Wikipedia in Nahuatl

[r. joe campbell]

Netzatzine',

   Thanks for the advice on the nah.wikipedia website!  I took a look at
it and had several reactions:

   1) I'm glad that there are people who are interested enough in Nahuatl
to do something active in it.
   2) When there is no wheel, someone needs to start thinking, "I think
I'll invent something called a wheel", but if some fairly smart and
industrious people have already invented it, then one should climb up on
their shoulders and ask, "How can I improve it for today's highways?"
(Some of their words look like they didn't look at the old product first.)
   3) If one is making something for his own amusement (and it isn't going
to leave his own kitchen table), then it's all right to start without
general knowledge of the technology and acquire it as he goes along, but
if it's for public sharing (as we are all tempted to do nowadays with the
available communication technology), he should be sure of general
construction facts (in this case, the rules for word formation in Nahuatl)
or submit his drafts to a native (of whom there are at least two on
Nahuat-l).

   Some examples:

   idioma    ihiyotlahtol  (a common word for language is tlahtolli;
                            I don't see a need for "ihiyo(tl)" --
                            it also carries the baggage of distracting
                            connotations)

   diccionario
             tlahtolmeamoxtli
                            (you can't compound a plural (tlahtolmeh)
                             in a noun-noun compound)

Oc achi moztla,

Joe


On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Netza wrote:

> Maybe it's a weird idea to make a free-content nahuatl encyclopedia, and
> maybe that's why this project looks so down:
>
> http://nah.wikipedia.org/
>
> There's an article that is trying to create neologisms in order to give the
> nahuatl a scientific and artistic terminology, but it doesn't have any
> success at all:
>
> http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yancuictlahtolli
>