The Nahuatl language is today spoken by people, mostly in mountainous areas in the states of central Mexico. Mexican Spanish today incorporates hundreds of loans from Nahuatl, and many of these words have passed into general Spanish use, and further into other world languages. In Mexico, Aztec place names are ubiquitous, particularly in central Mexico where the Aztec empire was centered, but also in other regions where many towns, cities and regions were established under their Nahuatl names, as Aztec auxiliary troops accompanied the Spanish colonizers on the early expeditions that mapped New Spain. In this way even towns, that were not originally Nahuatl speaking came to be known by their Nahuatl names.
Language and placenames
Aztecs
Aztecs | Language and placenames
Nahuatl language Nahuatl. Nahuatl Nahuatl language
the culture of the aztec empire was based around which geographic form
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Central Mexico
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this culture became popular between which time period?
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Post-classic period from 1300 to 1521
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which language was spoken by the people of that time?
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In Guerrero the Tlapanecs of Yopitzinco speaking the Oto-Manguean Tlapanec language remained independent of the Aztec empire as did some of the Oaxacan cultures such as the Mixtecs of Tututepec and the Zapotec of Zaachila. In the late postclassic around 1400 CE Zapotecs of Zaachila moved into the Isthmus of Tehuantepec creating a wedge of Zapotec speaking settlements between the former neighbors the Mixe and the Huave who were pushed into their current territories on the edges of the Isthmus.
Mesoamerican languages | Postclassic period (1000–1521 CE)
The Aztecs distinguished between at least two social registers of language: the language of commoners ("macehuallahtolli") and the language of the nobility ("tecpillahtolli"). The latter was marked by the use of a distinct rhetorical style. Since literacy was confined mainly to these higher social classes, most of the existing prose and poetical documents were written in this style. An important feature of this high rhetorical style of formal oratory was the use of parallelism, whereby the orator structured their speech in couplets consisting of two parallel phrases. For example: Another kind of parallelism used is referred to by modern linguists as "difrasismo", in which two phrases are symbolically combined to give a metaphorical reading.
Nahuatl | Stylistics
As Nahuatl, carried by the Toltec and later the Aztec culture, became a lingua franca throughout Mesoamerica even some Mayan states such as the K'iche' Kingdom of Q'umarkaj adopted Nahuatl as a prestige language. In Oaxaca Zapotec and Mixtec peoples expanded their territories displacing speakers of the Tequistlatecan languages slightly. During this time the Purépecha (Tarascans) consolidated their state based at Tzintzuntzan. They were resistant to other states of Mesoamerica and had little contact with the rest of Mesoamerica. Probably as a result of their isolationist policy the Purépecha language is the only language of Mesoamerica to not show any of the traits associated with the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
Mesoamerican languages | Postclassic period (1000–1521 CE)
The Aztecs' story maintains that only a man, Coxcox, and a woman, Xochiquetzal, survive, having floated on a piece of bark. They found themselves on land and begot many children who were at first born unable to speak, but subsequently, upon the arrival of a dove were endowed with language, although each one was given a different speech such that they could not understand one another.
Mythical origins of language | Mesoamerica
Also it is interesting that the word "ahwahnee", as a Californian toponym, is derived from the Southern Sierra Miwok word "awwo" which, in English, means "mouth." This is not a mere coincidence, since the Miwok is an Utian language, and associates this word with the concept of breathing (and then to smelling). Furthermore, the Aztec ahwahnees were educated to frequently opening their mouths for singing, elegantly speaking, and smiling (smile was a magic feature performed by them, in order to make Mictlantecuhtli be away from people, avoiding, so, facing death; see Johansson, 2006). Three young ahwahnees can be seen in the opera Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli (2012).
Ahwahnee (Aztec Culture) | Presence in Modern Culture
In the Postclassic period Nahuan languages diversified and spread, carried by the culture commonly known as Toltec. In the early Postclassic period feuds between royal lineages in the Yucatán Peninsula caused the forefathers of the Itza' to move south into the Guatemalan jungle. In northwestern Oaxaca speakers of Mixtec and Chocho-Popolocan languages built successful city-states, such as Teotitlan del Camino, which did not fall under Nahuan subjugation. Speakers of Otomian languages (Otomi, Mazahua and Matlatzinca) were routinely displaced to the edges of the Nahuan states. The Otomi of Xaltocan, for example, were forcibly relocated to Otumba by the early Aztec empire.
Mesoamerican languages | Postclassic period (1000–1521 CE)
Throughout the southern part of the Maya area and the highlands the elite of the Classic Maya centers spoke a common prestige language based on Cholan, a variant often referred to as Classic Ch'olti'an. An important question that remains to be answered is what language or languages were spoken by the people and rulers of the empire of Teotihuacan. During the first part of the Classic period Teotihuacan achieved dominance over central Mexico and far into the Maya area. Possible candidates for the language of Teotihuacan have been Nahuatl, Totonac or Mixe–Zoque. Terrence Kaufman has argued that Nahuatl is an unlikely candidate because Proto-Nahuan did not enter Mesoamerica until around the time of the fall of Teotihuacan (c.
Mesoamerican languages | Classic period (200–1000 CE)
The Nahuatl language is today spoken by people, mostly in mountainous areas in the states of central Mexico. Mexican Spanish today incorporates hundreds of loans from Nahuatl, and many of these words have passed into general Spanish use, and further into other world languages. In Mexico, Aztec place names are ubiquitous, particularly in central Mexico where the Aztec empire was centered, but also in other regions where many towns, cities and regions were established under their Nahuatl names, as Aztec auxiliary troops accompanied the Spanish colonizers on the early expeditions that mapped New Spain. In this way even towns, that were not originally Nahuatl speaking came to be known by their Nahuatl names.
Aztecs | Language and placenames
This depopulation of the Bajío coincided with an incursion of new populations into the Valley of Mexico, which suggests that this marks the influx of Nahuatl speakers into the region. These people populated central Mexico, dislocating speakers of Oto-Manguean languages as they spread their political influence south. As the former nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples mixed with the complex civilizations of Mesoamerica, adopting religious and cultural practices, the foundation for later Aztec culture was laid. After 900 CE, during the postclassic period, a number of sites almost certainly inhabited by Nahuatl speakers became powerful. Among them the site of Tula, Hidalgo, and also city states such as Tenayuca, and Colhuacan in the valley of Mexico and Cuauhnahuac in Morelos.
Aztecs | Central Mexico in the classic and postclassic
What is known is that in the years following Teotihuacan’s fall Nahuan speakers quickly rose to power in central Mexico and expanded into areas earlier occupied by speakers of Oto-Manguean, Totonacan and Huastec. During this time Oto-Manguean groups of central Mexico such as the Chiapanec, Chorotega and Subtiaba migrated south some of them reaching the southern limits of Mesoamerica in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Also some speakers of Nahuan moved south, some settling on the coast of Oaxaca where their speech became the language Pochutec, and others moving all the way to El Salvador, becoming the ancestors of the speakers of modern Pipil.
Mesoamerican languages | Classic period (200–1000 CE)
During this time the Oto-Manguean languages diversified and spread into Oaxaca and central Mexico. In the Valley of Oaxaca, the Oto-Manguean Zapotec culture emerges around c. 1000 BCE. The splitting of Proto-Mayan into the modern Mayan languages slowly began at roughly 2000 BCE when the speakers of Huastec moved north into the Mexican Gulf Coast region. Uto-Aztecan languages were still outside of Mesoamerica during the Preclassic, their speakers living as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers on the northern rim of the region and co-existing with speakers of Coracholan and Oto-Pamean languages.
Mesoamerican languages | Preclassic period (2000 BCE – 200 CE)
C. for 1300 A.D. was submitted by the Otomi Jaltocan kingdom. At this time only Otomi and Totonac was spoken, but to AD 1400 Chichimeca came and introduced the use of the Nahuatl language.
Acaxochitlán | History of Acaxochitlan
Contact in earnest between the two languages began along with the beginning of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1519. Prior to that, Nahuatl existed as the dominant language of much of central, southern, and western Mexico, the language of the dominant Aztec culture and Mexica ethnic group. Though the Spanish tried to eradicate much of Mexica culture after their defeat of the Mexica Aztec in their capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, Aztec culture and the Nahuatl language were spread among a variety of ethnic groups in Mexico, some of whom, like the Tlaxcala, were instrumental allies of the Spanish in their defeat of the Aztec empire.
Nahuatl–Spanish contact | Spanish conquest
The Aztecs did not have a fully developed writing system like the Maya, however like the Maya and Zapotec, they did use a writing system that combined logographic signs with phonetic syllable signs. Logograms would, for example, be the use of an image of a mountain to signify the word "tepetl," "mountain", whereas a phonetic syllable sign would be the use of an image of a tooth "tlantli" to signify the syllable "tla" in words unrelated to teeth. The combination of these principles allowed the Aztecs to represent the sounds of names of persons and places. Narratives tended to be represented through sequences of images, using various iconographic conventions such as footprints to show paths, temples on fire to show conquest events, etc.
Aztecs | Writing and iconography
Proto-Mixe–Zoquean was spoken on the gulf coast and on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and on the Guatemalan Pacific coast around 2000 BCE, in a much larger area than its current extension. Totonacan languages, Purépecha, Huave and the Tequistlatecan languages can also be assumed to have been present in Mesoamerica at this point although it is unknown.
Mesoamerican languages | Archaic period (–2000 BCE)
During the Classic period the linguistic situation simultaneously becomes both clearer and more obscure. While the Maya actually left examples of their writing, researchers have been unable to determine the linguistic affiliations of several important Classic civilizations, including Teotihuacan, Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, and El Tajín. During this time it is well established that Mixtec languages were spoken at Tilantongo and Zapotec at Monte Albán (in the Valley of Oaxaca). The linguistic situation of the Maya area is relatively clear – Proto-Yucatec and Proto-Cholan were established in their respective locations in Yucatán and in the Tabasco area. Around 200 CE speakers of the Tzeltalan branch of Proto-Cholan moved south into Chiapas displacing speakers of Zoquean languages.
Mesoamerican languages | Classic period (200–1000 CE)
Classical Nahuatl (also known simply as Aztec or Nahuatl) is any of the variants of Nahuatl, spoken in the Valley of Mexico and central Mexico as a "lingua franca" at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. During the subsequent centuries, it was largely displaced by Spanish and evolved into some of the modern Nahuan languages in use today (other modern dialects descend more directly from other 16th-century variants). Although classified as an extinct language, Classical Nahuatl has survived through a multitude of written sources transcribed by Nahua peoples and Spaniards in the Latin script.
Classical Nahuatl | Introduction
Epigrapher Alfonso Lacadena has demonstrated that the different syllable signs used by the Aztecs almost enabled the representation of all the most frequent syllables of the Nahuatl language (with some notable exceptions), but some scholars have argued that such a high degree of phoneticity was only achieved after the conquest when the Aztecs had been introduced to the principles of phonetic writing by the Spanish. Other scholars, notably Gordon Whittaker, have argued that the syllabic and phonetic aspects of Aztec writing were considerably less systematic and more creative than Lacadena's proposal suggests, arguing that Aztec writing never coalesced into a strictly syllabic system such as the Maya writing, but rather used a wide range of different types of phonetic signs.
Aztecs | Writing and iconography
Some authorities on the history of the Uto-Aztecan language group place its homeland in the border region between the USA and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, shown on the map (below left) roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert. The proto-language would have been spoken by foragers, about 5,000 years ago. Hill (2001) proposes instead a homeland further south, making the assumed speakers of Proto-Uto-Aztecan maize cultivators in Mesoamerica, who were gradually pushed north, bringing maize cultivation with them, during the period of roughly 4,500 to 3,000 years ago, the geographic diffusion of speakers corresponding to the breakup of linguistic unity.
Urheimat | Uto-Aztecan
Post-Classic cultures such as the Aztec and Mixtec cultures do not seem to have developed true writing systems, but instead used semasiographic writing although they did use phonetic principles in their writing by the use of the rebus principle. Aztec name glyphs for example do combine logographic elements with phonetic readings. From the colonial period on there exists an extensive Mesoamerican literature written in the Latin script.
Mesoamerican languages | Writing
600 AD), and that Totonac or Mixe–Zoque are likely candidates because many Mesoamerican languages have borrowed from these two languages during the Classic period. Others find Mixe–Zoque an unlikely candidate because no current Mixe–Zoque settlements are found in central Mexico. Around 500–600 CE a new language family entered Mesoamerica when speakers of Proto-Nahuan, a southern Uto-Aztecan language, moved south into central Mexico. Their arrival, which coincides with the decline of Teotihuacan and a period of general turmoil and mass migration in Mesoamerica, has led scientists to speculate that they might have been involved somehow in the fall of the Teotihuacan empire.
Mesoamerican languages | Classic period (200–1000 CE)
Their conclusion was quickly accepted. Nahuan thus consists of Pochutec and "General Aztec", which consists of Nahuatl and Pipil. Bartholomew (1980) suggests that some of the divergent traits, for example last syllable stress, are due to influence from Chatino, an Oto-Manguean language. She argues that at the time of the 16th century Spanish conquest of Mexico the settlement of Pochutla did not fall under the Aztec Empire's domain, but instead was part of the Mixtec state centered at Tututepec. Thus, the Chatino linguistic influences stemmed from the trade and communication routes between Pochutla and Tututepec passing through Chatino territory.
Pochutec language | Introduction
In a 1937 paper published in the journal American Anthropologist, Whorf argued that the phoneme resulted from some of the Nahuan or Aztecan languages having undergone a sound change from the original * to in the position before *. This sound law is known as "Whorf's law", considered valid although a more detailed understanding of the precise conditions under which it took place has since been developed.
Benjamin Lee Whorf | Studies of Uto-Aztecan languages
Aztec is a term used to refer to certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who achieved political and military dominance over large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the Late post-Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology. Until the age of fourteen, the education of children was in the hands of their parents, but supervised by the authorities of their "calpōlli". Part of this education involved learning a collection of sayings, called "huēhuetlàtolli" ("sayings of the old"), that embodied the Aztecs' ideals. Judged by their language, most of the "huēhuetlàtolli" seemed to have evolved over several centuries, predating the Aztecs and most likely adopted from other Nahua cultures.
History of education | Aztec
The "urheimat" of the Otomanguean family may be the valley of Tehuacán (Puebla). This site was one of the places of the domestication of maize. The thousand-year presence of Otomanguean-speaking groups in this region makes it probable that they were active in this domestication process, which favored the inhabitants of the Altiplano's transition to a sedentary lifestyle and thus influenced the development of Mesoamerican civilization. Campbell and Kaufman have proposed that the Otomanguean languages began to diverge about 1500 BCE. The difficulty of establishing more general relationships between the eight subgroups of the family presents a difficulty for making more detailed inferences on the historical development of the languages.
Mixtecan languages | Proto-Mixtecan
In Acaxochitlan live Otomi Tepehuas, Nahuas and mestizos, so it is a sample of what Mexico is today. Even though barely 34 thousand inhabitants only a third retains the native tongue, the other speaks only Spanish.
Acaxochitlán | Languages
The use of "sh" in both dialects actually corresponded with "ch," which was used in the high dialects of Tecoatl, Eloxochitlan, San Mateo, and the low dialects of Mazatlan and Soyaltepec. The issue concluded with the notion that "sh" and "ch" were reflexes of Proto-Poplocan. The San Miguel Huautla dialect occupies an intermediary position sharing traits with both groups. The division between highland and lowland dialects corresponds to the political division between highland and lowland territories that existed 1300 to 1519. During the period of Aztec dominance from 1456 to 1519, the Highland territory was ruled from Teotitlán del Camino and the lowland territory from Tuxtepec, and the division remains today.
Mazatecan languages | Dialect history
Traditionally, Pre-Columbian Aztec writing has not been considered a true writing system, since it did not represent the full vocabulary of a spoken language in the way that the writing systems of the Old World or the Maya Script did. Therefore, generally Aztec writing was not meant to be read, but to be told. The elaborate codices were essentially pictographic aids for memorizing texts, which include genealogies, astronomical information, and tribute lists. Three kinds of signs were used in the system: pictures used as mnemonics (which do not represent particular words), logograms which represent whole words (instead of phonemes or syllables), and logograms used only for their sound values (i.e.
Nahuatl | Writing
Second, they adduced new arguments for dividing the branch in two subdivisions: Pochutec, whose sole member is the Pochutec language, which became 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).
Nahuan languages | Historical linguistic research
Although most authors use the form "tequistlatec(an)" today, this is based on an improper derivation in Nahuatl (the correct derivation from "Tequisistlán" would be "Tequisistec(an)", and both terms were used by Sapir interchangeably).
Tequistlatecan languages | Name
The proposed migration of speakers of the Proto-Nahuan language into the Mesoamerican region has been placed at sometime around AD 500, towards the end of the Early Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology. Before reaching the Mexican Plateau, pre-Nahuan groups probably spent a period of time in contact with the Corachol languages Cora and Huichol of northwestern Mexico (which are also Uto-Aztecan). The major political and cultural center of Mesoamerica in the Early Classic period was Teotihuacan. The identity of the language(s) spoken by Teotihuacan's founders has long been debated, with the relationship of Nahuatl to Teotihuacan being prominent in that enquiry.
Nahuatl | Pre-Columbian period
Nahuatl (; ) is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live in Central Mexico. Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE. It was the language of the Aztec/Mexica, who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. During the centuries preceding the Spanish and Tlaxcalan conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Aztecs had expanded to incorporate a large part of central Mexico. Their influence caused the variety of Nahuatl spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan to become a prestige language in Mesoamerica.
Nahuatl | Introduction
Proto-Uto-Aztecan is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Uto-Aztecan languages. Authorities on the history of the language group have usually placed the Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland in the border region between the United States and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert and the western part of the Chihuahuan Desert. It would have been spoken by Mesolithic foragers in Aridoamerica, about 5,000 years ago.
Uto-Aztecan languages | Proto-Uto-Aztecan
Colonial scholars found themselves confused in their attempts to discern the language spoken by the Tataviam. Eventually it became clear to that errors had been made in compiling their word lists: the vocabularies recorded by colonial scholar C. Hart Merriam were not in fact Tatavian, but rather were from a Chumash dialect, while the vocabularies recorded by Alfred Kroeber and John P. Harrington were of the Uto-Aztecan language, meaning it is probably more likely that their recordings are the language spoken by the Tataviam people before they experienced genocide and language loss. Further research has shown that the Uto-Aztecan language belonged to the Takic branch of that language family, specifically the Serran branch along with Kitanemuk and Serrano.
Tataviam | Traditional Language
This tradition lasted only a few centuries however and due to royal decrees about Spanish being the only language of the Spanish empire by the mid-1700s most indigenous languages were left without a living tradition for writing. Oral literature, however, kept being transmitted to this day in many indigenous languages and began to be collected by ethnologists in the beginnings of the 20th century, however without promoting native language literacy in the communities in which they worked. It is an important and extremely difficult job in the Mesoamerica of today, and what that is only beginning to be undertaken, to return native language literacy to the indigenous peoples.
Mesoamerican literature | Postconquest literatures written in Latin script
To this day, the title of Duke of Moctezuma is held by a Spanish noble family. A few of the indigenous nobility learned Spanish. Spanish friars taught indigenous tribes to write their own languages in Latin letters, which soon became a self-perpetuating tradition at the local level. Their surviving writings are crucial in our knowledge of colonial era Nahuas.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire | The Aztecs under Spanish rule
Some of these manuscripts were entirely pictorial, often with glyphs. In the postconquest era many other texts were written in Latin script by either literate Aztecs or by Spanish friars who interviewed the native people about their customs and stories. An important pictorial and alphabetic text produced in the early sixteenth century was "Codex Mendoza", named after the first viceroy of Mexico and perhaps commissioned by him, to inform the Spanish crown about the political and economic structure of the Aztec empire. It has information naming the polities that the Triple Alliance conquered, the types of tribute rendered to the Aztec Empire, and the class/gender structure of their society.
Aztecs | Sources of knowledge
The following word pairs are the proposed cognates from Whorf & Trager (1937) and Davis (1979) considered promising by Campbell (1997:273).
Aztec–Tanoan languages | Proposed cognates
The most widely known early grammars and dictionaries are of the Aztec language, Nahuatl. Famous examples are the works written by Alonso de Molina and Andrés de Olmos. But also Mayan and other Mesoamerican languages have early grammars and dictionaries, some of very high quality. The introduction of the Latin alphabet and the elaboration of conventions for writing indigenous languages allowed for the subsequent creation of a wide range of texts. And indigenous writers took advantage of the new techniques to document their own history and tradition in the new writing, while monks kept on extending literacy in the indigenous population.
Mesoamerican literature | Postconquest literatures written in Latin script
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"). Since 1978, the term "General Aztec" has been adopted by linguists to refer to the languages of the Aztecan branch excluding the Pochutec language. The speakers of Nahuatl themselves often refer to their language as either "Mexicano" or some word derived from "mācēhualli", the Nahuatl word for "commoner". One example of the latter is the case for Nahuatl spoken in Tetelcingo, whose speakers call their language "mösiehuali".
Nahuatl | Terminology
A large number of languages known only from brief mentions are thought to have been Uto-Aztecan languages that became extinct before being documented.
Uto-Aztecan languages | Extinct languages
The Tlaxcaltecs were originally a conglomeration of three distinct ethnic groups who spoke Nahuatl, Otomi, and Pinome. Eventually, the Nahuatl speakers became the dominant ethnic group. Despite early attempts by the Mexica, the Tlaxcaltecs were never conquered by the Aztec Triple Alliance. The Aztecs allowed them to maintain their independence so that they could participate in the xochiyaoyatl (flower wars) with them to facilitate human sacrifice.
Tlaxcaltec | Pre-Columbian history
The Spanish introduced the Latin alphabet, which was then utilized to record a large body of Aztec prose and poetry, a fact which somewhat mitigated the devastating loss of the thousands of Aztec manuscripts which were burned by the Spanish. (See Aztec codices.) Important lexical works (e.g. Alonso de Molina's classic "Vocabulario" of 1571) and grammatical descriptions (of which Horacio Carochi's 1645 "Arte" is generally acknowledged the best) were produced using variations of this orthography. The Classical Nahuatl orthography was not perfect, and in fact there were many variations in how it was applied, due in part to dialectal differences and in part to differing traditions and preferences that developed.
Nahuatl orthography | Orthographical history
In the middle of the first millennium CE, the first waves of tribes speaking the forefather language of the Nahuan languages migrated south into Mesoamerica. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers and arrived in a region that was already populated by complex societies at a highly advanced technological level. Under the influence of classic Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Teotihuacanos, the Maya, the Totonacs and the Huastecs the proto-Aztecs became sedentary agriculturalists and achieved the same levels of technology as their neighbouring peoples. They held on to their language, many of their religious systems, and probably aspects of their previous social customs.
Aztec society | Mesoamerican origins
Following this growth however the influx of new residence slowed, and evidence suggests that, by the Miccaotli phase, c. 200 CE. The urban population had reached its maximum. In 2001, Terrence Kaufman presented linguistic evidence suggesting that an important ethnic group in Teotihuacan was of Totonacan or Mixe–Zoquean linguistic affiliation. He uses this to explain general influences from Totonacan and Mixe–Zoquean languages in many other Mesoamerican languages, whose people did not have any known history of contact with either of the above-mentioned groups. Other scholars maintain that the largest population group must have been of Otomi ethnicity because the Otomi language is known to have been spoken in the area around Teotihuacan both before and after the Classic period and not during the middle period.
Teotihuacan | Culture
The Tlahuica civilization primarily inhabited the central plateau of Mexico, today in the state of Morelos. The Tlahuica language, also known as Atzinca or Ocuilteco, is a language affiliated with the Otopame group of the Oto-Pamean languages. Tlahuica is called pjiekak'joo, which means "what I am, or what I speak." It development occurred during the Post-classical period (1100 AD - 1521 AD). The largest cities were Cuauhnahuac (Cuernavaca) and Huaxtepec (Oaxtepec).
Tlahuica | Introduction
The Mexican people have varied origins and an identity that has evolved with the succession of conquests among Amerindian groups and later by Europeans. The area that is now modern-day Mexico has cradled many predecessor civilizations, going back as far as the Olmec which influenced the latter civilizations of Teotihuacan (200 B.C. to 700 A.D.) and the much debated Toltec people who flourished around the 10th and 12th centuries A.D., and ending with the last great indigenous civilization before the Spanish Conquest, the Aztecs (13 March 1325 to 13 August 1521). The Nahuatl language was a common tongue in the region of modern Central Mexico during the Aztec Empire, but after the arrival of Europeans the common language of the region became Spanish.
Mexicans | History
And missionary grammarians undertook the job of writing grammars for the indigenous languages in order to teach priests. For example, the first grammar of Nahuatl, written by Andrés de Olmos, was published in 1547 – three years before the first grammar of French. During this time some literacy in indigenous languages written in the Latin script began to appear. In 1570 Philip II of Spain decreed that Nahuatl should become the official language of the colonies of New Spain in order to facilitate communication between the Spanish and natives of the colonies. Throughout the colonial period grammars of indigenous languages were composed, but strangely the quality of these were highest in the initial period and declined towards the ends of the 18th century.
Mesoamerican languages | Colonial period (1521–1821)
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 Mexico in several waves. But recently, the traditional assessment has been challenged by Jane H. Hill, who proposes instead that the Uto-Aztecan language family originated in central Mexico and spread northwards at a very early date. This hypothesis and the analyses of data that it rests upon have received serious criticism.
Nahuatl | Pre-Columbian period
At the time of the Spanish conquest, Aztec writing used mostly pictograms supplemented with a few ideograms. When needed, it also used syllabic equivalences; Diego Durán recorded how the "tlacuilos" could render a prayer in Latin using this system but it was difficult to use. The writing system was adequate for keeping such records as genealogies, astronomical information, and tribute lists, but it could not represent a full vocabulary of spoken language in the way that the writing systems of the Old World or the Maya civilization's script could. The Spanish introduced the Latin script, which was then used to record a large body of Aztec prose and poetry, which somewhat diminished the devastating loss caused by the burning of thousands of Aztec codices by the Spanish authorities.
Classical Nahuatl | Writing system
Standard terminology is used for the dialects that the Ethnologue names differently from published scholarly works, e.g. "Upper Necaxa Totonac" instead of "Totonac of Patla-Chicontla". The language was spoken per the following
El Zapotal | The Language
Classical Nahuatl was the lingua franca of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. An extensive corpus of the language as spoken exists. Like Latin and Hebrew (prior to the founding of modern Israel), Classical Nahuatl was more of a sociolect spoken among the elites (poets, priests, traders, teachers, bureaucrats) than a language spoken in any common family household. After the Spanish conquest, Nahuatl remained the lingua franca of New Spain. Spanish friars matched the language to a Latin alphabet, and schools were established to teach Nahuatl to Spanish priests, diplomats, judges, and political leaders.
List of lingua francas | Nahuatl
Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken in the North American mountain ranges and adjacent lowlands of the western United States (in the states of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, California, Nevada, Arizona) and of Mexico (states of Sonora, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz, Morelos, Estado de México, and Ciudad de México. Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and its modern relatives are part of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Pipil language, an offshoot of Nahuatl, spread to Central America by a wave of migration from Mexico, and formerly had many speakers there. Now it has gone extinct in Guatemala and Honduras, and it is nearly extinct in western El Salvador, all areas dominated by use of Spanish.
Uto-Aztecan languages | Geographic distribution
At the time of the Spanish conquest, Aztec writing used mostly pictographs supplemented by a few ideograms. When needed, it also used syllabic equivalences; Father Diego Durán recorded how the "tlàcuilòquê" (codex painters) could render a prayer in Latin using this system, but it was difficult to use. This writing system was adequate for keeping such records as genealogies, astronomical information, and tribute lists, but could not represent a full vocabulary of spoken language in the way that the writing systems of the old world or of the Maya civilization could. The Aztec writing was not meant to be read, but to be told; the elaborate codices were essentially pictographic aids for teaching, and long texts were memorized.
Nahuatl orthography | Orthographical history
The Tecuexe language is now extinct and very little is known about it. It may have been an Uto-Aztecan language. "IBAL" means "wait!".
Tecuexe | Language
600 AD. The Precolumbian Otomi people did not have a fully developed writing system, but the largely ideographic Aztec writing could be read in Otomi as well as Nahuatl. The Otomi often translated names of places or rulers into Otomi rather than using the Nahuatl names. For example, the Nahuatl place name "Tenochtitlān", "place of Opuntia cactus", was rendered as ' in proto-Otomi, with the same meaning.
Otomi language | Proto-Otomi period and later precolonial period
Archaeological evidence suggests that Teotihuacan was a multi-ethnic city, and while the official languages used by Teotihuacan is unknown, Totonac and Nahua, early forms of which were spoken by the Aztecs, seem to be highly plausible. This apparent regionally diverse population of Teotihuacan can be traced back to a natural disaster that occurred prior to its population boom. At one point in time, Teotihuacan was rivaled by another basin power, Cuicuilco. Both cities, roughly the same size and hubs for trade, both were productive centers of artisans and commerce. Roughly around 100 BC however, the power dynamic changed when Mount Xitle, an active volcano, erupted, and heavily impacted Cuicuilco and the farmland that supported it.
Teotihuacan | Culture
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. Lyle Campbell and Ronald W. 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.
Nahuan languages | Historical linguistic research
The most important factor towards the decline of indigenous languages in this period has probably been the social marginalization of the native populations and their languages – and this process has been particularly effective during modern times.
Mesoamerican languages | Colonial period (1521–1821)
The terminology used to describe varieties of spoken Nahuatl is inconsistently applied. Many terms are used with multiple denotations, or a single dialect grouping goes under several names. Sometimes, older terms are substituted with newer ones or with the speakers' own name for their specific variety. The word "Nahuatl" is itself a Nahuatl word, probably derived from the word "nāhuatlahtōlli" ("clear language"). The language was formerly called "Aztec" because it was spoken by the Central Mexican peoples known as Aztecs . During the period of the Aztec empire centered in Mexico-Tenochtitlan the language came to be identified with the politically dominant "mēxihcah" ethnic group, and consequently the Nahuatl language was often described as "mēxihcacopa" (literally "in the manner of Mexicas") or "mēxihcatlahtolli" "Mexica language".
Nahuatl | Terminology
Much linguistic information was lost as a consequence of the Spanish conquest. Some researchers believe La Campana was a Nahuatl-speaking settlement, but it is thought residents also spoke other languages, some belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language family, which includes the following languages:
La Campana (archaeological site) | Language
It is a matter of debate whether the enormous city of Teotihuacan was inhabited by speakers of Nahuatl, or whether Nahuas had not yet arrived in central Mexico in the classic period. It is generally agreed that the Nahua peoples were not indigenous to the highlands of central Mexico, but that they gradually migrated into the region from somewhere in northwestern Mexico. At the fall of Teotihuacan in the 6th century CE, a number of city states rose to power in central Mexico, some of them, including Cholula and Xochicalco, probably inhabited by Nahuatl speakers. One study has suggested that Nahuas originally inhabited the Bajío area around Guanajuato which reached a population peak in the 6th century, after which the population quickly diminished during a subsequent dry period.
Aztecs | Central Mexico in the classic and postclassic
The search for the origin of language has a long history rooted in mythology. Most mythologies do not credit humans with the invention of language but speak of a divine language predating human language. Mystical languages used to communicate with animals or spirits, such as the language of the birds, are also common, and were of particular interest during the Renaissance. Vāc is the Hindu goddess of speech, or "speech personified". As Brahman's "sacred utterance", she has a cosmological role as the "Mother of the Vedas". The Aztecs' story maintains that only a man, Coxcox, and a woman, Xochiquetzal, survived a flood, having floated on a piece of bark.
Origin of language | In religion and mythology
The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec peoples included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states ("altepetl"), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca; Texcoco; and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco.
Aztecs | Introduction
The Xixime spoke Xixime, a poorly documented, now-extinct Uto-Aztecan language. Dialects of Xixime included Hine and Hume (to the north and south of the Xixime territory, respectively). The exact classification of the language is unknown although it may belong to the Taracahitic branch.
Xiximes | Language
Proto-Uto-Aztecan is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Uto-Aztecan languages. Authorities on the history of the language group have usually placed the Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland in the border region between the United States and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert and the western part of the Chihuahuan Desert. It would have been spoken by Mesolithic foragers in Aridoamerica, about 5,000 years ago.
Proto-Uto-Aztecan | Introduction
Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups. The Southern languages are divided into the Tepiman languages (including O'odham and Tepehuán), the Tarahumaran languages (including Raramuri and Guarijio), the Cahitan languages (including Yaqui and Mayo), the Coracholan languages (including Cora and Huichol), and the Nahuan languages.
Uto-Aztecan languages | Introduction
The post-conquest situation of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica also required them to learn to navigate in a complex new administrative system. In order to obtain any kinds of favorable positions pleas and petitions had to be made to the new authorities and land possessions and heritages had to be proven. This resulted in a large corpus of administrative literature in indigenous languages, because documents were often written in the native language first and later translated into Spanish. Historians of central Mexican peoples draw heavily on native-language documentation, most notably Charles Gibson in "The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule" (1964) and James Lockhart in "The Nahuas After the Conquest" (1992).
Mesoamerican literature | Administrative documents
A survey of agriculture-related vocabulary by Merrill (2012) found that the agricultural vocabulary can be reconstructed for only Southern Uto-Aztecan. That supports a conclusion that the Proto-Uto-Aztecan speech community did not practice agriculture but adopted it only after entering Mesoamerica from the north. A more recent proposal from 2014, by David L. Shaul, presents evidence suggesting contact between Proto-Uto-Aztecan and languages of central California, such as Esselen and the Yokutsan languages. That leads Shaul to suggest that Proto-Uto-Aztecan was spoken in California's Central Valley area, and it formed part of an ancient Californian linguistic area.
Proto-Uto-Aztecan | Homeland
A large number of languages known only from brief mentions are thought to have been Uto-Aztecan languages, but became extinct without being documented. The following list is based on .
List of extinct Uto-Aztecan languages | Introduction
General Aztec encompasses the Nahuatl and Pipil languages. Pochutec is a scantily attested language, which became extinct in the 20th century, and which Campbell and Langacker classify as being outside general Aztec. Other researchers have argued that Pochutec should be considered a divergent variant of the western periphery.
Nahuatl | Classification
Because the Mexica spoke Nahuatl (the most common language at the time of Spanish arrival) their terms and names were widespread as descriptors of cities, regions, valleys, rivers, mountains, and many cultural objects. The Spanish used Nahuatl translators as they waged wars of conquest throughout Mexico and beyond. As a result, Nahuatl names were used as geographic identifiers as far away as Guatemala (e.g. "Utatlán" was "Q’umarka’aj," becoming modern Santa Cruz de Quiché; "Guatemala" comes from "Iximché," the capital of the "kaqchiles") and Suchitlán in the northern state of Coahuila on the southern Texas border. Numerous words from the Nahuatl language are today interspersed within Mexican Spanish.
Pre-Columbian Mexico | Nahuatl language
Their language is related to the Luiseño language spoken by the nearby Luiseño tribe located to the interior. Considered to speak a dialect of Luiseño, the Juaneño were part of the Cupan subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan languages. Their language became extinct by the early 20th century. The tribe is working at reviving it, with several members learning it. Their studies are based on the research and records of Anastacia Majel and John P. Harrington, who recorded the language in 1933. (The tape recordings resurfaced around 1995.)
Acjachemen | Language
The first complex society in Mesoamerica was the Olmec civilization, which emerged around 2000 BCE during the Early Preclassic. It is documented that around this time many Mesoamerican languages adopted loanwords from the Mixe–Zoquean languages, particularly loanwords related to such culturally fundamental concepts as agriculture and religion. This has led some linguists to believe that the carriers of Olmec culture spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language and that words spread from their language into others because of their potential cultural dominance in the Preclassic period, though the relationship between the Olmec and other Preclassic groups is still debated (see Olmec influences on Mesoamerican cultures).
Mesoamerican languages | Preclassic period (2000 BCE – 200 CE)
Toward the fifth Millennium BCE, Oto-Manguean languages speaking peoples formed a large unit. Language diversification and geographical expansion, which has been proposed as their "Urheimat", that is, the Tehuacán valley (current state of Puebla) should have occurred after the domestication of the Mesoamerican agricultural Trinity, composed by Corn, Beans and Chile pepper. This is based on the large amount of cognates in the repertoire of words alluding to agriculture in the Oto-manguean languages. After the development of an incipient agriculture, the proto-manguean language gave rise to two distinct languages that constitute the current eastern and western groups of the Oto-manguean family background.
Huamango | History
Their number varied but they were never numerous; they had their own uniforms, their own heads ("başdilsiz"), and although many were literate, they also communicated in their own special sign language.
Enderûn | Introduction
The ethnographical work in the Florentine Codex and the songs of the Cantares Mexicanos both written in Classical Nahuatl. The prophetical and historical accounts of the books of Chilam Balam written in the Yucatec Maya language. As well as numerous smaller documents written in other indigenous languages throughout the colonial period. No true literary tradition for Mesoamerican languages of the modern period has yet emerged.
Mesoamerican languages | Literary traditions
Neither of the above etymologies is judged plausible by Isthmus Zapotec speakers.
Huave language | Name of the language
Below is a representation of the internal classification of the language family based on . The classification reflects the decision to split up the previous Taracahitic and Takic groups, that are no longer considered to be valid genetic units. Whether the division between Northern and Southern languages is best understood as geographical or phylogenetic is under discussion. The table contains demographic information about number of speakers and their locations based on data from The Ethnologue. The table also contains links to a selected bibliography of grammars, dictionaries on many of the individual languages.( = extinct) In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, it is suspected that among dozens of now extinct, undocumented or poorly known languages of northern Mexico, many were Uto-Aztecan.
Uto-Aztecan languages | Present scheme
Fathers admonished their daughters to be respectful and very clean, but not to use makeup, because they would look like "ahuianis". Mothers admonished their daughters to support their husbands, even if they turned out to be humble peasants. Boys were admonished to be humble, obedient and hard workers. Judging by their language, most of the "huehuetlatolli" seemed to have evolved over several centuries, predating the Aztecs and most likely adopted from other Nahua cultures.
Aztec society | Education
A small number of their proposed cognates do seem to have some merit and in his 1997 review of the hypothesis Lyle Campbell states that the proposal is not implausible but requires detailed study. A recent article by Jane H. Hill argues that the evidence cited for the genetic relation by Whorf and Trager is better understood as a result of language contact between the Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan proto-languages.
Aztec–Tanoan languages | Introduction
Their language probably had Uto-Aztecan languages and Oto-Manguean languages roots. However, from the information recollection by Spaniards as of 1521, some sparse information is available about the languages spoken in different Tepanecas cities. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún includes Tepanecas among Nahuatl speaker groups although this claim seems rather a –synchronous, non-historical- attempt, of describing ethnical conditions in times near the Spaniard presence, it is known that the consolidation of major political units of the Central Highlands, also entailed the Nahuatl acceptance as a common pipiltin language of the different altépetl.
Copilco | Language
Aztec was pictographic and ideographic proto-writing, augmented by phonetic rebuses. It also contained syllabic signs and logograms. There was no alphabet, but puns also contributed to recording sounds of the Aztec language. While some scholars have understood the system to not be considered a complete writing system, this is a changing topic. The existence of logograms and syllabic signs are being documented and a phonetic aspect of the writing system has emerged, even though many of the syllabic characters have been documented since at least 1888 by Nuttall. There are conventional signs for syllables and logograms which act as word signs or for their rebus content.
Aztec writing | Structure and use
Scholars who were part of a branch of Mesoamerican ethnohistory, more recently called the New Philology have, using indigenous texts in the indigenous languages, been able to examine in considerable detail how the indigenous lived during the era of Spanish colonial rule. A major work that utilizes colonial-era indigenous texts as its main source is James Lockhart's "The Nahuas After the Conquest: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology." The key to understanding how considerable continuity of pre-Conquest indigenous structures was possible was the Spanish colonial utilization of the indigenous nobility. In the colonial era, the indigenous nobility were largely recognized as nobles by the Spanish colonial regime, with privileges including the noble Spanish title "don" for noblemen and "doña" for noblewomen.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire | The Aztecs under Spanish rule
Nauhuatl-speaking people arrived in the state of Morelos in the 12th and 13th centuries, where they formed large, important domains such as "Xiutépetl." In A.D. 1389, Xiutépetl fought a war against Cuauhanauhuac, Tetlama, and Yautepec. In 1425, Aztec emperor Ixcóatl conquered Jiutepec.
Jiutepec | Prehispanic history
adduced further evidence for the unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a valid grouping.
Uto-Aztecan languages | History of classification
Purépecha (also P'urhépecha , or "Phorhépecha"), often called Tarascan (), is a language isolate or small language family that is spoken by 124,494 Purépecha in the highlands of Michoacán, Mexico. Purépecha was the main language of the pre-Columbian Tarascan State and became widespread in northwestern Mexico during its heyday in the late post-Classic period. The small town of Purepero got its name from the indigenous people who lived there. Other groups that existed then were the Aztec and the Maya (ca. 1400–1521). Even though it is spoken within the boundaries of Mesoamerica, Purépecha does not share many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican language area, suggesting that the language is a remnant of an indigenous pre-Aztec substrate that existed several thousands of years ago before the migration of speakers that contributed to the formation of the sprachbund, or alternatively is a relatively new arrival to the area.
Purépecha language | Introduction
The Mixtecan languages (in their many variants) were estimated to be spoken by about 300,000 people at the end of the 20th century, although the majority of Mixtec speakers also had at least a working knowledge of the Spanish language. Some Mixtecan languages are called by names other than Mixtec, particularly Cuicatec (Cuicateco), and Triqui (or Trique). They were also known for their exceptional mastery of jewelry, in which gold and turquoise figure prominently. The production of Mixtec goldsmiths formed an important part of the tribute the Mixtecs had to pay to the Aztecs during parts of their history.
Huamelulpan (archaeological site) | Language, codices, and artwork
The Oto-Pamean languages are thought to have split from the other Oto-Manguean languages around 3500 BC. Within the Otomian branch, Proto-Otomi seems to have split from Proto-Mazahua ca. 500 AD. Around 1000 AD, Proto-Otomi began diversifying into the modern Otomi varieties. Much of central Mexico was inhabited by speakers of the Oto-Pamean languages before the arrival of Nahuatl speakers; beyond this, the geographical distribution of the ancestral stages of most modern indigenous languages of Mexico, and their associations with various civilizations, remain undetermined. It has been proposed that Proto-Otomi-Mazahua most likely was one of the languages spoken in Teotihuacan, the greatest Mesoamerican ceremonial center of the Classic period, the demise of which occurred ca.
Otomi language | Proto-Otomi period and later precolonial period
D.H. Lawrence gave the name "Quetzalcoatl" to an early draft of his novel "The Plumed Serpent", but his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, insisted on a change of title. American author Gary Jennings wrote two acclaimed historical novels set in Aztec-period Mexico, "Aztec" (1980) and "Aztec Autumn" (1997). The novels were so popular that four more novels in the Aztec series were written after his death. Aztec society has also been depicted in cinema. The Mexican feature film "The Other Conquest" (Spanish: "La Otra Conquista") from 2000 was directed by Salvador Carrasco, and illustrated the colonial aftermath of the 1520s Spanish Conquest of Mexico.
Aztecs | In popular culture
From the arrival of the first Franciscan missionaries, Spanish, Latin, and indigenous languages played parts in the evangelization of Mexico. Many sixteenth-century churchmen studied indigenous languages in order to instruct native peoples in Christian doctrine. The same men also found Castilian and Latin appropriate in certain contexts. All told, there existed a kind of "linguistic coexistence" from the beginning of the colonial period. Some monks and priests attempted to describe and classify indigenous languages with Spanish. Philip II of Spain decreed in 1570 that Nahuatl become the official language of the colonies of New Spain in order to facilitate communication between the natives of the colonies.
Languages of Mexico | Language history
Another close borrowing is from the Nahuatl word "tlatoani," referring to a leader of an Aztec state (e.g. Montezuma); it is similar to the clan-name of the Tsolyáni emperors, "Tlakotáni."
Tsolyáni language | Introduction
In the colonial era, "altepetl" were renamed "cabeceras" or "head towns" (although they often retained the term "altepetl" in local-level, Nahuatl-language documentation), with outlying settlements governed by the "cabeceras" named "sujetos", subject communities. In "cabeceras", the Spanish created Iberian-style town councils, or "cabildos", which usually continued to function as the elite ruling group had in the pre-conquest era. Population decline due to epidemic disease resulted in many population shifts in settlement patterns, and the formation of new population centers. These were often forced resettlements under the Spanish policy of "congregación". Indigenous populations living in sparsely populated areas were resettled to form new communities, making it easier for them to brought within range of evangelization efforts, and easier for the colonial state to exploit their labor.
Aztecs | Social and political continuity and change
Hill, based on her reconstruction of maize-related vocabulary in Proto-Uto-Aztecan. By her theory, the assumed speakers of Proto-Uto-Aztecan were maize cultivators in Mesoamerica, who gradually moved north, bringing maize cultivation with them, during the period of roughly 4,500 to 3,000 years ago. The geographic diffusion of speakers corresponded to the breakup of linguistic unity. The hypothesis has been criticized on several grounds, and it is not generally accepted by Uto-Aztecanists. Using computational phylogenetic methods, Wheeler & Whiteley (2014) also suggest a southern homeland for Proto-Uto-Aztecan in or near the area occupied by historical Cora and some Nahua. Nahuatl forms the most basal clade in Wheeler & Whiteley's (2014) Uto-Aztecan phylogram.
Proto-Uto-Aztecan | Homeland
C. E. Buschmann, but he failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and the rest. He ascribed the similarities between the two groups to diffusion. Daniel Garrison Brinton added the Aztecan languages to the family in 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. John Wesley Powell, however, rejected the claim in his own classification of North American indigenous languages (also published in 1891). Powell recognized two language families: "Shoshonean" (encompassing Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal) and "Sonoran" (encompassing Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol). In the early 1900s Alfred L. Kroeber filled in the picture of the Shoshonean group, while Edward Sapir proved the unity among Aztecan, "Sonoran", and "Shoshonean".
Uto-Aztecan languages | History of classification
Uto-Aztecan has been accepted by linguists as a language family since the early 1900s, and six subgroups are generally accepted as valid: Numic, Takic, Pimic, Taracahitic, Corachol, and Aztecan. That leaves two ungrouped languages: Tübatulabal and Hopi (sometimes termed "isolates within the family"). Some recent studies have begun to question the unity of Taracahitic and Takic and computer-assisted statistical studies have begun to question some of the long-held assumptions and consensuses. As to higher-level groupings, disagreement has persisted since the 19th century. Presently scholars also disagree as to where to draw language boundaries within the dialect continua. The similarities among the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J.
Uto-Aztecan languages | History of classification
Classical Nahuatl is one of the Nahuan languages within the Uto-Aztecan family. It is classified as a central dialect and is most closely related to the modern dialects of Nahuatl spoken in the valley of Mexico in colonial and modern times. It is probable that the Classical Nahuatl documented by 16th- and 17th-century written sources represents a particularly prestigious sociolect. That is to say, the variety of Nahuatl recorded in these documents is most likely to be more particularly representative of the speech of Aztec nobles ("pīpiltin"), while the commoners ("mācēhualtin") spoke a somewhat different variety.
Classical Nahuatl | Classification
The first human presence in Mesoamerica is documented around 8000 BCE, during a period referred to as the Paleo-Indian. Linguistic data, however, including language reconstruction derived from the comparative method, do not reach further back than approximately 5000 years (towards the end of the Archaic period). Throughout the history of Mesoamerica, an unknown number of languages and language families became extinct and left behind no evidence of their existence. What is known about the pre-Columbian history of the Mesoamerican languages is what can be surmised from linguistic, archeological and ethnohistorical evidence. Often, hypotheses concerning the linguistic prehistory of Mesoamerica rely on very little evidence.
Mesoamerican languages | Pre-Columbian period
The last battle between the Aztecs and the Zapotecs occurred between 1497 and 1502, under the Aztec ruler Ahuizotl. At the time of Spanish conquest of Mexico, when news arrived that the Aztecs were defeated by the Spaniards, King Cosijoeza ordered his people not to confront the Spaniards so they would avoid the same fate. They were defeated by the Spaniards only after several campaigns between 1522 and 1527. However, uprisings against colonial authorities occurred in 1550, 1560 and 1715.
Zapotec civilization | Warfare and resistance
In practice the friars found that learning all the indigenous languages was impossible and they began to focus on Nahuatl. During this period the linguistic situation of Mesoamerica was relatively stable. However, in 1696 Charles II made a counter decree banning the use of any languages other than Spanish throughout the Spanish Empire. And in 1770 a decree with the avowed purpose of eliminating the indigenous languages was put forth by the Royal Cedula. This put an end to the teaching of and writing in indigenous languages and began a strict policy of hispanization of the Indians. However the fact that today around five million people in Mesoamerica still speak indigenous languages suggest that this policy wasn't as effective after all.
Mesoamerican languages | Colonial period (1521–1821)