Report from the 7th Pastoral Workshop on Nahuatl Language and Culture

[Magnus Pharao Hansen]

Dear Listeros, I thought many of you would be interested in know about this
event, so here I am sharing some of my notes from the field.

From Monday the 9th to Thursday the 12th of June 2014, the 7th Pastoral
Workshop on Nahuatl Language and Culture took place in Tehuipango, in the
Sierra de Zongolica in Central Veracruz. The workshop was organized and
presided over by Monsignor Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, Bishop of San
Cristobal de las Casas. I was fortunate enough to be invited and be present
during two days of the workshop, and to be able to interview the Bishop and
talk to several of the participants.

This objective of this series of workshops which has been going on since
2012 is to create an official, translation approved by Rome of the catholic
mass into Nahuatl, and as a secondary objective create a unified liturgical
language to be used in the many dioceses with Nahuatl speakers. The
initiative was started under Pope Benedict, but according to Bishop
Arizmendi, Pope Francis has already expressed his interest in the project
and his willingness to let translation work take place in the countries in
which the linguistic expertise is found instead of in Rome.

The translation is a collective work of a group of Nahuatl speaking priests
representing different dialect areas working conjointly on a a version that
is meant to be acceptable to speakers in all regions. This requires many
deep discussions of local usage, and semantics. Originally the aim was to
have a couple of different versions, perhaps three, but at the first
workshop in 2012 at Tepeyac, a consensus formed among the delegates that it
should be possible to make a single authorized version in a new variety of
Nahuatl that would be widely acceptable. The translation does include
footnotes allowing for substitutions of certain terms in cases where
meaning or pronunciation differs too much to reconcile all speakers into a
single version.

The orthography settled upon at the first meeting uses the letters k, s, h
and hu – a kind of compromise orthography using elements of the two main
contending orthographies. There are still some advocates of using w instead
of hu among the participants.

It is likely the first time in several centuries that the Catholic Church
has taken any official interest in the Nahuatl language, and the result
will be the first official translation of the mass into Nahuatl ever.

Many interesting topics of Nahuatl grammar stirred discussion among the
participating priests. For descriptions of some of the discussions about
the translation you may have a look at my blog where I describe the event
in more detail.

My new nahuatl blog is at:  http://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.mx/


Best wishes,

Magnus

-- 
Magnus Pharao Hansen
PhD. candidate
Department of Anthropology
Brown University
128 Hope St.
Providence, RI 02906

*magnus_pharao_hansen at brown.edu <magnus_pharao_hansen at brown.edu>*
US: 001 401 651 8413
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