop ("saltillo"), similar to the commented dialects of the
|Sixteenth Century.

Is the [h] in Spanish 'jota' similar to the final sound in German
'ach?'  Did Nahuatl ever have the softer sound found in German 'ich?'