Talk:Tetelcingo Nahuatl

Latest comment: 11 years ago by Maunus in topic Untitled

Untitled edit

Hey, all,

I don't know when the name got changed from Tetelcingo Nahuatl to Morelos Nahuatl, but it was a mistake.

ISO 639-3 has two different dialects/variants/languages here. Tetelcingo Nahuatl (code nhg) is(/was)spoken only in Tetelcingo and its two colonias. Morelos Nahuatl (nhm) is(/was) spoken in "Morelos state, municipality Temixco, Cuentepec; municipality Miacatlán, Coatetelco; municipality Tepoztlán, Santa Catarina; municipality Tetela del Volcán, Hueyapan, Alpanocan; municipality Puente de Ixtla, Xoxocotla. state of Puebla (on the border to Morelos): municipality Acteopan, San Marcos Acteopan, San Felipe Toctla." In fact most speakers are in Cuentepec, with a few left in Tetela, Hueyapan, etc. What is described in this article is Tetelcingo, not the more general Morelos dialect.

The two variants differ in important respects. Perhaps most immediately obvious is Tetelcingo's shifting of the vowel systems so that the "length" distinction is something like tenseness, and the contrasts are very obvious. The rest of Morelos keeps the traditional vowels with their highly elusive length distinction. The honorific systems, and a number of other subsystems of the languages, are also different in various aspects (though of course there are similarities as well: they both are, after all, Nahuatl).

I will try to change the name back to Tetelcingo Nahuatl, but if I can't, I ask that somebody who knows how please fix this.

--Lavintzin (talk) 03:58, 13 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Later: I made the changes. But now I need the Morelos Nahuatl page to be a regular article, not a redirect to Tetelcingo. I will see if I can do that, too.

--Lavintzin (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Correcting the populations. Is the infobox now correct for Tetelcingo? — kwami (talk) 18:09, 13 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, according to the source it probably is, but in reality there are not more than at most a couple of hundred speakers of tetelcingo Nahuatl.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, census data is dangerous. Do any of our refs support the smaller number? — kwami (talk) 18:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
We should ask Lavintzin, he has worked on the dialect.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:07, 13 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
I strongly suspect that Maunus is right, that speakers are many fewer now. I know that many are scattered to places like Canada and New York as well as many places in Mexico, and many of them have virtually forgotten the mösiehuali they once knew. Active speakers are likely in the dozens rather than the hundreds. But I have not been in Tetelcingo for years now, and no way to count if I were. User:Lavintzin