Nahuatl Language

The Nahuatl language is an indigenous Mesoamerican tongue that was spoken by the Aztec peoples (as well as other native groups) in antiquity, though several modern forms still exist. In its modern form, Nahuatl is principally found in central Mexico in the areas surrounding Mexico City and is spoken in mostly rural areas by about 1.5 million people—the most of any indigenous Mexican language. Pronounced "ná-watl," the name is thought to have connotations related to words meaning "clear speech" or "command" in the Nahuatl language.

History and Classification

The proto-Nahua peoples are thought to have migrated south during the fifth or sixth century CE from Aridoamerica, a region encompassing the present-day states of Chihuahua and Sonora in Northwestern Mexico and Arizona and New Mexico in the United States. This marked an important schism of the proto-Uto-Aztecan language family into Northern and Southern clades. Linguists generally classify the Northern clade as encompassing all derivative tongues in the United States (including such Native American languages as Hopi, Comanche, Ute, and Shoshoni), while the Southern clade includes all languages south of the Mexican border that developed after this break.

During this early period in the development of Nahuatl during the fourth and fifth centuries CE, Teotihuacan was the most powerful and largest city-state in Mesoamerica (possibly reaching a population as high as 125,000) and was, according to some theories, populated by a number of different ethnicities—including the Nahua. The ethnic identities of the founders of this city, however, are still under debate, with scholars offering the Totanac and Nahuan Toltec cultures as possible candidates.

The power of Teotihuacan began to wane during the sixth century CE, likely as a result of a combination of environmental and political factors. They were in turn succeeded over time by a Nahuan people called the Toltecs, who established their capital at Tula. By the tenth century, the Toltecs had become the dominant geo-political force in Central America, overtaking the unrelated Huastec, Oto-Manguean, and Totonacan peoples for control of the region. The Toltecs left no written record of their culture; however, their political—if not necessarily cultural—descendants, the Aztecs, left a heavily mythologized version of their history.

The Toltecs faded from the historical record in the twelfth century after the destruction of Tula in 1122 CE by the Mexica peoples. This era marked a period of intense geo-political turmoil that saw the population of Central Mexico decline by as much as 60 percent over a relatively short period. This power vacuum was filled by the Aztecs, an alliance of three Nahua city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. Together, these peoples (who shared a linguistic and cultural background) eventually assembled a sphere of influence by the fifteenth century that stretched from Northern Mexico south to Panama. This era of Mesoamerican history is often referred to as the Postclassic period and marks the height of Aztec power. The primary dialect of Nahuatl during this era is called Classical Nahuatl, and the strength of the Aztec power resulted in it being used as the lingua franca, or common language, across much of Mesoamerica.

The arrival of the Spanish during the sixteenth century dramatically altered the balance of power in Mesoamerica. The Spanish began a coordinated effort to seize control of the Aztec Empire with the assistance of the Tlaxcala—a key strategic rival of the Aztecs and a fellow Nahuan people—in February of 1519. Led by Hernán Cortés, the Spanish eventually took control of virtually the entire Aztec Empire by August, 1521.

Their arrival and subsequent domination of the region had a tremendous impact upon Nahuatl, both in terms of its relative import and development. Spanish largely replaced Nahuatl as the lingua franca of the region, though it remained in active use among traditional Nahuatl communities despite Spanish attempts to force their own language upon them. So strong was the Nahuan resistance, some Spanish Catholic priests even learned Nahuatl dialects in order to preach the Christian gospel to them in their native tongues. Additionally, as the Tlaxcala and now-defeated Aztecs had now allied themselves with the Spanish in the face of continued resistance among the various Mesoamerican tribes, in 1570, King Phillip II of Spain made Nahuatl the official language of the Central American Spanish colonies; thus enabling Nahuatl to enter new regions of El Salvador and Honduras for the first time as a language of conquest under foreign authority.

However, since the arrival of the Spanish to the region in the sixteenth century, overall usage of Nahuatl has been on a steady decline. In the past century in particular, policies that discouraged the teaching of native languages in favor of the majority Spanish, as well as the so-called "hispanization" of indigenous populations, have had a catastrophic effect on the health of the Modern Nahuatl language. Additionally, as the majority of Nahuatl-speakers lived in rural areas, they were particularly impacted by the bloodshed of the Mexican Revolution that ran from 1910 to 1920.

The Mexican government recently established more favorable policies toward its indigenous inhabitants, including reforms that have sought to promote and revitalize the use of Nahuatl dialects. Nahuatl is now among the protected national languages of Mexico, meaning that its native speakers are allowed to use it in all governmental, public, and private realms.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

Since the passage of Classic Nahuatl into Modern Nahuatl, the dialects of Nahuatl have developed notable differences between its many extant varieties—with some forms even having become mutually unintelligible. Huasteca Nahuatl, with more than one million speakers, is the most spoken variety in contemporary Mexico. In the Mexican census of 2000, 1.45 million people identified themselves as using a variety of Nahuatl as their first language, a number that accounted for 24 percent of all speakers of indigenous languages, although less than 2 percent of the overall Mexican population. Of these, 13 percent were unable to speak Spanish, the principal language of Mexico.

Bibliography

Launey, Michel, and Christopher Mackay. An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.

Léon-Portilla, Miguel. Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1963. Print.

"Nahuatl: An Uto-Aztecan Language of Mexico." Ela Alliance. Endangered Language Alliance, 2012. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. <http://elalliance.org/projects/meso-american-languages/nahuatl/>.

Schmal, John P. "The Aztecs are Alive and Well: The Najuatl Language in Mexico." Houston Culture. John P. Schmal, 2004. Web. 29 Sept. 2015. <http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/nahuatl.html>.