Hippocrene dictionary

[idiez at MAC.COM]

Listeros,
        I had a chance to briefly peruse Herrera's work this Summer. First of 
all, it isn't a dictionary: it's a vocabulary list. This list makes no 
mention of where the material came from. Are there classical sources? 
Are there modern sources? If so, what are they?
        We have written evidence that Nahuatl as a language has been 
creatively adapting to change since the mid 1530s. Today words for car 
and bus, for example, differ from microregion to microregion. In 
Zacatecas, we work simultaneously with Older and Modern Nahuatl, and 
since our vehicle for teaching is the language itself, we are 
constantly struggling with ways to express new concepts. This is all 
good. The problem is that if you are going to publish a dictionary, you 
need to be methodical and explicit about how you put it together. You 
need to explain the decisions you had to make in order to arrive at 
your final system of "words", definitions, and grammatical terminology. 
This is not done in Herrera's work.
John

John Sullivan, Ph.D.
Profesor de lengua y cultura nahua
Unidad Académica de Idiomas
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
Director
Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.
Tacuba 152, int. 47
Centro Histórico
Zacatecas, Zac. 98000
México
Oficina: +52 (492) 925-3415
Fax: +52 (492) 925-3416
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idiez at mac.com
www.idiez.org.mx



On Sep 7, 2004, at 6:33 PM, Amapohuani at AOL.COM wrote:

> Listeros:
>
>  Once again I am impressed by the thoughtful openmindedness of many of 
> the people on this list. I very much look forward to reading Fran's 
> review (see below) but am reminded of a comment someone much wiser 
> than I made about language: 'the only perfect language is a dead one.' 
> That is, once a language is no longer actively used then there is 
> always someone who fixes upon some 'high culture' definition of what 
> constituted that now-no-longer-spoken language, makes its conventions 
> the standard for all other varieties, and then attempts to foist this 
> somewhat (not always completely) arbitrary choice on everyone else who 
> wants to study that language.
>
>  I am rather focused on the 16th to 19th century varieties of Nahuatl 
> (as expressed in docs) but am very mindful and appreciative of what 
> others have been, or are, doing. For example, I think Jonathan Amith's 
> upcoming publication is going to be a major help for folks like me.
>
>  The more the merrier. And my sincere thanks to all of you who help 
> keep Nahuatl, in all its many spoken and written forms, a living 
> language. Oannechmocnelilitzinoque, otlacauhqui in 
> amochalchiuhyollotzin.
>
>  Ye ixquich.
>  Barry D. Sell
>
>  In a message dated 9/7/04 11:16:18 AM, karttu at NANTUCKET.NET writes:
>
>
>
> I just wrote a review of it in an article evaluating a number of recent
>  books intended to facilitate Nahuatl studies.  The review article has
>  been submitted to the journal Ethnohistory. I am not sure how long it
>  will be before it appears in print.
>
>  Frances Karttunen
>
>
>
>
>
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