Tetelcingo Nahuatl, called ''Mösiehuali̱'' by its speakers, is a
Nahuatl
Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...
variety of central Mexico. It is one of the core varieties closely related to
Classical Nahuatl
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 s ...
. It is spoken in the town of Tetelcingo, Morelos, and the adjacent ''
Colonia'' Cuauhtémoc and Colonia Lázaro Cárdenas. These three population centers lie to the north of
Cuautla, Morelos and have been largely absorbed into its urban area; as a result the Tetelcingo language and culture are under intense pressure.
In 1935
William Cameron Townsend published a study of Mösiehuali̱, and a number of other studies have been published since then.
Phonology
Vowels
Tetelcingo Nahuatl has converted the distinction of
vowel quantity
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
found in more conservative varieties into one of
vowel quality. The short vowels are reflected as (orthographically ''i̱ e a o'') in Tetelcingo, while the long vowels become (orthographically ''i, ie, ö, u'').
Consonants
Tetelcingo Nahuatl, like many dialects of Nahuatl, does not have voiced
obstruent
An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
consonants (with one clear exception: the stem /maga/, meaning 'fight' is derived from /maka/ 'give, hit'). Voiced obstruents and other non-native consonants do occur in
loanwords from
Spanish, however, and there are many such words in the language.
[ ]
Honorifics
Another striking characteristic of Tetelcingo Nahuatl is the pervasiveness and complexity of its
honorifics. Generally every 2nd or 3rd person verb, pronoun, postposition or possessed noun must be marked honorifically if its subject or object, designatum, object or possessor (respectively) is a living adult (the speaker's wife or adult children being exceptions). Extra-honorific forms of several kinds exist, especially for addressing or referring to godparental relations, high officials or God. Many third person honorifics use morphemes that in Classical Nahuatl were used to mark non-active (passive) verbs or unspecified or plural participants. Not infrequently a different (
suppletive) stem is used for honorifics, or the honorific form is in some other way irregular.
A few examples are given below, using the orthography of Brewer and Brewer 1962. Where more than one form is listed, the second is more highly honorific.
References
External links
(SIL Mexico)– includes sound recordings
Mösiehuali̱ Honorifics– includes sound recordings
Spanish loans in Mösiehuali̱– includes sound recordings
Texts in Mösiehuali̱
Literature
*Brewer, Forrest, y Jean G. Brewer. 1962. ''Vocabulario mexicano de Tetelcingo''. Vocabularios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves” 8. México: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
*Pittman, Richard S. 1948. “Nahuatl honorifics”. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 14:236-39.
*Pittman, Richard S. 1954. A grammar of Tetelcingo (Morelos) Nahuatl. ''Language Dissertation 50'' (supplement to ''Language'' 30).
*Tuggy, David. 1979. “Tetelcingo Nahuatl”. ''Modern Aztec Grammatical Sketches'', 1-140, Ronald W. Langacker, ed. ''Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar'', vol. 2. Arlington, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington.
*Tuggy, David. 1981
''The transitivity-related verbal morphology of Tetelcingo Nahuatl: an exploration in Space
ognitivegrammar.'' UC San Diego doctoral dissertation.
{{Uto-Aztecan languages
Nahuatl