nitah

[John Sullivan]

MIchael,
	One of the things I really like about combining the study of Classical and Modern is that in Classical we only see finished products of cases of vowel elision, haplology and other situations where words shrink. With Modern variants these processes are evolving right in front of your eyes (or next to your ears).
John

On Nov 10, 2011, at 6:49 PM, Michael McCafferty wrote:

> 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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> 
> 
> 
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