Tetelcingo Nahuatl, or Mösiehuali, is a Nahuatl

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...

 variety spoken by 3,500 people in the town of Tetelcingo and its colonias

Colonia (Mexico)

In general, colonias are neighborhoods in Mexican cities, which have no jurisdictional autonomy or representation. It is plausible that the name, which literally means colony, arose in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, when one of the first urban developments outside Mexico City's core was...

, Colonia Cuauhtémoc and Colonia Lázaro Cárdenas, in Morelos

Morelos

Morelos officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Morelos is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 33 municipalities and its capital city is Cuernavaca....

, 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...

. Tetelcingo and its colonias are (as of 2008) practically absorbed into the urban area of the city of Cuautla

Cuautla

Cuautla may refer to:*Cuautla, Jalisco, Mexico*Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico...

, Morelos, and the Mösiehuali language and culture are under intense pressure.

The work of SIL International

SIL International

SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...

 began with William Cameron Townsend

William Cameron Townsend

William Cameron Townsend was a prominent American Christian missionary whose ministry began in the early twentieth century...

's 1935 study of Tetelcingo Nahuatl.

Vowels

Tetelcingo Nahuatl has converted the distinction of vowel quantity found in more conservative varieties into one of vowel quality. The short vowels /i e a o/ are reflected as [ɪ e a o] in Tetelcingo, while the long vowels /iː eː aː oː/ become [i ⁱe ɔᵃ u].

Consonants

Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Apical Apical consonant An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...		Palato-alveolar Palato-alveolar consonant In phonetics, palato-alveolar consonants are postalveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants, that are weakly palatalized with a domed tongue...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
	Central Central consonant A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. The class contrasts with lateral consonants, in which air flows over the sides of the tongue rather than down its center....	Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....		Unrounded	Rounded
Stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p/p/	t/t/ d /d/			c /k/	cu /kʷ/
Affricates Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	f /ɸ/ ju /β/	tz/ts/	tl/tɬ/	ch /tʃ/
Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	b /v/	s /s/ ~ z /z/		x /ʃ/ ~ y /ʒ/			j /χ/
Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m /m/	n /n/
Approximants Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...	hu /ʋ/		l /l~ɽ/	y /j/

Tetelcingo Nahuatl, like most dialects of Nahuatl does not differentiate between voiced and unvoiced consonants in s strict orthographic form and therefore voiced consonants are not considered standard consonants but allophones. A consonant evolves into it's voiced counterpart at the initial of every second syllable in any world with three or more syllables similar to Rendaku

Rendaku

is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...

 in the Japanese language. For example: telakantsixofilus is pronounced /teɽakandziʃoviluz/. However the voicing will not start until the second initial consonant of any given word so elakantsixofilus would be pronounced /elagantsiʒofiɽus/ not /eɽakandziʃoviluz/ but if the initial Consonants within bracketts, , are voiced allophones of the afformentioned consonants. Additional consonants may occur in loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

s from Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

.

Honorifics

Another striking characteristic of Tetelcingo Nahuatl is the pervasiveness and complexity of its honorific

Honorific

An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title...

s. Generally every 2nd or 3rd person verb, pronoun, postposition or possessed noun must be marked honorifically if its subject or object, designatum, object or possessor (respectively) is a living adult (the speaker's wife or adult children being exceptions). Extra-honorific forms of several kinds exist, especially for addressing or referring to godparental relations, high officials or God. Many third person honorifics use morphemes that in Classical Nahuatl were used to mark non-active (passive) verbs or unspecified or plural participants. Not infrequently a different (suppletive) stem is used for honorifics, or the honorific form is in some other way irregular.

A few examples are given below, using the orthography of Brewer and Brewer 1962. Where more than one form is listed, the second is more highly honorific.

Stem Meaning	2nd person sg	2nd person sg honorific	3rd person sg	3rd person sg honorific
pronoun	taja	tejuatzi	yaja	yejuatzi
one's house	mocal	mocaltzi	ical	tiecal, tiecaltzi
before	mixpa	mixpantzinco	ixpa	tieixpa, tieixpantzinco
go	tiya	tomobica	yabi	biloa, mobica
come	tibitz	timobicatz, tihualmobica	ibitz	biloatz, hualmobica
notice it, get it (a point)	tiquijtilia	tomojtililia	quijtilia	quijtililo
say it	tiquijtoa	tomojtalfia	quijtoa	quijtulo

External links

• Ethnologue
• Mösiehuali (SIL Mexico) – includes sound recordings
• Mösiehuali Honorifics – includes sound recordings
• Spanish loans in Mösiehuali – includes sound recordings
• Texts in Mösiehuali

Literature

• Brewer, Forrest, y Jean G. Brewer. 1962. Vocabulario mexicano de Tetelcingo. Vocabularios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves” 8. México: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
• Pittman, Richard S. 1948. “Nahuatl honorifics”. International Journal of American Linguistics 14:236-39.
• Pittman, Richard S. 1954. A grammar of Tetelcingo (Morelos) Nahuatl. Language Dissertation 50 (supplement to Language 30).
• Tuggy, David. 1979. “Tetelcingo Nahuatl”. Modern Aztec Grammatical Sketches, 1-140, Ronald W. Langacker, ed. Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar, vol. 2. Arlington, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington.
• Tuggy, David. 1981. Electronic version 2008. The transitivity-related verbal morphology of Tetelcingo Nahuatl: an exploration in Space [Cognitive] grammar. UC San Diego doctoral dissertation.