Nahuatl interdialectical meeting in Zacatecas

Fri Jan 6 19:08:30 UTC 2012

Piyali nomacehualpoyohuan huan nocoyopoyohuan, huan xinechtlapopolhuican pampa huehueyiyaz notlahtol,
	At the beginning of December, and as part of the NEH project, “An Online Nahuatl (nci, nhe, nhw) Lexical Database: Bridging Past, Present, and Future Speakers,” Stephanie Wood and I invited over 20 native speakers of Nahuatl from the states of San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Guerrero, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos and Estado de México to participate in a series of focus group discussions in Zacatecas. The original idea was to have the participants look over and discuss a set of basic words and concepts that appear in Classical Nahuatl manuscripts in order to see if and how they are used in Modern Nahuatl. 
	Given that we had a total of five days, we decided to expand the activity. Normally in Mexico when native speakers of indigenous languages get together, it is under the sponsorship of a government agency. If they are supposed to talk at all during the event, the topic is determined by the organizers and communication takes place in Spanish. So we decided to try something new. We asked the native speakers to determine the topics they wanted to discuss, and told them that the discussions would be in Nahuatl. Now this in itself is difficult, because Nahuatl is not a public language in Mexico. The language at home in their village; but increasingly, Spanish is the lingua franca in all public (and academic) settings, even among native speakers. The macehualmeh who work at IDIEZ have overcome this, but the participants who came to visit us felt a bit awkward at the beginning. 
	I have had a few experiences seeing native speakers from different variants of Nahuatl converse, and my work with Classical and Modern Huastecan has predisposed me to the idea that all variants are mutually intelligible. And I have always said that Nahuatl is one language with many variants. But, as Victoriano said at the beginning of the event in Zacatecas, “Naman tiquittazceh tlan melahuac.” “Now we’re going to see if it’s true.” 
	To say that everyone understood each other would be an understatement. We spent a week together eating, laughing and discussing topics in Nahuatl, including identity, rituals and celebrations, kinship terminology, food, educations, grammatical terminology, linguistic public policy, immigration, and interculturality. For one session, men and women were split into two groups to discuss topics of their choice. Delfina and I realized that this was necessary a few years ago when, in her village, we gathered women to talk about family related topics. Everything was going fine until a man entered the room. Immediately the women stopped talking and the man took over the conversation. Anyway, when the tlacameh got together during the Zacatecas event, they talked about...... you guessed it! Sex and pitzotlahtolli (groserías). I don’t know what the woman talked about. Perhaps you can talk about that, Stephanie. 
	Intelligibility has a linguistic meaning and an everyday meaning. The level of linguistic intelligibility between variants will have to be measured, and this will be one of the things examined within a new dialectology study of Nahuatl that will be conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas, under the direction of Lucero Flores Nájera, a linguist and native speaker of Nahuatl from Guerrero, who should be attending the Yale conference in May. As far as practical intelligibility goes, I think it’s safe to say that all of the macehualmeh who participated in the Zacatecas event understood each other well enough to hold successful focus group discussions on the aforementioned topics. Jim Lockhart states that he senses a joy in the manuscripts of the Nahua notaries at having the new tool/toy of alphabetic writing at their disposal. That feeling of joy on the part of native speakers from different regions of Mexico, sharing each others’ company and discussing important things in their own language, permeated the atmosphere at IDIEZ in early December.
	Something has become increasingly clear to me during the last month. The things we’ve been doing at IDIEZ are important, but it hasn’t been clear to me up until now what the end-point of it all is. Now I know that it is revitalization (increasing the number of native speakers, and expanding the use of the language out from the home and the village into all spaces and functions of society). The problem is that revitalization is a daunting idea. I mean, think about it. All indigenous languages in America are on the road to extinction. All core national ideologies in America seek cultural homogenization. School systems and the media all conspire to this end. And the fractioned and underfunded nature of past and current revitalization projects isn’t helping. I have understood for some time now that if revitalization is to be successful, it will depend on the cooperation and support of many different persons and institutions, both at a national and international level, but the spark you get when you realize that something is really possible, just wasn’t there. 
	The spark came during the event in Zacatecas and has been making more and more sense ever since. And it fits very well with what is happening all over the world right now: the push to expand unfettered and uncensored communication between human beings. 
	So the idea is to identify and promote the formation of independent and independently funded (read “the IDIEZ model”) groups of native speakers in all of the dialectical regions of Nahuatl to begin to talk monolingually about their problems and what they want to do about the future of their civilization. There will have to be in-person meetings, such as the Zacatecas event, at least once or twice a year. And we will have to set up a virtual network based on the multi-point videoconferencing capability of internet 2 technology (We have started to work on this through the computer center at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas) that will permit these regional groups to be in constant communication with each other. We (this new conglomeration of native speakers) will need to establish relations with other groups that have extensive experience in revitalization; the Maori and the Jews (thanks, Seth), for example. And then, little by little, do what is possible whenever bright, independent, inspired and committed minds get together: plan and implement a project that will work.
	Speaking of cooperation with coyomeh, Stephanie Wood suggested we should start up a new listserv for macehualmeh and coyomeh who can speak/write in Nahuatl. It’s up and running, and I will address this in a separate mail.
	First of the two last things. Many people have asked me which variant of Modern Nahuatl should be used as a lingua franca that will permit native speakers to communicate with each other. Some have even suggested using Classical Nahuatl. Sorry, this is what has been done in countries for many centuries now, using guns and public school systems. Nahuas don’t need a lingua franca because Nahuatl variants are mutually intelligible. And one of the next projects we will be working on is a kind of “user manual” for native speakers of Nahuatl who want to communicate with speakers of variants other than their own. It will be a short list key words, phrases and linguistic structures that may not be immediately recognizable across variants. And I promise, the “users” will check it over before it gets published.
	Last of the last two things. Some people also have asked about orthographic conventions. Let’s be realistic, the lack of a standardized spelling system is not unique to Nahuatl. This is a national problem in Mexico: Mexican Spanish has never been standardized, and given the decline in book culture and the rise in the alternative spelling and graphic conventions of Twitter and Facebook, it probably never will be. The most hideous and dictatorial attempts to standardize Nahuatl spelling have come from within the Mexican educational system itself. If we take guns and decrees out of the equation, what is the best road to standardization? Get people to communicate, communicate, communicate (hopefully in writing). And that leaves us with rule number 1 in the IDIEZ book of rules: There is no topic (not even competing orthographic systems) that is so important that it should prevent two people from sitting down and having a nice chat (in any of the mutually intelligible variants of Nahuatl).
John

John Sullivan, Ph.D.
Professor of Nahua language and culture
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
Zacatecas Institute of Teaching and Research in Ethnology
Tacuba 152, int. 43
Centro Histórico
Zacatecas, Zac. 98000
Mexico
Work: +52 (492) 925-3415
Home: +52 (492) 768-6048
Mobile (Mexico): +52 1 (492) 103-0195
Mobile (US): (615) 649-2790
idiez at me.com
www.macehualli.org

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