nitah

Michael McCafferty mmccaffe at indiana.edu
Fri Nov 11 00:49:17 UTC 2011


Curious piece of language here, John.

Also, it's interesting how such a creation could confuse Nahuatl speakers.

In my case, I was looking for "notah" or "nitahtli," which I'm not sure 
is possible in modern dialects, not "nitah".

Michael


Quoting John Sullivan <idiez at me.com>:

> Piyali notequixpoyohuan,
> 	Here?s a fun one. ?nitah?, is an expression of surprise or
> astonishment used in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl. Sometimes used in the
> expression, ?nitah totiotzin (noteotzin).?
> 1. ?nitah? is actually a shortened form of the Mexican Spanish
> ?nanita,? ?mamita,? referring to the Virgin Mary
> 2. ?nanita? comes from the Nahuatl ?nantli? plus the Spanish
> diminutive ?-ita?
> 3. But as we all know, Mexican Spanish has taken the Spanish
> diminutive and used it to substitute for the Nahuatl
> diminutive-honorific ?-tzin.?
> 	How that for (de)colonial morphology? And see, I?m actually using
> some up-to-date theoretical terminology.
> John
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