Nahuatl Digest, Vol 125, Issue 8

[jonathan.amith at yale.edu]

Dear listeros,

John F. Schwaller has informed me that attachments often don't go through on a
listserve. For those who are interested in the thoughts on standardization, I
have put the first part of my essay up at
http://www.balsas-nahuatl.org/standardization

Comments are welcome, here on offlist.

Best, Jonathan

Quoting magnus hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com>:

> Dear Dr. Sullivan
>
> I do believe you are being overly dramatic when you accuse the use of
> non-spanish graphemes of being the straight way towards language death and
> disolution of nahua culture.  This I think, comes from greatly
> overestimating the value of a unified spelling system as the only means to
> have unified language and culture. I don't think there is any empirical
> evidence to back up that assumption. Many languages have had flourishing
> literary traditions without a unified spelling system - among them English,
> French, Spanish and Nahuatl. As I know you know classical texts do not show
> any uniform spelling at all, only in the works of grammarians there are
> taken steps towards developing standard orthographies - but this never
> really made it out to the Nahua masses who kept writing their language in an
> unstandardized manner.
>
> It seems that you believe that humans are not able to cope with the same
> language being written in different ways - I don't know what would give you
> that impression - all the Nahuatl speakers I have worked with have shown
> quite impressive abilities to read texts from different dialects written in
> different orthographies - often they don't even notice the orthography being
> used when they read.  This of course is because they are completely unaware
> of Molinas, Carochis and Karttunens valuable efforts towards standardizing
> orthograhies and they simply read what the texts say.
>
> The same is true for any number of languages in which spelling reforms have
> taken place -  people are quite able to manage two different orthographies -
> that is why i can read Danish texts written both before and after 1948, and
> Greenlandic written both before and after 1973. And the reeson I kan reede
> Chaucer and Shackespere who wrote before English hath a unifyed spellinge
> systemme.
>
> As for Barrios he studied linguistics with Barlow and his orthography is
> meant to be phonemic not phonetic. That is reason he don't write devoiced
> consonants, why he writes the geminate l in with two l's kaxtillan. And the
> reason he doesn't write a devoiced w after possessed tonalama is that his
> dialect doesn't have any such final w's. I find it quite unfair to accuse
> Barrios of "widening the chasm" - for the reasons stated above - no one says
> that people can't deal with two writing systems, and if anything his purpose
> was the opposite.
>
> Nobody accuses Mayan language writers using the standard orthographies
> proposed by the the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala  that use both w,
> k and s of widening the chasm between maya peoples and their past or accuse
> the academys spelling systems of fragmentarizing maya culture or leading it
> towards its extinction.
>
> Magnus Pharao Hansen
>



-- 
Jonathan D. Amith
Director: Mexico-North Program on Indigenous Languages
Research Affiliate: Gettysburg College; Yale University; University of Chicago
(O) 717-337-6795
(H) 717-338-1255
Mail to:
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
Gettysburg College
Campus Box 412
300 N. Washington Street
Gettysburg, PA  17325
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