See more
Does Nahuatl use subject agreement?
All verbs are marked with prefixes in order to agree with the person of the subject, and, where there is one, the object. In addition, verbs take a special suffix to mark plural subjects (only animates take plural agreement).
Does Nahuatl have cases?
Nahuatl does not have grammatical case but uses what is sometimes called a relational noun to describe spatial (and other) relations. These morphemes cannot appear alone but must occur after a noun or a possessive prefix. They are also often called postpositions or locative suffixes.
How do you say Aztec in Nahuatl?
Even the way to say Aztec is different than how we have been saying it. In Nahuatl, the word for the Aztec people is “aztectl.” Many words in Nahuatl, as you may have noticed, end in -tl.
Is Nahuatl a language?
Nahuatl language, Spanish náhuatl, Nahuatl also spelled Nawatl, also called Aztec, American Indian language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken in central and western Mexico. Nahuatl, the most important of the Uto-Aztecan languages, was the language of the Aztec and Toltec civilizations of Mexico.
How do you say my love in Nahuatl?
Nimitztlazohtla. en An affirmation of romantic feeling, to a lover or spouse.
Did Mayans speak Nahuatl?
They all spoke, and still speak, a language called 'Nahuatl' and this is what unites them. Like English today or French or Latin in the past, Nahuatl spread widely into many other cultural and ethnic areas. By the time the Spaniards came, even the Maya spoke Nahuatl in addition to their native languages.
How do you say Angel in Nahuatl?
ángel.(a loanword from Spanish)Headword: ... an angel (see attestations)angelotin (noun) = angels.More items...
What does avocado mean in Nahuatl?
The Nahuatl word for the avocado (Persea americana) /a:wakatl/ (variously spelled ahuacatl, aguacatl, auacatl etc.) comes from a proto-Nahuan word *pawata which also means "avocado" - the word pawatl is still used for wild avocado in some Nahuatl varieties.
How do I speak Nawa?
1:036:46How To Speak Nahuatl -- basic words - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipBut often times TL is silent for example the word now what it's it's silent it's not now waddle it'sMoreBut often times TL is silent for example the word now what it's it's silent it's not now waddle it's now what now the accent in nahuatl is always. The second to last syllable.
How do you say love in Aztec?
Yollotl. Love is a universal language, but it's always fun, and romantic, to learn some words that describe it in other languages. Yollotl is the Nahuatl word for “heart.”
How do you say hello in Nahuatl?
Basic Nahuatl Phrases & GreetingsHello: Pialli (pee-ahh-lee)Please: NimitztlaTlauhtia(nee-meetz-tla-tlaw-ti-ah)Thank You: Tlazocamati (tlah-so-cah-mah-tee)Thank You very Much: Tlazohcamati huel miac. ( ... You're Welcome/It's nothing: Ahmitla (ahh-mee-tla)Excuse me: Moixpantzinco (mo-eesh-pahntz-ink-oh)How Are You?More items...•
Is Nahuatl difficult to learn?
In spite of Nahuatl being 100% a Mexican language and me currently residing in Mexico, finding resources and teachers with whom to learn this language, even within my country, was actually really hard.
What is the meaning of Nahuatl?
The verb is composed of a root, prefixes, and suffixes. The prefixes indicate the person of the subject, and person and number of the object and indirect object, whereas the suffixes indicate tense, aspect, mood and subject number.
Where did the word "nahuatl" come from?
The word Nahuatl is itself a Nahuatl word, probably derived from the word nāhuatlahtōlli [naːwat͡laʔˈtoːlli] ("clear language"). The language was formerly called "Aztec" because it was spoken by the Central Mexican peoples known as Aztecs Nahuatl pronunciation: [asˈteːkah].
What is the Aztec language?
Now, the term "Aztec" is rarely used for modern Nahuan languages, but linguists' traditional name of "Aztecan" for the branch of Uto-Aztecan that comprises Nahuatl, Pipil, and Pochutec is still in use (although some linguists prefer "Nahuan").
What are the phonological systems of Nahuatl?
Classical Nahuatl and most of the modern varieties have fairly simple phonological systems. They allow only syllables with maximally one initial and one final consonant. Consonant clusters occur only word-medially and over syllable boundaries. Some morphemes have two alternating forms: one with a vowel i to prevent consonant clusters and one without it. For example, the absolutive suffix has the variant forms -tli (used after consonants) and -tl (used after vowels). Some modern varieties, however, have formed complex clusters from vowel loss. Others have contracted syllable sequences, causing accents to shift or vowels to become long.
What is stress in Nahuatl?
In Mexicanero from Durango, many unstressed syllables have disappeared from words, and the placement of syllable stress has become phonemic .
Where is Nahuatl spoken today?
Today, a spectrum of Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered areas stretching from the northern state of Durango to Tabasco in the southeast. Pipil, the southernmost Nahuan language, is spoken in El Salvador by a small number of speakers.
What language family is Nahuatl?
Language of the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Nahuatl. Aztec, Mexicano. Nāhuatl, Nāhuatlahtōlli, Mēxihcatlahtōlli, Mācēhuallahtōlli, Mēxihcacopa. Nahua man from the Florentine Codex. The speech scrolls indicate speech or song. Native to.
What is the grammar of Nahuatl?
The grammar of Classical Nahuatl is agglutinative, head-marking, and makes extensive use of compounding, noun incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed. Very long verbal forms or nouns created by incorporation, and accumulation of prefixes are common in literary ...
What is the base number of Nahuatl?
Classical Nahuatl has a vigesimal or base 20 number system. In the pre-Columbian Nahuatl script, the numbers 20, 400 (20 2) and 8,000 (20 3) were represented by a flag, a feather, and a bag, respectively. It also makes use of numeral classifiers, similar to languages such as Chinese and Japanese .
What does "ti" mean in Nahuatl?
In other words from the perspective of an English speaker, one can describe each Classical Nahuatl noun as a specific verb meaning "to be X.". Example: ti + amolnamacac 'soap seller', becomes tamolnamacac, meaning 'you are a soap seller' (See verb inflection below).
How are all the doubled consonants in Nahuatl produced?
Almost all doubled consonants in Nahuatl are produced by the assimilation of two different consonants from different morphemes. Doubled consonants within a single morpheme are rare, a notable example being the verb -itta "see", and possibly indicates a fossilized double morpheme.
What is the order of words in Nahuatl?
The basic word order of Classical Nahuatl is verb initial and often considered to be VSO, but some scholars have argued for it being VOS. However, the language being non-configurational, all word orders are allowed and are used to express different kinds of pragmatic relations, such as thematization and focus.
What is a particle in Nahuatl?
The particle in is important in Nahuatl syntax and is used as a kind of definite article and also as a subordinating particle and a deictic particle, in addition to having other functions.
What is the suffix for "tl"?
Non-possessed nouns take a suffix called the absolutive. This suffix takes the form -tl after vowels ( ā-tl, "water") and -tli after consonants, which assimilates with a final /l/ on the root ( tōch-tli, "rabbit", but cal-li, "house"). Some nouns have an irregular form in -in ( mich-in, fish). These suffixes are dropped in most derived forms: tōch-cal-li, "rabbit-hole", mich-matla-tl, "fishing net". Possessed nouns do not take the absolutive suffix (see Noun inflection below), but do receive a prefix to denote the possessor.
How many time/mood forms are there in Nahuatl?
A normal Nahuatl verb has nine "time/mood" forms. How they are formed depends on which of four "classes" the verb falls into. Further, the nine time/mood forms are sometimes usefully thought of as derived from three "bases," although these may not be of much interest to a beginner.
Why are 10 verbs used as suffixes?
Ten verbs (in their preterit stems) are frequently used as suffixes to other verbs to lend more complex nuances. their English translation formula is normally awkward, and often best omitted, but it is important to recognize the forms.
What does the dots on the front of a suffix mean?
Two dots on the front of a suffix (-:an) show that it lengthens the previous vowel. < = what follows is a plural form. (E.g. pilli < R-tin means that the plural of pilli is pïpiltin. See below for meaning of R.) > = what follows is a preterit (past) form. (E.g., päca > päc means that päca has the preterit form päc.)
Is "mati" an agentive noun?
Agentive nouns (indicating actors) are usually formed in the absolutive form in one of three ways: Add the suffix -ni to verbal stem (and form the plural by adding -meh to that): mati = to know, tla.mati = to know (something), tla.matini = scholar, tla.mati.ni.meh = scholars, the scholarly people.
Overview
Morphology and syntax
The Nahuatl languages are agglutinative, polysynthetic languages that make extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. That is, they can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed, and a single word can constitute an entire sentence.
The following verb shows how the verb is marked for subject, patient, object, and indirect object:
Classification
As a language label, the term Nahuatl encompasses a group of closely related languages or divergent dialects within the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (National Institute of Indigenous Languages) recognizes 30 individual varieties within the "language group" labeled Nahuatl. The Ethnologue recognizes 28 varieties with …
History
On the issue of geographic origin, the consensus of linguists during the 20th century was that the Uto-Aztecan language family originated in the southwestern United States. Evidence from archaeology and ethnohistory supports the thesis of a southward diffusion across the North American continent, specifically that speakers of early Nahuan languages migrated from Aridoamerica into central …
Demography and distribution
Today, a spectrum of Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered areas stretching from the northern state of Durango to Tabasco in the southeast. Pipil, the southernmost Nahuan language, is spoken in El Salvador by a small number of speakers. According to IRIN-International, the Nawat Language Recovery Initiative project, there are no reliable figures for the contemporary numbers o…
Phonology
Nahuan languages are defined as a subgroup of Uto-Aztecan by having undergone a number of shared changes from the Uto-Aztecan protolanguage (PUA). The table below shows the phonemic inventory of Classical Nahuatl as an example of a typical Nahuan language. In some dialects, the /t͡ɬ/ phoneme, which was common in Classical Nahuatl, has changed into either /t/, as in Isthmus Nahuatl, Mexicanero and Pipil, or into /l/, as in Nahuatl of Pómaro, Michoacán. Many dialects no lo…
Contact phenomena
Nearly 500 years of intense contact between speakers of Nahuatl and speakers of Spanish, combined with the minority status of Nahuatl and the higher prestige associated with Spanish has caused many changes in modern Nahuatl varieties, with large numbers of words borrowed from Spanish into Nahuatl, and the introduction of new syntactic constructions and grammatical categories.
Vocabulary
Many Nahuatl words have been borrowed into the Spanish language, most of which are terms designating things indigenous to the Americas. Some of these loans are restricted to Mexican or Central American Spanish, but others have entered all the varieties of Spanish in the world. A number of them, such as chocolate, tomato and avocado have made their way into many other languag…
Overview
The grammar of Classical Nahuatl is agglutinative, head-marking, and makes extensive use of compounding, noun incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed. Very long verbal forms or nouns created by incorporation, and accumulation of prefixes are common in literary works. New words can thus be easily created.
Orthography used in this article
Vowel length was phonologically distinctive in Classical Nahuatl, but vowel length was rarely transcribed in manuscripts, leading to occasional difficulties in discerning whether a given vowel was long or short. In this article, long vowels are indicated with a macron above the vowel letter: <ā, ē, ī, ō>. Another feature which is rarely marked in manuscripts is the saltillo or glottal stop ([ʔ]). In this article, the saltillo is indicated with an h following a vowel. The grammarian Horacio Carochi (1645) …
Morphophonology
The phonological shapes of Nahuatl morphemes may be altered in particular contexts, depending on the shape of the adjacent morphemes or their position in the word.
Where a morpheme ending in a consonant is followed by a morpheme beginning in a consonant, one of the two consonants often undergoes assimilation, adopting features of the other consonant.
Morphology
The words of Nahuatl can be divided into three basic functional classes: verbs, nouns and particles. Adjectives exist, but they generally behave like nouns and there are very few adjectives that are not derived from either verbal or nominal roots. The few adverbs that can be said to exist fall into the class of particles.
Classical Nahuatl is a non-copulative language, meaning it lacks a verb meaning 'to be.' Instead, t…
Syntax
The particle in is important in Nahuatl syntax and is used as a kind of definite article and also as a subordinating particle and a deictic particle, in addition to having other functions.
Classical Nahuatl can be classified as a non-configurational language, allowing many different kinds of word orders, even splitting noun phrases.
The basic word order of Classical Nahuatl is verb initial and often considered to be VSO, but so…
Number system
Classical Nahuatl has a vigesimal or base 20 number system. In the pre-Columbian Nahuatl script, the numbers 20, 400 (20 ) and 8,000 (20 ) were represented by a flag, a feather, and a bag, respectively.
It also makes use of numeral classifiers, similar to languages such as Chinese and Japanese.
Multiples of 20, 400 or 8,000 are formed by replacing cēm- or cēn- with another number. E.g. ōm…