Nahua revitalization

[idiez at MAC.COM]

Galen y demás listeros,
        There is no official academy of the Nahuatl language, and it's 
doubtful there ever will be one. Isolation of towns and regions, 
academic and political factions, and the lack of national interest you 
mention, are all factors.
        The geographical isolation of many indigenous towns is a problem. Many 
times local bosses block road construction in order to perpetuate their 
local monopoly on everything from orange crops, to livestock, to 
transportation. Paradoxically, this same isolation is probably one of 
the important factors that has prevented Nahuatl from disappearing 
altogether as a Modern Language. However, progress is inevitable: paved 
roads, television, telephones, and internet are and will be reaching 
indigenous communities more and more. The problem is how to manage 
assimilation to modernity while promoting cultural revitalization.
        For this reason, projects such as ours at IDIEZ and Jonathan Amith's 
are very important. Jonathan may correct me here, but I think each of 
us work opposite sides of a fundamental coin. Jonathan concentrates on 
revitalization of the language within the indigenous community, at the 
source, so to speak. At IDIEZ, we work with indigenous students who 
have left their communities in order to go to college. They receive 
instruction in Nahuatl (both older and modern) at the university level, 
work as TA's in order to teach their language and culture to mestizo 
students, and participate in research projects. When these young people 
graduate and go to work, they will be professionals educated in both 
Hispanic and Nahua culture (most of them also study English). 
Hopefully, each of them will in some way contribute to expand the use 
of Nahuatl within Mexican society.
        While Jonathan works to strengthen the language and culture within the 
indigenous community, we work to do so in other sectors of Mexican 
society. I think that in order for Nahua revitalization to work, both 
strategies must be implemented.
        Futhermore, people who work in these kinds of projects need to 
constantly communicate with each other, in order to try and unify 
aspects of revitalization which seem to go in opposite directions. For 
example, one aspect of standardization which can and should be 
implemented in the future has to do with the orthographic system. At 
this point everyone seems to fall somewhere along a line connecting two 
poles: a writing system based on science vs a writing system based on 
tradition.
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
Domicilio: +52 (492) 768-6048
Celular: +52 (492) 544-5985
idiez at mac.com
www.idiez.org.mx