nepatia Re: [Nahuat-l]

[Matthew Montchalin]

| I've never heard of the *Analytic Compendium of Nahuatl Grammar,*
| which you mention twice. I have Karttunen's *An Analytical Dictionary
| of Nahuatl* and Sullivan's *Compendio de la Gramatica Nahuatl*
| (which I understand exists in translation as the *Compendium of
| Nahuatl Grammar*). Is there a new grammar out, or have you just
| added a Karttunian adjective to Sullivan's classic (but
| phonologically pre-Andrews) study?

Whoooops, I guess my subconscious must have played a trick on my
poor drowsy, sleepy fingers as they were trying to type the post
that must have puzzled you.

Anyway, not only do I have a very dog-eared copy of Thelma
Sullivan's "Compendium of Nahuatl Grammar" (1988), but I also
have a paperback copy of Frances Karttunen's "Analytical Dictionary
of Nahuatl" (1983), and how I wish they were hardbacked, as I am
very hard on my books.  As I've had these books for a few years,
it seems a pity I am only now digging into them.

It appears that I also have had, at my disposal if I were so
inclined, a paperback by James Taggart, "Nahuat Myth and Social
Structure" (first printing in paperback, 1997), but there's very
little linguistic information in that work.  It's more a
sociological treatment.

Back in the 1990s (and through 1991 or so), I had access to a
native of Mexico (and self-titled student of Nahuatl), and that is
how I learned to make the -tl sound in the "final" position, and for
which I am very thankful.  This is because the closest that comes to
the -tl sound (for English speakers) is, arguably, the Ll sound in
Welsh.

Then on Monday, October 30th, I went to a local bookstore and bought
James Lockhart's "Nahuatl as Written" (2001).  On browsing through
it, I consider it an excellent and highly desirable addition to my
collection.

The only complaint I have, is the same complaint I previously had:
an expectation that I should have had some familiarity with
the Spanish language, and Spanish orthography.  In the preface to
James Lockart's work, he writes:

    "If you feel the need of some grounding in pronunciation,
  you might turn first to Lesson 17, on orthographic matters.
  But you will do just as well knowing that the letters in
  general are pronounced much as in Spanish (for rare is the
  person who comes to Nahuatl without knowing some Spanish
  first), that ",c" represents [s] as in "soar," x stands for
  [sh] as in "shell," and /tl/ represents a single complex
  consonant, never making a syllable by itself.  Stress is
  on the penultimate syllable of a word."

Well, I am one of those rare individuals with a pretty good
background in Classical Latin instead of a background of any kind in
Spanish.  (If I know a few parts of speech in Spanish, it is in
spite of having studied Latin.)  I think the choice of Spanish
orthography is a huge detriment to my getting into the language, but
I am persevering anyway.

The Mexican native that taught me Nawatl had linguistically
"compromised" reading/writing skills, except in his indian language
(one of those Indian "dialectos"), and he just tried to sound out
the words, and write them down phonetically, hoping I could follow
him.

In Lockhart's Chapter 17, he mentioned the various ways of writing
a nasal consonant (usually by employing a superscript stroke of
some kind over the preceding vowel).  Needless to say, that
little stroke usually represented the accusative form of a noun in
Mediaeval Latin, but other times, with a single abbreviating stroke,
represented the enclitic suffixes -que -ne or -ve, and very
rarely the enclitic -ce.  (Lockhart could have mentioned that,
but he wasn't writing to those of us with a background in Latin
instead of Spanish.)

My objective in studying Classical Nawatl is to be able to read
a few passages here and there, and perhaps write some.

I also have dreams of writing and directing a vampire movie with a
mostly Mexican cast, and it would be nice to have a Nawatl language
option for DVD distributions.  (Needless to say, I'd like to be able
to *read* the stuff that I pay my translators to come up with, and
that way I'll know if any of the translations are actually worth
the money I put up for it.  But time is on my side, and as I am not
in a hurry, I'll get around to the movie treatment when I get around
to it.)


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