Standardization of Nahuatl

Fri Jun 13 12:01:46 UTC 2014

I believe that forcing modern day Nahuatlahtoh to write....speak.... think
in "the Classical Nahuatl" of  Moctekwzuma and Sahagun would be akin to
forcing Mexicans, Peruvians, and Colombians to speak, write and think in the
Castilian of Cervantes..... or forcing Brits, Aussies, and Yanks, to do the
same in Shakespeare's English.

-----Original Message-----
From: nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org
[mailto:nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org] On Behalf Of seth wolitz
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 5:29 PM
To: John Sullivan
Cc: list nahuatl discussion; Juan Adrián Pérez Rivera
Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Standardization of Nahuatl

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/ecn4
>> 2/874.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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