Schools

[Galen Brokaw]

I've always been curious about how and where Andrews learned Nahuatl. It 
was my understanding that he taught in the Spanish and Portuguese dept. 
at Vanderbilt with a primary specialization in Medieval and/or Golden 
Age literature. In the introduction to his book he says that he first 
taught it in 1967 or somewhere close to that. Does anybody know where he 
studied Nahuatl? Did he learn it on his own? And what about Anderson and 
Dibble? Did they study in Mexico City?
I guess metaphorically speaking, I'm sort of on the same floor as Joe, 
but he made me feel guilty for not responding. So although what I have 
to say may be a little redundant and in some cases maybe obvious, here 
is my two cents.
I don't know that much about the teaching of Nahuatl in Mexico City, but 
outside of Mexico City and in the US over the last few decades, I think 
there have been/are at least four major sources/centers of Nahuatl 
teaching/learning for non-native speakers.

1. As everyone probably knows, Lockhart has probably produced the 
greatest number of scholars who go on to produce translations and use 
Nahuatl in historical research. If you come across someone who works 
with Nahuatl and got their Ph.D. from UCLA or in some cases even from 
universities near by there as in John's case, then it is likely that 
they studied with him. My impression is that Lockhart's students are 
primarily interested in the language as a tool of historical research, 
but there are a few exceptions (see #4). I think Lockhart's group has 
produced several people who have been producing translations, because 
this kind of thing was integrated into their graduate training and often 
as part of their dissertation research program.

2. As Joe already mentioned, he has been teaching Nahuatl at Indiana for 
many years and he is a very generous contributor to Nahuat-l. Michael 
and Fritz have already mentioned that they studied with Joe. There are 
also several other people who studied with Joe, like me, who participate 
to one degree or another on this list but haven't necessarily made new 
scholarly contributions to knowledge of the language or been influential 
in producing new generations of Nahuatl scholars (at least not yet). In 
the case of Nahuatl studies at Indiana, I think there have been 
different times at which there was a convergence of the stars or 
alignment of the planets or something during which there have been 
higher levels of activity and interest. As Michael has explained, there 
has been one such period of interest and activity recently with Pablo. 
While I was there from the mid to late 1990s was another such period 
originally made possible in part by a government grant in the Center for 
Latin American Studies, but also strengthened and extended as a result 
of a group of really interested and motivated students (Jongsoo Lee, 
Mark Morris, and me). I say "really interested" because, you have to be 
really interested in order to survive the rigor of Joe's classes (I 
don't think he will mind me saying this). His formal courses are very 
intense and demanding, but the experience is also very rewarding. And 
even after completing all the formal coursework that the funding allows, 
he generously volunteers to continue working in a regular study session 
mode with students who are interested. At one point, we were also 
fortunate to be able to bring in a Mexican scholar and native Nahuatl 
speaker to teach a Nahua culture course, attend our Nahuatl study 
sessions, and work with us as an informant. Another reason for the 
fertile environment for Nahuatl studies at Indiana in the 1990s was 
because at the same time some of us were also studying Mesoamerican 
pictography with Gordon Brotherston. As Fritz mentioned, another really 
nice thing about Indiana is that right there on campus, we had the Lilly 
Library's rare book and manuscript collection, which has a collection of 
Nahuatl documents, some of which also have accompanying picotgraphic 
texts. If you will permit a shameless plug at this point, I would 
mention that in 1997 my fellow Nahuatl students and I at Indiana 
published transcriptions and translations of a few short Nahuatl 
documents with accompanying pictographic texts in a publication along 
with a longer study and analysis by Gordon Brotherston titled 
_Footprints through time: Mexican pictorial manuscripts at the Lilly 
Library_ available from the Lilly Library. [I think we are all pretty 
pround of that publication, but if you order a copy, keep in mind that 
we were, and perhaps still are and always will be, novices :-)].

3. Jonathan Amith's summer program in Mexico. I don't know very much 
about this program, but I have heard very good things about it from 
people who have participated. I would be interested to hear about 
Jonathan's initial formation in Nahuatl....

4. John Sullivan, who was a student of Lockhart's, has also recently 
started a summer program in Zacatecas about which I have heard very good 
things. John has also undertaken the very ambitious project of 
developing a program for native speakers, devising linguistic 
terminology in Nahuatl so the language can be studied in Nahuatl itself, 
creating a Nahuatl-Nahuatl dictionary, etc.

Alfonos Reyes was also very active working with students on archives of 
Nahuatl documents in Tlaxcala, but I don't know if this project involved 
Nahuatl instruction or not.

There may be other programs of which I am unaware. I do know that 
Nahuatl is sometimes taught at other institutions in the U.S., but my 
impression is that in most cases not to the same extent or in the same 
depth as has been possible at UCLA and Indiana.
The summer programs are very good good and practical, but they have the 
disadvantage of being limited in terms of time. And knowledge gained in 
that way is very perishable if it is not reinforced over longer periods 
of time.
Both the UCLA and the Indiana groups have had the advantage of being 
able to study over the course of several consecutive years under the 
direction of Jim Lockhart and Joe Campbell respectively. I think most of 
the students who have come out of UCLA and Indiana, however, are 
historians or literature/cultural studies people. Michael was trained 
and works in linguistics and John has sort of become a linguist, but I 
think most of us who were trained in literature and/or history are 
constrained by the demands of the fields in which we work. As Joe knows, 
several of his former Indiana students like me are very interested in 
working more directly on Nahuatl, teaching it regularly, etc., but we 
also have to do what it takes to get tenure in our repsective fields. So 
in most cases, it becomes ancillary to our primary teaching and research 
programs.

Of course, I should include Nahuat-l on my list as well. Everyone here 
already knows about Nahuat-l, but I think we all owe a tribute to Fritz 
for starting and maintaining it over the years. I think it has been an 
invaluable resource for disseminating information, requesting help and 
collaboration in various kinds of endeavors related to the study of Nahuatl.

Best,
Galen








R. Joe Campbell wrote:
> David,
> 
>    When I saw your message over ten days ago, I was delighted at the 
> question -- I would like to know the answers.  Why?  Because I'm curious 
> about the house I live in.  I know a lot of people who live on my hallway
> and when their doors are open, I stop by and lean on their doorframe and
> talk for a while.  But there are a lot of floors closer to the foundation
> than mine... and I think the elevator is out of service.
> 
>    The answers to your question would give all of us pleasure and 
> perspective, but so far I haven't seen one even threecoming.
> No!  Iztlacapahtiliztli!!  Bernard shared a genealogical fact with
> us and I appreciated that.  Now, surely *someone* has another one
> that they could contribute without doing any harm to themselves.
> 
>    It would be so easy for each list member to contribute what
> they know (even if splinter facts) about how they got into Nahuatl,
> who was helpful in their formation, and what they know about other
> branches on the tree.
> 
>    Myself, I never took a course in Nahuatl.  My professor,
> Ken Hale, went to Tepoztlan during Easter vacation for few
> days in 1962 and took a five inch tape back to the University
> of Illinois.  He totally assimilated it in a few days and then
> entertained a group of us acting as our Nahuatl informant,
> preparing for the summer field trip in Tepoztlan.
>    Ken got to Tepoztlan about three days ahead of me in the
> summer and seemed to have there for a year -- his vocabulary
> was incredibly large and his understanding of word formation
> was... again, beyond belief.
> 
>    Six weeks in Tepoztlan and a laborious term paper on verb
> formation that I wrote after my return to Champaign was all of
> my experience in Nahuatl before Indiana University asked me to
> teach a series of NDEA funded courses.  I went to Hueyapan,
> in the summer of 1970 to invite a young woman to act as a
> language expert and work in the course with me.  We worked
> together for two intense semesters and then I furthered my
> learning of the language by teaching it alone for two more
> years... and they didn't fully realize how little I knew.
> 
>    In 1974 I started working on translating Molina,
> Nahuatl-Spanish, into English -- and succeeded in
> learning a little more.  And from 1974 to 1985, I worked
> on doing the morphological analysis for the same dictionary,
> then moving on to doing the same thing for the Florentine
> Codex.  ...and on ...and on ...and on.
> 
>    For the last twenty+ years, I've done fieldwork on various
> Nahuatl dialects.
> 
>    And I'm still learning.  OK, I never had a classroom professor
> in Nahuatl (never took an exam), but I wouldn't be doing Nahuatl
> now if it hadn't been for Ken Hale.
> 
> Iztayohmeh,
> 
> Joe
> 
> p.s.  For quite a while, I have been intending to ask the listeros
> if they would contribute to a list of places and resources for learning
> Nahuatl.
> 
>    Who is currently teaching it?  Where?  What variety of Nahuatl?
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 21 May 2006, David Wright wrote:
> 
>> Estimados listeros:
>>
>> I've long wondered about how accumulated knowledge of Nahuatl grammar was
>> transmited over the years, particularly during the 20th century.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Nahuatl mailing list
> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
> 
> 



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