Nahuatl dialects
Encyclopedia
The many dialects of the Nahuatl
language belong to the Nahuan branch
of the Uto-Aztecan language family
, and form a group of linguistic varieties spoken in central Mexico
. Some authorities, such as the Mexican government and Ethnologue
, consider the modern Nahuatl varieties separate languages, due to the fact that they are often mutually unintelligible and represent distinct ethnic identities. As of 2008, the Mexican government recognizes thirty varieties that are spoken in Mexico (see the list below).
Researchers distinguish between several dialect areas that each have a number of shared features: One classification scheme distniguishes innovative central dialects, spoken around Mexico City, from conservative peripheral ones spoken north, south and east of the central area, while another scheme distinguishes a basic split between western and eastern dialects.
Nevertheless these variants all are clearly related, and more closely related to each other than to Pochutec
, and they and Pochutec are more closely related to each other than to any other Uto-Aztecan languages (such as Cora
or Huichol
, Tepehuán
and Tarahumara
, Yaqui
/Mayo
, etc.)
Campbell and Langacker (1978), in a paper whose focus was the internal reconstruction
of the vowels of Proto-Aztecan (or Proto-Nahuan
), made two proposals of lasting impact regarding the internal classification of the Aztecan branch. They introduced the claim, which would quickly be received as proven beyond virtually any doubt, that the well known change of Proto-Uto-Aztecan */ta-/ to */t͡ɬa-/ was a development in Proto-Aztecan (Proto-Nahuan), not a later development in some dialects descended from Proto-Aztecan. Second, they adduced new arguments for dividing the branch in two subdivisions: Pochutec, whose sole member is the Pochutec language, which went extinct sometime in the 20th century, and General Aztec, which includes the Pipil language and all dialects spoken in Mexico which are clearly closely related to the extinct literary language, Classical Nahuatl. This binary division of Aztecan (Nahuan) was already the majority opinion among specialists, but Campbell and Langacker's new arguments were received as being compelling. Furthermore, in "adopt[ing] the term 'General Aztec' ", they may in fact have been the ones to introduce this designation. Part of their reconstruction of the Proto-Aztecan vowels was disputed by Dakin (1983).
The most comprehensive study of the history of Nahuan languages is Canger's "Five Studies inspired by Nahuatl verbs in -oa" (Canger 1980) in which she explores the historical development of grammar of the verbs ending in -oa and -ia. She shows that verbs in -oa and -ia are historically and grammatically distinct from verbs in -iya and -owa, although they are not distinguished in the pronunciation in any modern dialects. She shows the historical basis for the five verb classes, based on how they form the perfect tense-aspect, and she shows that all of the different forms of the perfect tense-aspect derives from a single -ki morpheme that has developed differently depending on the phonological shape of the verb to which it was suffixed. She also explains the historical development of the applicative suffix with the shape -lia and -lwia as coming from a single suffix of the shape -liwa.
In 1984 Canger and Dakin published an article in which they showed that proto-nahuan *ɨ had become /e/ in some Nahuan dialects and /i/ in others, and they proposed that this split was among the oldest splits of the Nahuan group.
Dakin has proposed a historical internal classification of Nahuan, e.g., Dakin (2000). She asserts two groups of migrations in central Mexico and eventually southwards to Central America. The first produced Eastern dialects. Centuries later, the second group of migrations produced Western dialects. But many modern dialects are the result of blending between particular Eastern dialects and particular Western dialects.
Campbell in his grammar of Pipil (1985) discussed the problem of classifying Pipil. Pipil is either a descendant of Nahuatl (in his estimation) or still to this day a variety of Nahuatl (in the estimation of for example Lastra de Suárez (1986) and Dakin (2001)).
Dakin (1982) is a book length study (in Spanish) of the phonological evolution of Proto-Nahuatl. Dakin (1991) suggested that irregularities in the modern Nahuatl system of possessive prefixes might be due to the presence in Proto-Nahuan of distinct grammatical marking for two types of possession.
In the 1990s, two papers appeared addressing the old research problem of the "saltillo
" in Nahuatl: a lost paper by Whorf (1993), and Manaster Ramer (1995).
In the decade up to 1986 there was a spate of research published on the classification of the modern dialects, culminating in the isogloss atlas by Lastra (Lastra de Suárez 1986). Since then there has been little research published as to the classification of Nahuatl dialects.
, although the descriptor "classical" was never used until the 20th century). Since the 1930s, there have appeared several grammars of individual modern dialects (in either article or book form), in addition to articles of narrower scope.
As a geographical note: the northern part of the State of Puebla is universally recognized as having two subgroupings. The northern part of the State of Puebla is a long north to south lobe. In the middle of it from east-northeast to west-southwest runs the Sierra de Puebla (as Nahuanist linguists call it) or Sierra Norte de Puebla (as geographers call it). The "Sierra de Puebla" dialects are quite distinct from the "northern Puebla" dialects, which are spoken in northernmost Puebla State and very small parts of neighboring states.
Most specialists in Pipil (El Salvador) consider it to have diverged from Nahuatl to the point it should no longer be considered a variety of Nahuatl. Most specialists in Nahuan do not consider Pochutec to have ever been a variety of Nahuatl.
Some of the isoglosses used by Canger to establish the Peripheral vs. Central dialectal dichotomy are these:
Lastra de Suárez in her Nahuatl dialect atlas (1986) affirmed the concept of the Center-Periphery geographic dichotomy, but amended Canger's assignment of some subgroupings to the Center or the Periphery. The three most important divergences are probably those involving Huastec dialects, Sierra de Zongolica dialects, and northwestern Guerrero dialects. Lastra classifies these as Peripheral, Central, and Central, respectively, while in each case Canger does the opposite.
The dialectal situation is very complex and most categorizations, including the one presented above, are, in the nature of things, controversial. Lastra wrote, "The isogloss
es rarely coincide. As a result, one can give greater or lesser importance to a feature and make the [dialectal] division that one judges appropriate/convenient" (1986:189). And she warned: "We insist that this classification is not [entirely] satisfactory" (1986:190). Both researchers emphasized the need for more data in order for there to be advances in the field of Nahuatl dialectology. Since the 1970s, there has been an increase in research whose immediate aim is the production of grammars and dictionaries of individual dialects. But there is also a detailed study of dialect variation in the dialect subgroup sometimes known as the Zongolica (Andrés Hasler 1996). A. Hasler sums up the difficulty of classifying Zongolica thus (1996:164): "Juan Hasler (1958:338) interprets the presence in the region of [a mix of] eastern dialect features and central dialect features as an indication of a substratum of eastern Nahuatl and a superstratum of central Nahuatl. Una Canger (1980:15-20) classifies the region as part of the eastern area, while Yolanda Lastra
(1986:189-190) classifies it as part of the central area."
As already alluded to, the nucleus of the Central dialect territory is the Valley of Mexico
. The extinct Classical Nahuatl
, the enormously influential language spoken by the people of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, is one of the Central dialects. Lastra in her dialect atlas proposed three Peripheral groupings: eastern, western, and Huasteca
. She included Pipil in Nahuatl, assigning it to the Eastern Periphery grouping. Lastra's classification of dialects of modern Nahuatl is as follows (many of the labels refer to Mexican states):
(INALI)'s Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales, published in the Diario Oficial on 14 January 2008,http://www.dof.gob.mx/abrirPDF.php?archivo=140108-MAT.pdf pp. 106–129.) The full document has variations on the names especially “autodenominaciones” ("self designations", the names these dialect communities use for their language), along with lists of towns where each variant is spoken.
s strung together.
Nahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
language belong to the Nahuan branch
Nahuan languages
The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone the sound change known as Whorf's Law changing the original /*t/ to before */a/...
of the Uto-Aztecan language family
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
, and form a group of linguistic varieties spoken in central Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Some authorities, such as the Mexican government and Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
, consider the modern Nahuatl varieties separate languages, due to the fact that they are often mutually unintelligible and represent distinct ethnic identities. As of 2008, the Mexican government recognizes thirty varieties that are spoken in Mexico (see the list below).
Researchers distinguish between several dialect areas that each have a number of shared features: One classification scheme distniguishes innovative central dialects, spoken around Mexico City, from conservative peripheral ones spoken north, south and east of the central area, while another scheme distinguishes a basic split between western and eastern dialects.
Intelligibility
The differences among the dialects are not trivial, and in many cases result in low mutual intelligibility: people who speak one dialect cannot understand or be understood by those from another. Thus by this criterion they could be considered different languages. The ISO divisions referenced below respond to intelligibility more than to historical or reconstructional considerations. Like the higher-level groupings, they also are not self-evident, and are subject to considerable controversy.Nevertheless these variants all are clearly related, and more closely related to each other than to Pochutec
Pochutec
Pochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct...
, and they and Pochutec are more closely related to each other than to any other Uto-Aztecan languages (such as Cora
Cora language
The Cora language is an indigenous language of Mexico of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the ethnic group that is widely known as the Cora but who refer to themselves as Naáyarite. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state Nayarit which is named after its indigenous...
or Huichol
Huichol language
The Huichol language is an indigenous language of Mexico which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the ethnic group widely known as the Huichol , whose mountainous territory extends over portions of the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Durango, mostly in Jalisco...
, Tepehuán
Tepehuán
The Tepehuán are a Native American ethnic group in northwest Mexico, whose villages at the time of Spanish conquest spanned a large territory along the Sierra Madre Occidental from Chihuahua and Durango in the north to Jalisco in the south...
and Tarahumara
Tarahumara language
The Tarahumara language is a Mexican indigenous language of the Uto-Aztecan language family spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara people in the state of Chihuahua, according to an estimate by the government of Mexico.-Genetic affiliation:Tarahumara belongs to the Taracahitic group of the Uto-Aztecan...
, Yaqui
Yaqui language
Yaqui , locally known as Yoeme or Yoem Noki, is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It is spoken by about 15,000 people, mostly of the border Yaqui people, in the region around the Mexican state of Sonora, and Arizona in the United States.-Phonology:The remarks below use the...
/Mayo
Mayo language
Mayo is an Uto-Aztecan language. It is spoken by about 40,000 people, the Mexican Mayo or Yoreme Indians, who live in the South of the Mexican state of Sonora and in the North of the neighboring state of Sinaloa...
, etc.)
Historical linguistic research
Little work has been done in the way of the historical linguistics of Nahuatl proper or the Aztecan (nowadays often renamed Nahuan) branch of Uto-Aztecan.Campbell and Langacker (1978), in a paper whose focus was the internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction is a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date...
of the vowels of Proto-Aztecan (or Proto-Nahuan
Proto-Nahuan
Proto-Nahuan is the hypothetical daughter language of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan language which is the common ancestor from which the modern Nahuan languages have developed...
), made two proposals of lasting impact regarding the internal classification of the Aztecan branch. They introduced the claim, which would quickly be received as proven beyond virtually any doubt, that the well known change of Proto-Uto-Aztecan */ta-/ to */t͡ɬa-/ was a development in Proto-Aztecan (Proto-Nahuan), not a later development in some dialects descended from Proto-Aztecan. Second, they adduced new arguments for dividing the branch in two subdivisions: Pochutec, whose sole member is the Pochutec language, which went extinct sometime in the 20th century, and General Aztec, which includes the Pipil language and all dialects spoken in Mexico which are clearly closely related to the extinct literary language, Classical Nahuatl. This binary division of Aztecan (Nahuan) was already the majority opinion among specialists, but Campbell and Langacker's new arguments were received as being compelling. Furthermore, in "adopt[ing] the term 'General Aztec' ", they may in fact have been the ones to introduce this designation. Part of their reconstruction of the Proto-Aztecan vowels was disputed by Dakin (1983).
The most comprehensive study of the history of Nahuan languages is Canger's "Five Studies inspired by Nahuatl verbs in -oa" (Canger 1980) in which she explores the historical development of grammar of the verbs ending in -oa and -ia. She shows that verbs in -oa and -ia are historically and grammatically distinct from verbs in -iya and -owa, although they are not distinguished in the pronunciation in any modern dialects. She shows the historical basis for the five verb classes, based on how they form the perfect tense-aspect, and she shows that all of the different forms of the perfect tense-aspect derives from a single -ki morpheme that has developed differently depending on the phonological shape of the verb to which it was suffixed. She also explains the historical development of the applicative suffix with the shape -lia and -lwia as coming from a single suffix of the shape -liwa.
In 1984 Canger and Dakin published an article in which they showed that proto-nahuan *ɨ had become /e/ in some Nahuan dialects and /i/ in others, and they proposed that this split was among the oldest splits of the Nahuan group.
Dakin has proposed a historical internal classification of Nahuan, e.g., Dakin (2000). She asserts two groups of migrations in central Mexico and eventually southwards to Central America. The first produced Eastern dialects. Centuries later, the second group of migrations produced Western dialects. But many modern dialects are the result of blending between particular Eastern dialects and particular Western dialects.
Campbell in his grammar of Pipil (1985) discussed the problem of classifying Pipil. Pipil is either a descendant of Nahuatl (in his estimation) or still to this day a variety of Nahuatl (in the estimation of for example Lastra de Suárez (1986) and Dakin (2001)).
Dakin (1982) is a book length study (in Spanish) of the phonological evolution of Proto-Nahuatl. Dakin (1991) suggested that irregularities in the modern Nahuatl system of possessive prefixes might be due to the presence in Proto-Nahuan of distinct grammatical marking for two types of possession.
In the 1990s, two papers appeared addressing the old research problem of the "saltillo
Saltillo (linguistics)
In Mexican linguistics, saltillo refers to a glottal stop consonant, . It was given that name by the early grammarians of Classical Nahuatl. In a number of other Nahuatl languages, the sound cognate to Classical Nahuatl’s glottal stop is , and the term saltillo is applied to either pronunciation...
" in Nahuatl: a lost paper by Whorf (1993), and Manaster Ramer (1995).
Modern dialects of Nahuatl and their tentative classification
A Center-Periphery scheme, strictly synchronic, without historical pretensions, was introduced by Canger in 1978 and supported by Lastra de Suarez (1986). An Eastern-Western scheme making the claim to genetic validity was used by Dakin (2003:261).In the decade up to 1986 there was a spate of research published on the classification of the modern dialects, culminating in the isogloss atlas by Lastra (Lastra de Suárez 1986). Since then there has been little research published as to the classification of Nahuatl dialects.
Studies of individual dialects
Until the middle of the 20th century, scholarship on Nahuatl was limited almost entirely to the literary language that existed approximately 1540-1770 (which is now known as Classical NahuatlClassical Nahuatl grammar
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 through...
, although the descriptor "classical" was never used until the 20th century). Since the 1930s, there have appeared several grammars of individual modern dialects (in either article or book form), in addition to articles of narrower scope.
Classification
The history of research into Nahuatl dialect classification in the 20th century up to 1988 has been reviewed by Canger (1988). Before 1978, classification proposals had relied to a greater or lesser degree on the three way interdialectal sound correspondence /t͡ɬ ~ t ~ l/ (the lateral affricate /t͡ɬ/ of Classical Nahuatl and many other dialects corresponds to /t/ in some eastern and southern dialects and to /l/ in yet other dialects). Benjamin Lee Whorf (1937) had performed an analysis and concluded that /t͡ɬ/ was the reflex of Proto-Uto-Aztecan */t/ before /a/ (a conclusion which has been borne out). But in 1978 Campbell and Langacker made the novel proposal—which met with immediate universal acceptance—that this sound change had occurred back in Proto-Aztecan (the ancestor dialect of Pochutec and General Aztec) and that therefore the corresponding /t/ or /l/ in Nahuatl dialects were innovations.As a geographical note: the northern part of the State of Puebla is universally recognized as having two subgroupings. The northern part of the State of Puebla is a long north to south lobe. In the middle of it from east-northeast to west-southwest runs the Sierra de Puebla (as Nahuanist linguists call it) or Sierra Norte de Puebla (as geographers call it). The "Sierra de Puebla" dialects are quite distinct from the "northern Puebla" dialects, which are spoken in northernmost Puebla State and very small parts of neighboring states.
Eastern–Western division
Dakin (2003:261) gives the following classification of Nahuatl dialects (in which the word "north" has been replaced by "northern"), based on her earlier publications, e.g., Dakin (2000).- Eastern Nahuatl
- La Huasteca
- Guerrero Central
- Sierra de Puebla
- Tehuacán–Zongolica
- Isthmus
- PipilPipil languagePipil is a Uto-Aztecan language descended from Nahuatl which was spoken in several parts of present day Central America before the Spanish conquest. It is on the verge of extinction in western El Salvador and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America...
- Western Nahuatl
- Central Nahuatl
- "Classical" Nahuatl
- Nahuatl of the center (D.F., Morelos, Tlaxcala, State of Mexico, etc.)
- northern Puebla Nahuatl
- Nahuatl of the western periphery
- Colima-Durango
- northern State of Mexico (Almomoloya, Sultepec)
- Jalisco–Nayarit
- northern Guerrero
- Michoacán
- PochutecPochutecPochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct...
- Central Nahuatl
Most specialists in Pipil (El Salvador) consider it to have diverged from Nahuatl to the point it should no longer be considered a variety of Nahuatl. Most specialists in Nahuan do not consider Pochutec to have ever been a variety of Nahuatl.
Center–Periphery division
Canger (1978; 1980) and Lastra de Suarez (1986) have made classification schemes based on data and methodology which each investigator has well documented. Both the proposals are tentative to a certain extent. They are "shallow", claiming only synchronic validity as opposed to representing an evolutionary tree of how the dialects emerged. Canger proposed a single Central grouping and several Peripheral groupings. The Center grouping is hypothesized to have arisen during the Aztec Empire by diffusion of the defining feature (an innovative verb form) and other features from the prestigious dialect of the capital. The dialects which adopted it could be from multiple genetic divisions of General Aztec. As for the various Peripheral groupings, their identity as Peripheral is defined negatively, i.e., by their lack the grammatical feature which, it is proposed, defines the Central grouping. Canger recognized the possibility that centuries of population migrations and other grammatical feature diffusions may have combined to obscure the genetic relationships (the branching evolution) among the dialects of Nahuatl.Some of the isoglosses used by Canger to establish the Peripheral vs. Central dialectal dichotomy are these:
| Central | Peripheral |
|---|---|
| #e- initial vowel e | #ye- epenthetic y before initial e |
| mochi "all" | nochi "all" |
| totoltetl "egg" | teksistli "egg" |
| tesi "to grind" | tisi "to grind" |
| -h/ʔ plural subject suffix | -lo plural subject suffix |
| -tin preferred noun plural | -meh preferred noun plural |
| o- past augment | – absence of augment |
| -nki/-wki "perfect participle forms" | -nik/-wik "perfect participle forms" |
| tliltik "black" | yayawik "black" |
| -ki agentive suffix | -ketl/-katl agentive suffix |
Lastra de Suárez in her Nahuatl dialect atlas (1986) affirmed the concept of the Center-Periphery geographic dichotomy, but amended Canger's assignment of some subgroupings to the Center or the Periphery. The three most important divergences are probably those involving Huastec dialects, Sierra de Zongolica dialects, and northwestern Guerrero dialects. Lastra classifies these as Peripheral, Central, and Central, respectively, while in each case Canger does the opposite.
The dialectal situation is very complex and most categorizations, including the one presented above, are, in the nature of things, controversial. Lastra wrote, "The isogloss
Isogloss
An isogloss—also called a heterogloss —is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature...
es rarely coincide. As a result, one can give greater or lesser importance to a feature and make the [dialectal] division that one judges appropriate/convenient" (1986:189). And she warned: "We insist that this classification is not [entirely] satisfactory" (1986:190). Both researchers emphasized the need for more data in order for there to be advances in the field of Nahuatl dialectology. Since the 1970s, there has been an increase in research whose immediate aim is the production of grammars and dictionaries of individual dialects. But there is also a detailed study of dialect variation in the dialect subgroup sometimes known as the Zongolica (Andrés Hasler 1996). A. Hasler sums up the difficulty of classifying Zongolica thus (1996:164): "Juan Hasler (1958:338) interprets the presence in the region of [a mix of] eastern dialect features and central dialect features as an indication of a substratum of eastern Nahuatl and a superstratum of central Nahuatl. Una Canger (1980:15-20) classifies the region as part of the eastern area, while Yolanda Lastra
Yolanda Lastra
Yolanda Lastra de Suárez is a Mexican linguist specializing in the descriptive linguistics of the indigenous languages of Mexico. She obtained her PhD degree in 1963 from Cornell University, her dissertation written under the guidance of Charles F...
(1986:189-190) classifies it as part of the central area."
As already alluded to, the nucleus of the Central dialect territory is the Valley of Mexico
Valley of Mexico
The Valley of Mexico is a highlands plateau in central Mexico roughly coterminous with the present-day Distrito Federal and the eastern half of the State of Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico was a centre for several pre-Columbian civilizations, including...
. The extinct Classical Nahuatl
Classical Nahuatl
Classical Nahuatl is a term used to describe the variants of the Nahuatl language that were spoken in the Valley of Mexico — and central Mexico as a lingua franca — at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Mexico...
, the enormously influential language spoken by the people of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, is one of the Central dialects. Lastra in her dialect atlas proposed three Peripheral groupings: eastern, western, and Huasteca
La Huasteca
La Huasteca is the first climbing area in Monterrey, Mexico, only 15 minutes from the city. With nearly 200 bolted routes with grades from 5.8 to 5.13C, it is the favorite place for weekend climbers. It is also known for the slippery type of limestone from which it is comprised, and which makes...
. She included Pipil in Nahuatl, assigning it to the Eastern Periphery grouping. Lastra's classification of dialects of modern Nahuatl is as follows (many of the labels refer to Mexican states):
- Western Periphery
- West coast
- Western México State
- DurangoMexicaneroMexicanero is the name used by the speakers of the variety of the Nahuatl language spoken in southern Durango to refer to their language. It is a member of the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It has around 1000 speakers in the remote towns of San Pedro Jícora and San Juan...
–Nayarit
- Eastern Periphery
- Sierra Norte de PueblaSierra Norte de PueblaThe Sierra Norte de Puebla – known simply as the Sierra Norte by locals – is a mountain range that makes up the southern end of the Sierra Madre Oriental in central Mexico.-Mountain range:...
- IsthmusIsthmus-Mecayapan NahuatlIsthmus–Mecayapan Nahuatl or Isthmus Nahuat is a modern variety of Nahuatl spoken by about 20,000 people in Mecayapan and Tatahuicapan, Veracruz, Mexico.-Vowels:-Consonants:*Occur only as allophones....
- PipilPipil languagePipil is a Uto-Aztecan language descended from Nahuatl which was spoken in several parts of present day Central America before the Spanish conquest. It is on the verge of extinction in western El Salvador and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America...
- Sierra Norte de Puebla
- Huasteca
- Center
- Nuclear subarea (in and near Mexico, D.F.)
- Puebla–Tlaxcala (areas by the border between the states of Puebla and Tlaxcala)
- Xochiltepec–Huatlatlauca (south of the city of Puebla)
- Southeastern Puebla (this grouping extends over the Sierra de Zongolica located in the neighboring state of Veracruz)
- Central Guerrero (so called; actually northern Guerrero, specifically the region of the Balsas River)
- Southern Guerrero
List of Nahuatl dialects recognized by the Mexican government
This list is taken from the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas IndígenasInstituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas
The Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas is a Mexican federal public agency, created 13 March 2003 by the enactment of the Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas by the administration of President Vicente Fox...
(INALI)'s Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales, published in the Diario Oficial on 14 January 2008,http://www.dof.gob.mx/abrirPDF.php?archivo=140108-MAT.pdf pp. 106–129.) The full document has variations on the names especially “autodenominaciones” ("self designations", the names these dialect communities use for their language), along with lists of towns where each variant is spoken.
- Náhuatl de la Sierra, noreste de Puebla
- Náhuatl del noroeste central
- Náhuatl del Istmo
- Mexicano de la Huasteca veracruzana
- Náhuatl de la Huasteca potosina
- Náhuatl de Oaxaca
- Náhuatl de la Sierra negra, sur
- Náhuatl de la Sierra negra, norte
- Náhuatl central de Veracruz
- Náhuatl de la Sierra oeste
- Náhuatl alto del norte de Puebla
- Náhuatl del Istmo bajo
- Náhuatl del centro de Puebla
- Mexicano bajo de occidente
- Mexicano del noroeste
- Mexicano de Guerrero
- Mexicano de occidente
- Mexicano central de occidente
- Mexicano central bajo
- Mexicano de Temixco
- Mexicano de Puente de Ixtla
- Mexicano de Tetela del Volcán
- Mexicano alto de occidente
- Mexicano del oriente
- Mexicano del oriente central
- Mexicano del centro bajo
- Mexicano del centro alto
- Mexicano del centro
- Mexicano del oriente de Puebla
- Mexicano de la Huasteca Hidalguense
List of Nahuatl dialects recognized in ISO 639-3, ordered by number of speakers
(name [ISO subgroup code] – location(s) ~approx. number of speakers)- Eastern Huasteca [nhe] – Hidalgo, Western Veracruz, Northern Puebla ~450,000
- Western Huasteca [nhw] – San Luis Potosí, Western Hidalgo ~450,000
- Guerrero [ngu] – Guerrero ~200,000
- Orizaba [nlv] – Central Veracruz ~140,000
- Southeastern Puebla [nhs] – Southeast Puebla ~135,000
- Highland Puebla [azz] – Puebla Highlands ~125,000
- Northern Puebla [ncj] – Northern Puebla ~66,000
- Central [nhn] – Tlaxcala, Puebla ~50,000
- Isthmus-Mecayapan [nhx] – Southern Veracruz ~20,000
- Central Puebla [ncx] – Central Puebla ~18,000
- Morelos [nhm] – Morelos ~15,000
- Northern Oaxaca [nhy] – Northwestern Oaxaca, Southeastern Puebla ~10,000
- Huaxcaleca [nhq] – Puebla ~7,000
- Isthmus-Pajapan [nhp] – Southern Veracruz ~7,000
- Isthmus-Cosoleacaque [nhk] – Northwestern Coastal Chiapas, Southern Veracruz ~5,500
- Tetelcingo [nhg] – Morelos ~3,500
- Michoacán [ncl] – Michoacán ~3,000
- Santa María de la Alta [nhz] – Northwest Puebla ~3,000
- Tenango [nhi] – Northern Puebla ~2,000
- Tlamacazapa [nuz] – Morelos ~1,500
- Coatepec [naz] – Southwestern México State, Northwestern Guerrero ~1,500
- Durango [nln] – Southern Durango ~1,000
- Ometepec [nht] – Southern Guerrero, Western Oaxaca ~500
- Temascaltepec [nhv] – Southwestern México State ~300
- Tlalitzlipa [nhj] – Puebla ~100
- Pipil [ppl] – El Salvador ~100
- Tabasco [nhc] – Tabasco
Morphology
Nahuatl is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemeMorpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s strung together.
See also
- NahuatlNahuatlNahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
- Isthmus-Mecayapan NahuatlIsthmus-Mecayapan NahuatlIsthmus–Mecayapan Nahuatl or Isthmus Nahuat is a modern variety of Nahuatl spoken by about 20,000 people in Mecayapan and Tatahuicapan, Veracruz, Mexico.-Vowels:-Consonants:*Occur only as allophones....
- MexicaneroMexicaneroMexicanero is the name used by the speakers of the variety of the Nahuatl language spoken in southern Durango to refer to their language. It is a member of the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It has around 1000 speakers in the remote towns of San Pedro Jícora and San Juan...
- PochutecPochutecPochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct...
- Pipil languagePipil languagePipil is a Uto-Aztecan language descended from Nahuatl which was spoken in several parts of present day Central America before the Spanish conquest. It is on the verge of extinction in western El Salvador and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America...
- Pipil grammarPipil grammarThis article provides a grammar sketch of the Nawat or Pipil language, an endangered language spoken by the Pipils of western El Salvador, belonging to the Nahua group within the Uto-Aztecan language family...
- Pipil language (typological overview)Pipil language (typological overview)This rather technical article provides a typological sketch of the Pipil language . Another related article outlines Pipil grammar in fuller detail...
- Uto-Aztecan languagesUto-Aztecan languagesUto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
- Nahuatl transcriptionNahuatl transcriptionNahuatl orthography describes the methodologies and conventions used to express the Nahuatl languages and dialects in some given writing system, and the inventory of glyphs, graphemes and diacritics employed for that purpose....