Nahuatl orthography

The development of Nahuatl orthography was analyzed and described by the American historian and linguist James Lockhart.[2] He divides the development of Nahuatl orthography into three stages:

• Stage 1, the early stage of experimentation, characterised by much variety in the representation of some phonemes; for example, /ˈiːwaːn/ "and, also" can be written as ihuan, yhuan, iuan, juan, yuan, ivan, jvan, yvan, ihoan, jhuan, yhoan, ioan, joan or yoan.[3]
• Stage 2, starting around 1570 when a more or less standardised orthography emerged, which showed "great stability as practiced in ecclesiastical circles";[4] this stage is considered the classical period of Nahuatl.
• Stage 3, from 1650 onward, which saw the production of large amounts of "mundane" (i.e. non-religious or ecclesiastical) texts by native scribes.

The standard or "classical" orthography was established in the second half of the 16th century.[5] It represents the phonemes of Nahuatl as follows.

As before, in post-classical orthography vowel length was never marked, and glottal stop was written only sporadically (as h).

The "single most substantial change" was the replacement, starting around 1650, of c (before e and i), ç and z by s. [22] This change was inspired by the merger of the Spanish apico-alveolar sibilant (written s) with the dental sibilant, and by the beginning of the 18th century the use of s had become the norm, as in totlasomahuisnantzin for classical totlaçomahuiznantzin /totɬasoʔmawisˈnaːnt͡sin/ "our precious revered mother".[23] The digraph tz for /ts/ remained unchanged.

With that, the orthography of post-classical texts shows growing instability, mainly through the influence of dialectal (non-classical) varieties of the language. One source of instability was the disappearance in some varieties of spoken Nahuatl of some syllable-final consonants, in particular /n/, which was reflected in the orthography. Other orthographical variants, encountered in all three stages, are:

• geminated consonants written as a single consonants
• i /i(ː)/ written y, especially in word-initial position[24]
• o /oː/ written u
• hu /w/ written u, ho or o
• ce /se(ː)/ and ci /si(ː)/ written çe, çi (matching ça /sa(ː)/ and ço /so(ː)/)

Since the 1970s, linguists working on Nahuatl have made use of what may be termed a "neoclassical" orthography for the language. This orthography is closely modelled on the classical (Stage 2) spelling as described above, but with the following adaptations:

• following Carochi, long vowels are always marked with a macron: classical a, e, i, o > neoclassical a/ā, e/ē, i/ī, o/ō
• syllable-final glottal stop is always written h, for example classical tlacuilo > neoclassical tlahcuiloh /tɬaʔkʷiloo̥/;[25] the use of h is based on historical precedent, and lends the glottal stop more "body" than the diacritics used by Carochi
• syllable-final /kʷ/ is always written uc, for example classical tecuhtli, tecutli or teuctli > neoclassical tēuctli /teːˈkʷt͡ɬi/ "lord".

Also, a few classical spelling conventions are brought into line with the current standardised Spanish orthography:

• ça and ço are replaced with za and zo, for example classical çacatl /ˈsakatɬ/ "grass, hay",[26] çoquitl /ˈsokitɬ/ "clay, mud"[27] > neoclassical zacatl, zoquitl [28]
• qua is replaced with cua, for example classical quaquauhconetl /kʷaːkʷaʍˈkoneːt͡ɬ/ "calf" > neoclassical cuācuauhconētl.[29]

The neoclassical spelling of Nahuatl provides a full written representation of all phonologically relevant facts. It is employed in two central reference tools in modern Nahuatl studies, Andrews' Introduction to Classical Nahuatl (1975, revised edition 2003), and Karttunen's Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (1983). It is also often used for the transcription of Nahuatl terms in non-linguistic disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and history.

It has to be borne in mind however that the neoclassical spelling is a modern construct, which does not exactly reproduce any of the actual orthographies that were used in historical printed and manuscript sources.

Overview of the neoclassical orthography:

Glottal stop occurs frequently in syllable-final position, and very rarely between like vowels in forms that resulted from reduplication. It is then also written h, as in ehēcatl /eʔˈeːkat͡ɬ/ "wind", ohōme /oʔˈoːme/ "two by two";[30] cf. classical eecatl and oome.[31]

The neoclassical spelling does not regulate the spelling of Spanish loanwords, because "loanwords exist in the language in all stages of assimilation to the phonology of the language (…). As a result, it is rather meaningless to assign canonical forms to them, existing as they do in transit from one language to the other."[32]

A new orthography was introduced in 1950 in the weekly cultural magazine Mexihkatl Itonalama, published by the American linguist Robert H. Barlow (director), and the Mexican linguist and native speaker Miguel Barrios Espinosa (editor-in-chief). The frontpage of the first issue of 12 May 1950 carries the headline ININ TOTLAHTOL OKSE: TLEKA TIKIHKWILOSKEH KEMEN KAXTILLAN? "This language of ours is a different one: why should we write it as if it were Spanish?"[33]

Compared to classical Nahuatl spelling as described above, the new orthography as proposed and used in Mexihkatl Itonalama contains the following changes:

• /s/ is written s instead of c/ç/z
• /ts/ is written ts instead of tz
• /k/ is written k instead of c/qu
• /kʷ/ is written kw instead of qu/cu/uc
• /w/ is written w instead of hu/uh
• /ʔ/ is written h

The new orthography thus does away with all almost all the typically Spanish spelling conventions of the classical orthography. The exception is the digraph ch /tʃ/, which was kept, but which could have been replaced with tx.

The new orthography does not mark the vowel length contrast, which has been lost in most modern dialects.

Overview of the new orthography:

This new orthography, now usually named the "modern orthography" (ortografía moderna), is used for the writing of some modern dialects, sometimes with the alternative spellings ku for kw, and u for w.[34] Also, long vowels can be written with double symbols aa, ee, ii, oo, and fricative /h/, which occurs in some dialects as the reflex of original glottal stop, may be written j.

The new or modern orthography is promoted by the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP), a federal government authority, and is sometimes referred to as "the modern orthography of the SEP" (la ortografía moderna de SEP), with some websites wrongly stating that it was designed by SEP experts.[35]

The new or modern orthography has not yet succeeded in becoming the dominant system, and some dialects such as Huasteca are now written in several competing orthographies (neoclassical, modern, and the mixed orthography employed by SIL international).

• Nahuas
• Nahuatl
• Classical Nahuatl
• Classical Nahuatl grammar
• History of Nahuatl
• Nahuan languages

• Andrews, J. Richard (2003). Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, Revised Edition. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3452-6.
• Canger, Una (2011). "The origin of orthographic hu for /w/ in Nahuatl". Ancient Mesoamerica. 22: 27–35.
• Carochi, Horacio (1645). Arte de la lengua mexicana con la declaración de los adverbios della. Mexico City: Juan Ruiz.
• Karttunen, Frances (1983). An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-8061-2421-0.
• Launey, Michel (1994). Une grammaire omniprédicative – Essai sur la morphosyntaxe du nahuatl classique. Paris: CNRS Éditions. ISBN 2-271-05072-3.
• Launey, Michel (2011). An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521732291.
• Lockhart, James (2001). Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts. UCLA Latin American Studies, Vol. 88. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-4282-0.
• Molina, Alonso de (1571). Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana. Mexico City: Antonio de Spinosa.