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80-543: The term "totonac" refers to the people living in Totonacapan. There is no agreement as to the origin of the term. Some authors have translated the term "totonac" as a Nahuatl word meaning "People of Hot Land". The translation for this word in the Totonac Language, according to sources, is "toto-nacu" meaning "three hearts" signifying their three cities or cultural centers: Cempoala , Tajin and Teayo . Evidence, however,

160-487: A pitch accent , such as Nahuatl of Oapan, Guerrero . Many modern dialects have also borrowed phonemes from Spanish, such as /β, d, ɡ, ɸ/ . In many Nahuatl dialects vowel length contrast is vague, and in others it has become lost entirely. The dialect spoken in Tetelcingo (nhg) developed the vowel length into a difference in quality: Most varieties have relatively simple patterns of allophony . In many dialects,

240-502: A chronicle of the royal lineage of Tenochtitlan by Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc ; Cantares Mexicanos , a collection of songs in Nahuatl; a Nahuatl-Spanish/Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary compiled by Alonso de Molina ; and the Huei tlamahuiçoltica , a description in Nahuatl of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe . Grammars and dictionaries of indigenous languages were composed throughout

320-451: A complex morphology , or system of word formation, characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination . This means that morphemes – words or fragments of words that each contain their own separate meaning – are often strung together to make longer complex words. Through a very long period of development alongside other indigenous Mesoamerican languages , they have absorbed many influences, coming to form part of

400-409: A few hundred people, perhaps only a few dozen". According to the 2000 census by INEGI, Nahuatl is spoken by an estimated 1.45 million people, some 198,000 (14.9%) of whom are monolingual. There are many more female than male monolinguals, and women represent nearly two-thirds of the total number. The states of Guerrero and Hidalgo have the highest rates of monolingual Nahuatl speakers relative to

480-493: A great deal of autonomy in the local administration of indigenous towns during this period, and in many Nahuatl-speaking towns the language was the de facto administrative language both in writing and speech. A large body of Nahuatl literature was composed during this period, including the Florentine Codex , a twelve-volume compendium of Aztec culture compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún ; Crónica Mexicayotl ,

560-741: A maize deity, a culture hero with counterparts among most other cultures of the Gulf Coast and possibly also represented by the Classic Maya maize god . As to traditional curers, it is believed that they "are born during a storm, under the protection of thunder. They think that a lightning bolt strikes the house of a new-born baby ..., and makes it ... under its possession". Other known deities include Chichiní (the sun) and Aktzin . Nahuatl Nahuatl ( English: / ˈ n ɑː w ɑː t əl / NAH -wah-təl ; Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaːwat͡ɬ] ), Aztec , or Mexicano

640-877: A part of their efforts, missionaries belonging to several religious orders —principally Jesuits , as well as Franciscan and Dominican friars—introduced the Latin alphabet to the Nahuas. Within twenty years of the Spanish arrival, texts in Nahuatl were being written using the Latin script. Simultaneously, schools were founded, such as the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1536, which taught both indigenous and classical European languages to both Native Americans and priests. Missionaries authored of grammars for indigenous languages for use by priests. The first Nahuatl grammar, written by Andrés de Olmos ,

720-478: A small triangular poncho covering the breasts. Noble women wore shell and jade necklaces and earrings and often tattooed their faces with red ink. Married women wore their hair in the Nahuatl fashion while peasant women wore their hair long. Likewise, the noble men dressed well, adorning themselves with multicolored cloaks, loin cloths, necklaces, arm bands, lip plugs and devices made of the prized quetzal feathers. Hair

800-573: A spectrum of Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered areas stretching from the northern state of Durango to Tabasco in the southeast. Pipil, the southernmost Nahuan language, is spoken in El Salvador by a small number of speakers. According to IRIN-International, the Nawat Language Recovery Initiative project, there are no reliable figures for the contemporary numbers of speakers of Pipil. Numbers may range anywhere from "perhaps

880-605: A typical Nahuan language. In some dialects, the /t͡ɬ/ phoneme, which was common in Classical Nahuatl, has changed into either /t/ , as in Isthmus Nahuatl , Mexicanero and Pipil , or into /l/ , as in Michoacán Nahuatl . Many dialects no longer distinguish between short and long vowels . Some have introduced completely new vowel qualities to compensate, as is the case for Tetelcingo Nahuatl . Others have developed

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960-423: A vowel i to prevent consonant clusters and one without it. For example, the absolutive suffix has the variant forms -tli (used after consonants) and -tl (used after vowels). Some modern varieties, however, have formed complex clusters from vowel loss. Others have contracted syllable sequences, causing accents to shift or vowels to become long. Most Nahuatl dialects have stress on the penultimate syllable of

1040-455: A word. In Mexicanero from Durango, many unstressed syllables have disappeared from words, and the placement of syllable stress has become phonemic. The Nahuatl languages are polysynthetic and agglutinative , making extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. Various prefixes and suffixes can be added to a root to form very long words—individual Nahuatl words can constitute an entire sentence.. The following verb shows how

1120-617: Is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family . Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahuas , most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States . Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE. It was the language of the Mexica , who dominated what

1200-577: Is debated among linguists. Lyle Campbell (1997) classified Pipil as separate from the Nahuatl branch within general Aztecan, whereas dialectologists such as Una Canger , Karen Dakin, Yolanda Lastra , and Terrence Kaufman have preferred to include Pipil within the General Aztecan branch, citing close historical ties with the eastern peripheral dialects of General Aztec. Current subclassification of Nahuatl rests on research by Canger (1980) , Canger (1988) and Lastra de Suárez (1986) . Canger introduced

1280-543: Is inconclusive. In the 15th century, the Aztecs labeled the region of the Totonac " Totonacapan "; which then extended roughly from Papantla in the north to Cempoala in the south. Totonacapan was largely hot and humid. Along with the normal agricultural crops of maize, manioc, squash, beans, pumpkin and chili peppers, the region was noted for its production of cotton . Even during the disastrous central Mexican famine of 1450-1454,

1360-662: Is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history . During the centuries preceding the Spanish 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. Following the Spanish conquest, Spanish colonists and missionaries introduced

1440-645: Is probably derived from the word nāhuatlahtōlli [naːwat͡ɬaʔˈtoːliˀ] ('clear language'). The language was formerly called Aztec because it was spoken by the Central Mexican peoples known as Aztecs ( Nahuatl pronunciation: [asˈteːkaḁ] ). During the period of the Aztec empire centered in Mexico- Tenochtitlan the language came to be identified with the politically dominant mēxihcah [meːˈʃiʔkaḁ] ethnic group, and consequently

1520-624: Is the only living descendant of the variety of Nahuatl once spoken south of present-day Mexico. During the 7th century, Nahuan speakers rose to power in central Mexico. The people of the Toltec culture of Tula , which was active in central Mexico around the 10th century, are thought to have been Nahuatl speakers. By the 11th century, Nahuatl speakers were dominant in the Valley of Mexico and far beyond, with settlements including Azcapotzalco , Colhuacan and Cholula rising to prominence. Nahua migrations into

1600-599: Is widely accepted as having two divisions: General Aztec and Pochutec. 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 denotes at least Classical Nahuatl, together with related modern languages spoken in Mexico. The inclusion of Pipil in this group

1680-474: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec call their language mela'tajtol ('the straight language'). Some speech communities use Nahuatl as the name for their language, although it seems to be a recent innovation. Linguists commonly identify localized dialects of Nahuatl by adding as a qualifier the name of the village or area where that variety is spoken. On the issue of geographic origin, the consensus of linguists during

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1760-622: The Latin script , and Nahuatl became a literary language . Many chronicles , grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents and codices were written in it during the 16th and 17th centuries. This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl . It is among the most studied and best-documented Indigenous languages of the Americas . Today, Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along

1840-622: The Mesoamerican language area . Many words from Nahuatl were absorbed into Spanish and, from there, were diffused into hundreds of other languages in the region. Most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexico, which the Spanish heard mentioned for the first time by their Nahuatl names. English has also absorbed words of Nahuatl origin , including avocado , chayote , chili , chipotle , chocolate , atlatl , coyote , peyote , axolotl and tomato . These words have since been adopted into dozens of languages around

1920-599: The Mexican Plateau , pre-Nahuan groups probably spent a period of time in contact with the Uto-Aztecan Cora and Huichol of northwestern Mexico. 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. It

2000-519: The Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery. Under Mexico's General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples , promulgated in 2003, Nahuatl and the other 63 indigenous languages of Mexico are recognized as lenguas nacionales ('national languages') in the regions where they are spoken. They are given the same status as Spanish within their respective regions. Nahuan languages exhibit

2080-639: The Zapatista Army of National Liberation and indigenous social movements) led to legislative reforms and the creation of decentralized government agencies like the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI) and the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI) with responsibilities for the promotion and protection of indigenous communities and languages. In particular,

2160-534: The "language group" labeled Nahuatl. The Ethnologue recognizes 28 varieties with separate ISO codes. Sometimes Nahuatl is also applied to the Nawat language of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Regardless of whether Nahuatl is considered to refer to a dialect continuum or a group of separate languages, the varieties form a single branch within the Uto-Aztecan family, descended from a single Proto-Nahuan language . Within Mexico,

2240-634: The 16th century. Today, approximately 90,000 Totonac speakers reside in the region. The Totonac people traditionally speak Totonac , which, together with Tepehua , form a small language family . This means that Totonacan languages are not related to other Native Mesoamerican languages such as those in the Mayan , Oto-Manguean or Uto-Aztecan families. There are several local varieties of Totonac that are not mutually intelligible. The first grammatical and lexical descriptions of Totonac accessible to Europeans (now lost) were by Fray Andrés de Olmos , who also wrote

2320-512: 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

2400-499: The 20th century, Mexican educational policy focused on the Hispanicization of indigenous communities, teaching only Spanish and discouraging the use of indigenous languages. As a result, one scholar estimated in 1983 that there was no group of Nahuatl speakers who had attained general literacy (that is, the ability to read the classical language) in Nahuatl, and Nahuatl speakers' literacy rate in Spanish also remained much lower than

2480-735: The Aztec Empire , the Tlaxcaltecs allied with the Spanish Empire against their hated enemies, the Aztecs , supplying a large contingent for and sometimes most of the Spanish-led army that eventually destroyed the Aztec Empire . Tlaxcala was completely surrounded by Aztec lands, leading to the intermittent so called " flower war " between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcalans, fighting for their independence, as

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2560-549: The Aztecs wanted to absorb them into the empire. The Tlaxcalans arrived in Central Mexico during the Late Postclassic . They first settled near Texcoco in the valley of Mexico , between the settlement of Cohuatlinchan and the shore of Lake Texcoco . After some years the Tlaxcallans were driven out of the valley of Mexico and moved to the east, splitting into three groups along the way. While one group continued north towards

2640-562: The Central group, while Lastra de Suárez (1986) places them in the Eastern Periphery, which was followed by Kaufman (2001) . 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

2720-515: The Maya Kʼicheʼ people . As Tenochtitlan grew to become the largest urban center in Central America and one of the largest in the world at the time, it attracted speakers of Nahuatl from diverse areas giving birth to an urban form of Nahuatl with traits from many dialects. This urbanized variety of Tenochtitlan is what came to be known as Classical Nahuatl as documented in colonial times. With

2800-429: The Nahuatl language was often described as mēxihcacopa [meːʃiʔkaˈkopaˀ] (literally 'in the manner of Mexicas') or mēxihcatlahtolli 'Mexica language'. 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,

2880-496: The New Philology, such that there is a 2001 English translation of Carochi's 1645 grammar by James Lockhart . Through contact with Spanish the Nahuatl language adopted many loan words, and as bilingualism intensified, changes in the grammatical structure of Nahuatl followed. In 1570, King Philip II of Spain decreed that Nahuatl should become the official language of the colonies of New Spain to facilitate communication between

2960-473: The New World. While vanilla was long significant to Totonac culture, its importance as an export good did not emerge until the early-eighteenth century, when they traded with other Totonacs and with people in northern Oaxaca . The first regulation of the harvesting of Mexican vanilla appears in 1743, when the mayor of Papantla attempted to use a law for personal profit on the vanilla harvest. A second law regulating

3040-462: The Spanish and natives of the colonies. This led to Spanish missionaries teaching Nahuatl to Amerindians living as far south as Honduras and El Salvador. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Classical Nahuatl was used as a literary language; a large corpus dating to the period remains extant. They include histories, chronicles, poetry, theatrical works, Christian canonical works, ethnographic descriptions, and administrative documents. The Spanish permitted

3120-684: The Spanish. Even after the Spanish were expelled from Tenochtitlan , the Tlaxcaltecah continued their support. Tlaxcala also assisted the Spanish in the conquest of Guatemala . As a result of the alliance with the Spaniards, Tlaxcala had hidalgo privileged status within "New Spain", as confirmed in the Royal Writ of the Foundation of the City of Tlaxcala, Mexico . After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan and

3200-455: The Tlaxcallan group that had initially remained in the valley of Mexico. Ancient Tlaxcala was a republic ruled by a council of between 50 and 200 chief political officials (teuctli [sg.], teteuctin [pl.]). These officials gained their positions through service to the state, usually in warfare, and as a result came from both the noble (pilli) and commoner (macehualli) classes . Tlaxcala

3280-478: The United States has resulted in the establishment of small Nahuatl speaking communities in the United States , particularly in California, New York, Texas , New Mexico and Arizona . Nahuan languages are defined as a subgroup of Uto-Aztecan by having undergone a number of shared changes from the Uto-Aztecan protolanguage (PUA). The table below shows the phonemic inventory of Classical Nahuatl as an example of

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3360-481: The United States, some linguists are warning of impending language death . At present Nahuatl is mostly spoken in rural areas by an impoverished class of indigenous subsistence agriculturists. According to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 51% of Nahuatl speakers are involved in the farming sector and 6 in 10 receive no wages or less than the minimum wage. For most of

3440-488: 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. 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

3520-627: The Younger – the Tlaxcalteca warleader – that it would be better to ally with the newcomers than to kill them. Xicohtencatl the Younger was later condemned by the Tlaxcalan ruling council and hanged by Cortés for desertion, in April 1521, during the siege of Tenochtitlan . Due to protracted warfare between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcaltecah, the latter were eager to exact revenge, and soon became loyal allies of

3600-644: The arrival of the Spanish in 1519, Nahuatl was displaced as the dominant regional language, but remained important in Nahua communities under Spanish rule. Nahuatl was documented extensively during the colonial period in Tlaxcala , Cuernavaca, Culhuacan, Coyoacan, Toluca and other locations in the Valley of Mexico and beyond. In the 1970s, scholars of Mesoamerican ethnohistory have analyzed local-level texts in Nahuatl and other indigenous languages to gain insight into cultural change in

3680-451: The coastline. A smaller number of speakers exists in immigrant communities in the United States. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are not mutually intelligible . Huasteca Nahuatl , with over one million speakers, is the most-spoken variety. All varieties have been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish. No modern Nahuan languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around

3760-573: The colonial era via linguistic changes, known at present as the New Philology . Several of these texts have been translated and published either in part or in their entirety. The types of documentation include censuses, especially one early set from the Cuernavaca region, town council records from Tlaxcala, as well as the testimony of Nahua individuals. As the Spanish had made alliances with Nahuatl-speaking peoples—initially from Tlaxcala , and later

3840-447: The colonial period, but their quality was highest in the initial period. The friars found that learning all the indigenous languages was impossible in practice, so they concentrated on Nahuatl. For a time, the linguistic situation in Mesoamerica remained relatively stable, but in 1696, Charles II of Spain issued a decree banning the use of any language other than Spanish throughout the Spanish Empire . In 1770, another decree, calling for

3920-437: The conquered Mexica of Tenochtitlan—Nahuatl continued spreading throughout Mesoamerica in the decades after the conquest. Spanish expeditions with thousands of Nahua soldiers marched north and south to conquer new territories. Jesuit missions in what is now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States often included a barrio of Tlaxcaltec soldiers who remained to guard the mission. For example, some fourteen years after

4000-470: The elimination of the indigenous languages, did away with Classical Nahuatl as a literary language. Until the end of the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, the Spanish courts admitted Nahuatl testimony and documentation as evidence in lawsuits, with court translators rendering it in Spanish. Throughout the modern period the situation of indigenous languages has grown increasingly precarious in Mexico, and

4080-628: The federal Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas ['General Law on the Language Rights of the Indigenous Peoples', promulgated 13 March 2003] recognizes all the country's indigenous languages, including Nahuatl, as national languages and gives indigenous people the right to use them in all spheres of public and private life. In Article 11, it grants access to compulsory intercultural bilingual education . Nonetheless, progress towards institutionalizing Nahuatl and securing linguistic rights for its speakers has been slow. Today,

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4160-411: The first such descriptions of Nahuatl and Huastec (Teenek). The main varieties of Totonac are: Most present-day Totonacs are Roman Catholic . However, their Christian practice is often mixed with vestiges of their traditional religion, a notable instance being la Costumbre , a survival of an old rite of sacrifice in which various seeds are mixed with earth and the blood of fowls and dispersed over

4240-424: The modern state of Hidalgo and another remained in the vicinity of Texcoco, a third group arrived in the modern valley of Tlaxcala, where they established the city of Tepetícpac Texcallan under the leadership of Culhuatecuhtli Quanex . Over the subsequent years, the Tlaxcallan state expanded with the foundations of Ocotelulco and Tizatlán . The fourth major settlement, Quiahuiztlan , was founded by members of

4320-550: The national average. Nahuatl is spoken by over 1 million people, with approximately 10% of speakers being monolingual . As a whole, Nahuatl is not considered to be an endangered language; however, during the late 20th century several Nahuatl dialects became extinct. The 1990s saw radical changes in Mexican policy concerning indigenous and linguistic rights. Developments of accords in the international rights arena combined with domestic pressures (such as social and political agitation by

4400-403: The nobles. Fish and seafood as well as game was eaten by both nobles and farmers. The agave provided liquor. Totonac women were expert weavers and embroiderers; they dressed grandly and braided their hair with feathers . The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún stated that, in all aspects of their appearance, the women were "quite elegant", women wore skirts (embroidered for the nobles) and

4480-442: The northeastern city of Saltillo was founded in 1577, a Tlaxcaltec community was resettled in a separate nearby village, San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala , to cultivate the land and aid colonization efforts that had stalled in the face of local hostility to the Spanish settlement. Pedro de Alvarado conquered Guatemala with the help of tens of thousands of Tlaxcaltec allies, who then settled outside of modern Antigua Guatemala . As

4560-429: The numbers of speakers of virtually all indigenous languages have dwindled. While the total number of Nahuatl speakers increased over the 20th century, indigenous populations have become increasingly marginalized in Mexican society. In 1895, Nahuatl was spoken by over 5% of the population. By 2000, this figure had fallen to 1.49%. Given the process of marginalization combined with the trend of migration to urban areas and to

4640-453: The place of articulation of a following consonant. The voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ] is assimilated after /l/ and pronounced [l] . Classical Nahuatl and most of the modern varieties have fairly simple phonological systems. They allow only syllables with maximally one initial and one final consonant. Consonant clusters occur only word-medially and over syllable boundaries. Some morphemes have two alternating forms: one with

4720-620: The planting fields. The traditional religion was described in the early 1960s by the French ethnographer, Alain Ichon. No other major essay on Totonac religion has been found. Mother goddesses played a very important role in Totonac belief, since each person's soul is made by them. If a newly born child dies, its soul "does not go to the west, the place of the dead, but to the east with the Mothers". Ichon has also preserved for posterity an important myth regarding

4800-518: The possibility that other Mesoamerican languages were borrowing vocabulary from Proto-Nahuan much earlier than previously thought. In Mesoamerica the Mayan , Oto-Manguean and Mixe–Zoque languages had coexisted for millennia. This had given rise to the Mesoamerican language area . After the Nahuas migrated into the Mesoamerican cultural zone, their language likely adopted various areal traits, which included relational nouns and calques added to

4880-461: The question of whether to consider individual varieties to be languages or dialects of a single language is highly political. In the past, the branch of Uto-Aztecan to which Nahuatl belongs has been called Aztecan . From the 1990s onward, the alternative designation Nahuan has been frequently used instead, especially in Spanish-language publications. The Nahuan (Aztecan) branch of Uto-Aztecan

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4960-559: The region from the north continued into the Postclassic period . The Mexica were among the latest groups to arrive in the Valley of Mexico; they settled on an island in the Lake Texcoco , subjugated the surrounding tribes, and ultimately an empire named Tenochtitlan . Mexica political and linguistic influence ultimately extended into Central America, and Nahuatl became a lingua franca among merchants and elites in Mesoamerica, such as with

5040-422: The region remained a reliable agricultural center. At that time, many Aztecs were forced to sell themselves or their family members as slaves to the Totonac in exchange for subsistence maize. Totonacs in the twentieth century led the peoples growing the highest quality vanilla , and most Mexican vanilla was produced by Totonacs. Their association with agriculture of vanilla pre-dates the arrival of Columbus in

5120-514: The rest of Mexico, Tlaxcala was allowed to survive and preserve its pre-Columbian culture. In addition, as a reward for the unyielding loyalty the Tlaxcalan federation had shown the Spanish, the city and its inhabitants largely escaped the pillaging and destruction following the Spanish conquest. The Tlaxcaltecah gave further assistance in the Mixtón War . Following the Spanish Conquest, Tlaxcala

5200-657: The scheme of a Central grouping and two Peripheral groups, and Lastra confirmed this notion, differing in some details. Canger & Dakin (1985) demonstrated a basic split between Eastern and Western branches of Nahuan, considered to reflect the oldest division of the proto-Nahuan speech community. Canger originally considered the central dialect area to be an innovative subarea within the Western branch, but in 2011, she suggested that it arose as an urban koiné language with features from both Western and Eastern dialect areas. Canger (1988) tentatively included dialects of La Huasteca in

5280-653: The states of Puebla , Veracruz , Hidalgo , San Luis Potosí , and Guerrero . Significant populations are also found in the State of Mexico , Morelos , and the Federal District , with smaller communities in Michoacán and Durango . Nahuatl became extinct in the states of Jalisco and Colima during the 20th century. As a result of internal migration within the country, Nahuatl speaking communities exist in all states in Mexico. The modern influx of Mexican workers and families into

5360-587: The term General Aztec has been adopted by linguists to refer to the languages of the Aztecan branch excluding the Pochutec language . Speakers of Nahuatl generally refer to their language as either Mexicano or with a cognate derived from mācēhualli , the Nahuatl word for 'commoner'. One example of the latter is the Nahuatl spoken in Tetelcingo , Morelos, whose speakers call their language mösiehuali . The Pipil people of El Salvador refer to their language as Nāwat . The Nahuas of Durango call their language Mexicanero . Speakers of Nahuatl of

5440-464: The total Nahuatl speaking population, at 24.2% and 22.6%, respectively. For most other states the percentage of monolinguals among the speakers is less than 5%. This means that in most states more than 95% of the Nahuatl speaking population are bilingual in Spanish. According to one study, how often Nahuatl is used is linked to community well-being, partly because it is tied to positive emotions. The largest concentrations of Nahuatl speakers are found in

5520-405: The verb is marked for subject , patient , object , and indirect object: ni- I- mits- you- teː- someone- tla- something- makiː give Tlaxcala (Nahua state) Tlaxcala ( Classical Nahuatl : Tlaxcallān [t͡ɬaʃˈkalːaːn̥] , 'place of maize tortillas') was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico . During the Spanish conquest of

5600-456: The vocabulary, and a distinctly Mesoamerican grammatical construction for indicating possession. A language which was the ancestor of Pochutec split from Proto-Nahuan (or Proto-Aztecan) possibly as early as AD 400, arriving in Mesoamerica a few centuries earlier than the bulk of Nahuan speakers. Some Nahuan groups migrated south along the Central American isthmus, reaching as far as Nicaragua. The critically endangered Pipil language of El Salvador

5680-516: The voiced consonants are devoiced in word-final position and in consonant clusters: /j/ devoices to a palato-alveolar sibilant /ʃ/ , /w/ devoices to a glottal fricative [h] or to a labialized velar approximant [ʍ] , and /l/ devoices to a fricative [ɬ] . In some dialects, the first consonant in almost any consonant cluster becomes [h] . Some dialects have productive lenition of voiceless consonants into their voiced counterparts between vowels. The nasals are normally assimilated to

5760-469: The world. The names of several countries, Mexico, Guatemala and possibly Nicaragua , derive from Nahuatl. As a language label, the term Nahuatl encompasses a group of closely related languages or divergent dialects within the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (Indigenous Languages Institute) recognizes 30 individual varieties within

5840-478: Was divided into four fiefdoms ( señoríos ) by the Spanish corregidor Gómez de Santillán in 1545 (26 years after the Conquest). These fiefdoms were Ocotelolco , Quiahuiztlan , Tepeticpac , and Tizatlan . At this time, four great houses or lineages emerged and claimed hereditary rights to each fiefdom and created fictitious genealogies extending back into the pre-Columbian era to justify their claims. During

5920-411: Was grown it did not form a large part of their diet. The Totonacs ate fruit, most notably zapotes , guavas, papayas, plantains and avocados. Men hunted and fished shark, turtle, deer, armadillo, opossums, and frogs. Women raised turkeys and dogs. Peasants as well as nobles ate corn porridge in the morning. Lunch was the main meal of the day and consisted of manioc, bean stew or even a rich meat sauce for

6000-535: Was kept long with a thick tuft of hair on the top tied up with a ribbon. Houses were generally thatched and had an overhang. They were rectangular in shape. The region of Totonacapan was subject to Aztec military incursions from the mid-15th century until the Spanish arrival. Despite the establishment of Aztec fortifications throughout the region, rebellion was endemic. Major Totonac centers were Papantla , with an estimated population of 60,000 in 1519, Xalapa (around 120,000), and Cempoala (around 80,000). Cempoala

6080-450: Was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged in a state of perpetual war, the so-called flower wars or garland wars. Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes the first battle between the Spanish force and the Tlaxcaltecah as surprisingly difficult. He writes that they would probably have not survived, had not Xicotencatl the Elder and Maxixcatzin persuaded Xicotencatl

6160-452: Was presumed by scholars during the 19th and early 20th centuries that Teotihuacan had been founded by Nahuatl-speakers of, but later linguistic and archaeological research tended to disconfirm this view. Instead, the timing of the Nahuatl influx was seen to coincide more closely with Teotihuacan's fall than its rise, and other candidates such as Totonacan identified as more likely. In the late 20th century, epigraphical evidence has suggested

6240-603: Was promulgated in 1767, after Totonac vanilla growers in Colipa complained about thieves stealing immature vanilla pods. During Humboldt's travels in Mexico, most European imports of vanilla conveyed through the port of Veracruz , and Totonacs in the Misantla region harvested about 700,000 vanilla beans per year. There is a total absence of comals , metates and manos meaning the Totonacs did not eat tortillas ; however, even though corn

6320-490: Was published in 1547—3 years before the first grammar in French, and 39 years before the first one in English. By 1645, four more had been published, authored respectively by Alonso de Molina (1571), Antonio del Rincón (1595), Diego de Galdo Guzmán (1642), and Horacio Carochi (1645). Carochi's is today considered the most important colonial-era grammar of Nahuatl. Carochi has been particularly important for scholars working in

6400-459: Was the first indigenous city state visited by Hernán Cortés in his march to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán . The Totonacs of Cempoala joined forces with Cortés, and along with the Tlaxcalan people, contributed significantly to the Spanish conquest. Totonacapan became incorporated into the Spanish regime with comparatively little violence, but the region was ravaged by epidemic diseases during

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