Hello

[Henry Kammler]

Hello, hola, tlane:xtili Doug,

... and welcome.

I only want to refer to your no. 3 re: dialects.

Historical remark: Nahuatl already had a number of diverging dialects 
when written "classical" nahuatl came into being. Modern dialects are 
thus not mere branches stemming from that root but at least some have a 
longer history of their own. Most, however, interacted with "standard" 
Nahuatl (besides Spanish) for a long time, as this was a lingua franca 
in the Aztec Empire and in wide parts of New Spain (as an administrative 
and missionary language coupled with relatively widespread literacy), 
losing importance only after the Bourbonic reforms and altogether after 
Independence.

For todays' situation, in terms of "intelligibility" I would 
differentiate three aspects:
1) objective linguistic facts
2) language ideology
3) cultural praxis / language practice

1) For a linguist all Nahuatl dialects look very similar, in many cases 
you can easily identify certain regular changes, innovations, archaisms. 
  Some dialects located at quite a distance from each other are 
strikingly alike, some neighboring ones can be quite divergent. Most 
linguists would probably count a distant Nahuatl variant such as Pipil 
Nahuat in El Salvador as a "dialect". The Pochutec language in Oaxaca 
described by Franz Boas is the most divergent one, maybe Pochutec would 
be a candidate for the label "language". Unfortunately it is extinct as 
is probably Pipil (the latter a very tragic case).

2) Language ideology as coupled with the social reality of a class 
society defines certain languages as socially inferior. Speakers of such 
a language then tend to deny their mother tongue, depending on context. 
So when Nahuas from the same village avoid speaking their language with 
each other in an urban setting, they are much less likely to try their 
Nahuatl with a speaker from another region. Language ideologies 
detrimental to the preservation of Nahuatl come in two flavors, a rock 
and a hard place: (a) Progressist Flavor: Nahuatl is considered an 
obsolete vestige, a cultural expression of backward-oriented people, an 
obstacle to "progress" (you find this attitude even among bilingual 
teachers); (b) Purist Flavor: modern Nahuatl speakers are accused of 
"polluting" their once pristine, imperial language with Spanish 
modernisms, so it is not considered "legitimate" any more (many 
speakers, including bilingual teachers, give this as a reason not to 
speak nahuatl with their own children - "if it were still the real pure 
Aztec language, I would"). (I don't mean to personally criticize people 
who make a decision in favor of Spanish to the best of their 
understanding for the perceived best of their children.)
All over, the respective local indigenous language is called "dialecto" 
by the locals, and they don't mean it as a linguistic term but to 
indicate that it is culturally and socially inferior to a "real" 
language like Spanish or English. (Look at the Hills' "Speaking 
Mexicano" for a Puebla case of language purism.)
Under these circumstances, asking about intelligibility, you never know 
what is meant when somebody says "I don't understand the way those guys 
speak".

3) An intelligibility test with Nahuatl speakers from different regions 
will probably yield low rates of mututal understanding in a first run. 
But it will only take a very short time of joint practice and most will 
understand each other reasonably well. The reason why they seldom do in 
real life is that you don't use Nahuatl with someone you don't know, and 
there's always Spanish. Besides the perceived "inferiority" of the 
indigenous language, the real dialect differences can be a source of all 
kinds of jokes, which is not enjoyed by all. Compare this to a speaker 
of Castilean Spanish coming to Latin America and talking about "coger" 
all the time when the latino would say "tomar".
So I guess the lack of interdialectal language practice leads to low 
intelligibility.
Of course you find culturally interested individuals and Nahua 
intellectuals who enjoy using their language with "co-Nahuas" from all 
over but in my experience this is not the general rule.

But it remains an interesting question. Are there any systematic 
intelligibility test carried out anywhere (I mean from speakers' point 
of view, not judging from vocabulary lists / lexocstatistics)? On what 
empirical grounds have standardization efforts (look at the SEP/DGEI 
schoolbooks) been undertaken?

Ay, mela:k nitlatlahtotika we:i, xne:chpialika:n paciencia ;-)

ma nya

Henry
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