Standardization of Nahuatl

Fri Jun 13 02:00:51 UTC 2014

Dear all,

The Inquisition censored the translation of Scripture into indigenous
languages in the late 16th century (1580s). High probability for
mistranslation and thus heterodoxy was used as a justification for this
decree. Sahagún and Molina were both consulted on the matter by the Holy
office in Mexico.

Regards,
Edward
Sent from a wireless device
El jun 12, 2014 8:53 PM, "seth wolitz" <slwolitz at earthlink.net> escribió:

> Dear John: Your main position ia of course well taken and I support it
> fully but frankly you did not make a strong case. You needed to present it
> with a point by point logical linearity that eschews the clearly
> colonialist misguided persuasion of the Church to create a nahuatl mass in
> some concocted standard nahuatl.. It is astounding that there is no copy of
> the mass in nahautal form the 16th century when they were so busy
> prosetyzing? Can this be? Check on that! In any case, you have your hands
> full here and a clear polemic i before you. Good Luck!
> Seth
> On Jun 12, 2014, at 6:32 PM, John Sullivan wrote:
>
> > Notequixpoyohuan,
> >       The importante thing is not to create a standard version of
> Nahuatl. Rather, we need to promote communication among native speakers of
> all variants. A standardized orthography for all variants across space and
> time would go a long way toward facilitating this. Carochi is a good
> staring point here, but his system has been improved by
> Andrew/Campbell/Karttunen.
> >       As native speakers communicate across variants, they will begin to
> understand each other and slowly share words and structures with each
> other. A small, multi-variant manual of common words and structures would
> also promote inter variant communication.
> >       There is no such thing as a variant called Classical Nahuatl.
> This. There were at least as many variants in the past as there are now.
> Classical Nahuatl refers to the corpus of documents composed in Nahuatl
> using alphabetic writing during the colonial period (which in turn doesn´t
> make too much sense because the writing continued after Mexican
> Independence). As we progress in our study of this corpus we become more
> and more aware of these varietal differences. So….. Classical Nahuatl is
> not what the four tlahtoqueh you speak of spoke. And even if they did,
> would this justify their variant substituting for all others? I hope we
> understand today that multilingualism/multiculturalism (read
> multi-variant-ism) is good for humanity: ethnocide is not.
> >       I heard this argument (that Classical Nahuatl be used as a modern
> lingua franca) proposed by a European friend of Miguel León Portilla a few
> years ago at the 50th anniversary of his seminario, and it sounded as
> ridiculous then as it does now. And even if it had any academic merits,
> Nahuas themselves would not accept it, and they should´t. It would be
> viewed as the most recent in a long tradition of impositions by outsiders.
> >       Hmm, notequixpoh Adrián, ¿por qué deberíamos consultar a tres
> académicos no-nativohablantes de náhuatl para poder traducir la misa? Y por
> último, ¿por qué crees tan importante traducir la misa al náhuatl? Ya
> estuvo con el trabajo misionero (y eso que soy católico), ¿no crees?
> > John
> >
> >
> > On Jun 12, 2014, at 19:49, Juan Adrián Pérez Rivera <
> jadrian.perezr at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> About the translation of a Nahuatl Catholic Mass and more things
> >>
> >> I think it's great for nahuatl to receive attention from Rome. I'm
> >> catholic, and I think it would be great to translate many catholic
> >> texts to nahuatl. BUT, I'm afraid I don't like the way things are
> >> being done.
> >>
> >> You talk about create a 'simple' and 'unified nahuatl', in order to
> >> make a mass that every nahuatl speaker can easily understand. NAHUATL
> >> doesn't need this kind of changes. If you do this, you would make
> >> serious damage to this beautiful language.
> >>
> >> In my opinion, if you want to make a 'unified nahuatl', you should
> >> take classical nahuatl as reference. This is the original, the nahuatl
> >> that Cuauhtemoc, Tlacaelel, Itzcoatl and Motecuhzoma spoke. And in my
> >> opinion, if someday in the very far future, we have an agreement,
> >> Classical Nahuatl should be the standard nahuatl. Padre Horacio
> >> Carochi's grammar is the best book available to settle the nahuatl
> >> rules and correct writing and meanings and pronunciation. Also, you
> >> may go to Milpa Alta, in Mexico City. In the town of Santa Ana
> >> Tlacotenco, they speak a kind of nahuatl that is very close to
> >> classical nahuatl.
> >>
> >> I'm sorry if I sound aggressive, but this is a problem that should be
> >> consulted with expert people, not with bishops. Many groups around
> >> Mexico claim to have created their unified nahuatl, and the result is
> >> that we have dozens of 'correct' nahuatl idioms. I insist, we need to
> >> consult with people like Dr. León Portilla, Dr. López Austin, Dr.
> >> Launey, etc. etc. in order to have an excellent translation of
> >> catholic mass, I would really like that.
> >>
> >> If you speak spanish, I recommend this article from the serious
> >> magazine Estudios de cultura nahuatl:
> >>
> http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/nahuatl/pdf/ecn42/874.pdf
> >>
> >> Here the author recommends to use classical nahuatl as the standard
> >> and explain the reasons why we should do this.
> >>
> >> We need to teach people form little towns the correct grammar of their
> >> own language, because many of them don't know how to write it
> >> correctly, and that's why there are many dialects nowadays. Regards.
> >>
> >> Achcauhtli
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
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