NAHUATL: CHARACTERISTICS AND COMMON WORDS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The Nahuatl is a set of dialects belonging to the group of Native Americans native Mexico. It is the historical language of the Aztecs.

This language belongs to the Uto-Aztec linguistic family of 60 languages ​​and covers a geographical area that includes not only Mexico, but also the United States in areas such as Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah.

The Aztecs are known to be the quintessential Nahuatl speakers, but they weren't the first. It is known that previous tribes spoke in different branches of the language, which lasted during the heyday of the Aztec empire.

However, due to the extensive power of the Aztec empire, what is known as classical Nahuatl became the most widely spoken form, becoming the lingua franca throughout Mexico and other Mesoamerican countries before the European conquest. It is one of the ancient dialects with the highest records from the colonial period.

Before the conquest, the Aztecs used a rudimentary writing system that consisted mainly of pictograms and ideograms. It did not represent the language word for word, but was used to maintain the basic ideas of a text that would be explained in the story.

A phonetic syllabary also existed before the arrival of the Europeans. Spanish has inherited some words from Nahuatl, such as: avocado, chile and coyote. You may also be interested in knowing what the legend of the nahual of Mexico is.

Most common words in Nahuatl

Classic Nahuatl can present variants according to the Mexican region where it is found, mutating both in morphology, syntax or lexicon, following the known structures of a modern language.

The Nahuatl language is known as an agglutinating language, since the words have different meanings depending on the prefixes or suffixes with which they are combined.

Words that have remained uniform

Alt: this word means water.

Metzli, Tonaltzintli: with this phonetic conjunction they called the stars, specifically the Moon and the Sun, respectively.

Tlacatl, Cihuatl: it was the most common denomination to refer to man and woman.

Ce, Ome ', Yeyi, Nahui: these are the familiar words for numbering the decimals from one to four.

Animal names

Tecuani: with this word they pointed to the most common feline in the entire region; The jaguar.

Quimichpatlan: this phonetic conjunction means bat.

Ozomahtli: In the jungles, prehensile-tailed apes were very common, ranging from capuchins to more exotic specimens. This word is used to classify all monkeys or lesser primates.

Cochotl, Tecolotl, Tototl, Huitzilin: among the bird species that could be found, with these words they named the different species of macaws and parrots, as well as owls and owls, smaller birds and finally the colorful ones. and rare hummingbirds.

Michin, Coatl, Ayotl, Tecuixin: living near very humid areas, contact with aquatic animals or amphibians was not left aside. With these words they referred to fish, snakes such as anacondas, pythons and swallows, turtles and the imminent danger of alligators or crocodiles, respectively. The encounter with these was due to the distances that the Aztecs had to cover between tribe and tribe between the rivers and mangroves on their canoes.

Color names

Colors were part of popular culture among the Aztecs. Within his rudimentary works and gadgets such as garlands or clothes, a great variety of colors could be appreciated, thus having a wide knowledge about those that we know today beyond the primary and secondary ones, in addition to their degradations and gray scales.

Coztic, Texoticyapalli, Chiltic

Within these three words they cataloged what in our society is known as primary colors, naming yellow, blue and red.

It is believed that these names, their specific phonetics, come from the similarity of these colors with birds such as the turpial, the peacock and the cardinal.

Tlaztalehualli, Xochipalli, Xoxoctic

These phonemes correspond to pink, orange and green, rooted in the hues found in flowers and citrus fruits such as grapefruit, lemons and avocados found in Central America.

Tliltic, Iztac, Nextic, Chocolatic

The first two words correspond to the black and white values, referring to the absence or excess of light.

On this same scale, the third word would be equivalent to the combination of both that results in gray. The fourth word is equivalent to the name that is equivalent to cocoa and the brown earth that would end up being known as chocolate.

Main characteristics of Nahuatl and current validity

Classical Nahuatl phonology was notable for its use of the sound produced as a single consonant and for the use of glottis. This stop has been lost in some modern dialects and retained in others.

Nahuatl continues to be spoken in different regions of Mexico City, such as Milpa Alta, Xochimilco and Tláhuac.

It is also spoken in other states of Mexico such as Nayarit, Colima, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, south of Michoacán, Jalisco, Querétaro, Hidalgo, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Morelos, east of Oaxaca, Guerrero and parts of Tabasco and Yucatán.

In those regions alone, about 2.5 million people speak Nahuatl. According to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), one in every 100 people in the capital of Mexico continues to speak from that indigenous root.

According to the National Institute of Indigenous Languages ​​(Inali), the Nahuatl spoken in the city of Milpa Alta ranks 43rd out of a list of 364 languages ​​in danger of extinction, underlining the importance of continuing to preserve it. It is known that at least 6,824 people have lived in Milpa Alta since the last census.

References

1. Mexico City government seeks to present Náhuatl - retrieved from Mexiconewsnetwork.com.
2. Classical Nahuatl - language - retrieved from Britannica.com.
3. Nahuatl language - Uto-Aztecan language - retrieved from Britannica.com.
4. Nahuatl Language and the Nahuatl / Aztec Indians (Mexica) retrieved from native-languages.org.
5. Nahuatl Words (Aztec) retrieved from native-languages.org.
6. What is Nahuatl? Recovered from wisegeek.com.
7. Picture Dictionary: Nahuatl Animals (Aztec) retrieved from native-languages.org.