Fw: Fw: Totlahtol

Mon Sep 2 19:52:45 UTC 2013

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Michael Swanton <mwswanton at yahoo.com>
To: Michael McCafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>; Nahuat-L <nahuatl at LISTS.FAMSI.ORG> 
Sent: Monday, September 2, 2013 2:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Fw:  Totlahtol

Michael McCafferty,
I believe you are conflating different issues. One’s choice of orthography is different from erroneous grammatical interpretations. Regardless of what orthography one uses, it is possible to make mistakes in grammar, etymology and translation. This makes your dismissal of Launey’s Introduction based on erroneous, but unspecified, grammatical interpretations seem gratuitous when addressing a question about orthography. 

It is also, I believe, quite mistaken. I have taught Classical Nahuatl at Leiden University for several years before moving to Mexico and I found the French version of the Introduction to be quite valuable. Una Canger has used the Introduction for many years in her classes in Denmark. While all works can be improved—there are certainly some errata that need to be noted
 (especially in the translated versions of his book) and I have different interpretations of certain grammatical phenomena (particularly the passive)—Launey’s Introduction for me and many others continues to be the best, most accessible and overall reliable initiation to the language. [Full disclosure: I studied with Launey in Paris years ago]. 

Returning to the issue of orthography, Launey’s pedagogic use of the so-called Jesuit tradition (attested in Carochi, the Bancroft MS, Aldama y Guevara and to some extent in Rincón and Clavijero) strikes me as quite sound. When beginning Latin, one carefully learns to write the macrons in order to learn the grammar, meter and pronunciation even though they don’t appear in any classical texts. Eventually then, such annotations are disposed of once the learner has assimilated them. The same applies when learning Old English where not only are macrons added, but many authors add an overdot to
 <c> and <g> to indicate palatal as opposed to velar articulation. By the same token, when beginning Classical Hebrew, it is common to learn the texts with niqqud. In other words, there is a long practice—in reality going back to the Middle Ages—of adding diacritics to classical orthographies and texts to facilitate language learning. We may want to view Carochi’s orthography as part of this tradition.

The advantage of this approach is that relevant information can be added to the text with minimal modification of the original. The goal then is to facilitate access to the original texts, not to retranscribe them. In my advanced level classes, we would take a text (even ones with such divergent orthographies as the Florentine Codex or Olmos) and directly mark long vowels and glottalization using Carochi’s diacritics without retranscribing. This made for a good exercise.

Andrews’ orthography is different. It requires
 retranscription of texts because of its innovative use of <h> to indicate glottalization. There is nothing wrong with that; it is just a slightly different approach to teaching the classical language. Indeed, there are some good reasons to do so (p.e. emphasizing the complementary distribution of Carochi’s grave and circumflex diacritics). And, even though it was not designed for such purposes, Andrews’ orthography would make for a fine practical orthography should the Nahua choose to adopt it.

I do however disagree with your assertion that Andrews’s orthography characterizes the “modern study” of Nahuatl. Such an assertion would exclude many obligatory references for the language (Canger, Peralta, L. Campbell, Kaufman, Dakin, Lastra…). Indeed, what we see is that Andrew’s orthography is primarily used among certain scholars, generally American and generally more involved in lexicographic or philological endeavors (J.
 Campbell, Karttunen, Wright, Sullivan, Amith, Wimmer…and I have used it too in one article where I was making a comparative philological argument). As much as I respect and admire the work of these other scholars, I am sure they would be among the first to acknowledge that there are many important modern studies of Nahuatl that do not use Andrews’ orthography. The simple fact is that people write Nahuatl in different ways depending on their goal and on their intended audience, and any serious student of Nahuatl should be able to shift easily from one representational system to another. 

It would be most unfortunate if something as trivial as the use of an <h> be taken as an emblem as to one’s membership “in the flow of modern study”. 

Regardless of orthography, any Nahuatl speaker who writes his language is making a contribution to bring the language into a new social space. Regardless of orthography, any scholar who makes
 a good argument is contributing to Nahuatl language studies. Regardless of orthography, any teacher who gets his students interested in Nahuatl and sets them on a path to learning more is broadening the discipline and dignifying the profound linguistic knowledge that Nahuatl speakers, past and present, have.

Regards,
Michael Swanton

________________________________
 From: Michael McCafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>
To: 
Sent: Monday, September 2, 2013 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Fw:  Totlahtol

Carochi has served very well. No question. However, as far I as I can 
tell, only Carochi and Launey use Carochi's orthographic system. If you 
look around, that orthography is not where the modern study of the 
language is going. That's what I meant by my "utterly baffling" thought.

I explained also in a letter to Mr. Guillaume that some rather 
"baffling" ideas about Nahuatl grammar are found in Launey, and I'm 
confident I didn't find all of the mistakes. In the end, I would 
recommend having a copy of Launey on your shelf, but not as the sole 
source of your Nahuatl knowledge, and certainly not as a book used in a 
classroom unless the professor is knowledgeable enough to 1) catch 
Launey's errors and 2) bring enormous amounts of material written in 
the non-Carochi orthographic system so that students can be in the flow 
of modern
 study.

Best,

Michael

Quoting Michael Swanton <mwswanton at yahoo.com>:

>
>
>
> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> From: Michael Swanton <mwswanton at yahoo.com>
> To: Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com>;
> "nahuatl at lists.famsi.org" <nahuatl at lists.famsi.org>
> Sent: Sunday, September 1, 2013 4:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Totlahtol
>
>
>
> The "Carochi orthography" was the most sophisticated orthography used
>
 during the colonial period. We owe a great deal of our understanding
> of "Classical Nahuatl" to it. I find McCafferty's comments about it
> having "little value" to be utterly baffling.
>
> Michael Swanton
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com>
> To: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> Sent: Sunday, September 1, 2013 2:35 PM
> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Totlahtol
>
>
> I am not a Nahuatl scholar, but as an outsider I think that the Carochi
> orthography (perhaps with some modifications to facilitate its typeability,
> especially concerning th glottal stop) is still the best orthography to
> represent Classical Nahuatl. I am sorry
 to say that using an orthography
> that neglect vowel length is doing a disservice to language learners.
> Launey's manual is still in my opinion the best available introduction to
> Classical Nahuatl.
>
>
> Guillaume Jacques
>
>
> 2013/9/1 Michael McCafferty
> <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>
>
>> John,
>>
>> I'm happy to hear about this. "Anthropological Linguistics" will soon
>> publish my review of Michel Launey's Nahuatl grammar translated to English,
>> and one of the bedeviling aspects of his work is the perpetuation of
>> Carochi's orthography. The review was held up for a while as the editor
>> insisted that I use Carochi's orthography in describing various aspects of
>> Nahuatl, and that was difficult for me as I see little value in
 using it.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>> Quoting John Sullivan <idiez at me.com>:
>>
>>   Piyali notequixpoyohuan,
>>>          "Totlahtol" is a Series of the University of Warsaw, IDIEZ and
>>>
> other
>>> collaborating institutions, for publishing monolingual works in all
>>> variants of Modern Nahuatl and Classical Nahuatl. Works are
>>> standardized to the orthography of Campbell/Andrews/Karttunen. We
>>> hope to accomplish two things with this Series: 1. Get monolingual
>>> works of Nahuatl from all variants across space and time into the
>>> hands of native speakers, especially young students; 2. By rigorously
>>> standardizing the orthography of all
 variants across space and time,
>>> and "flooding the market" with these works, we hope to break the
>>> eighty-year political impasse that has prevented the orthographical
>>> standardization of Nahuatl. The first work, in the sub-series,
>>> "Toconehuan", is a children's' book, "Malintzin itlahtol", written by
>>> Refugio Nava of the University of Tlaxcala. The paper version is now
>>>
> being distributed, free of charge, in Nahua communities and in
>>> educational institutions. You may download a free pdf copy with the
>>> following link
>>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.**com/u/15911797/malintzin_**itlahtol.pdf<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15911797/malintzin_itlahtol.pdf>
>>> or go to www.macehualli.org under Publications. When you read the
>>> book, you will not only recognize the orthography, but you will be
>>> able to appreciate how Tlaxcallan Nahuatl has evolved over the last
>>> 500 years. Have fun!
>>> John
>>>
>>> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
>>> Research Scholar in Nahuatl Studies and
>>> Academic Director of the Yale-IDIEZ
> Nahuatl Language Institute,
>>> Yale University;
>>> Visiting scholar, Faculty of Artes Liberales
>>> University of Warsaw;
>>> Professor of Nahua language and culture
>>> Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas;
>>> Director, 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
>>>
>>> ______________________________**_________________
>>> Nahuatl mailing list
>>> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>>> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/**listinfo/nahuatl<http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
>> Nahuatl mailing list
>> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/**listinfo/nahuatl<http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Guillaume Jacques
> CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
> http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
> http://himalco.hypotheses.org/
> http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
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>

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