Review Essay on Nahuatl

[campbel at INDIANA.EDU]

   I have just read (and re-read) Fran Karttunen's "Nahuatl for the Twenty-First
Century" in Ethnohistory (The Journal of the American Society for Ethnohistory),
pp. 449-477, volume 52, no. 2, Spring 2005.  It is a review essay on twelve
publications in the field of Nahuatl which have come out in this century.

   I strongly doubt that anyone who is interested in Nahuatl could fail to find
the review of interest.  Concerning the works that I am familiar with, the
descriptive parts of the review were accurate and the judgemental parts were
either enlightening or of the nod-my-head-in-agreement kind.

   *If* you want to deepen your knowledge of Nahuatl matters, I recommend the
review enthusiastically, both for its own contents and for what it will motivate
you to read.

Joe

p.s.  I am not a member of the editorial board of Ethnohistory, nor have I been
coerced by any members of the board; I have been offered no stock options in any
off-shore ethnohistory projects.


The list of publications:

Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Edited
by William Frawley, Kenneth C. Hill and Pamela Munro. 2002.

Hippocrene Concise Dictionary: Nahuatl-English, English-nahuatl (Aztec). By
Fermin Herrera. 2004.

Arte de la lengua mexicana concluido en el convento de San Andres de
Ueytlalpan en la provincia de la Totonacapan que es en la Nueva Espan~a, el I
de enero de 1547. By fray Andre's de Olmos. ed. by Ascencio'n Herna'ndez de
Leo'n-Portilla and Miguel Leo'n-Portilla. 2002.

Grammar of the Mexican Language with an Explanation of its Adverbs. By Horacio
Carochi, S.J. translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart. 2001.

Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples
and Texts. By James Lockhart.

Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, Revised Edition. By J. Richard Andrews.
2003.

A Guide to Nahuatl Language Manuscripts Held in United States Repositories. By
John Frederick Schwaller. 2001.

Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances
of Fray Alonso de Molina, OFM. Edited and translated by Barry D. Sell with
contributions by Larissa Taylor and Asuncio'n Lavrin. 2003.

Bernardino de Sahagu'n: First Anthropologist. By Miguel Leo'n-Portilla.
translated by Mauricio J. Mixco. 2002.

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. by Matthew Restall. 2003.