Historical Context
Although Nahuatl was preserved for centuries under colonial conditions, in 1910, the Mexican Revolution and the resulting expansion of opportunities led to a language shift that threatened Nahuatl’s longevity. The increased role of government following the Mexican Revolution allowed it to be more active in the social, economic, and cultural spheres of society. However, the formation of a new, unified Mexican identity under a more involved government led to the rejection of indigenous cultures in favor of a collective mestizo culture. The expansion and standardization of education, the access to public radio and TV, and migration and assimilation into urban centers were all changes with end products that left no space for Nahuatl to be spoken.
Nonetheless, even before the changes brought upon by the Mexican Revolution, Nahua people were often discriminated against. Interestingly enough, race was less of an exclusionary factor than language and culture since Mexican’s mestizo population, as the name implies, was mixed.
Hence, in mainstream society and its social, economic, and cultural aspects, Nahuatl was a limited and oppressed language and continues to be so today.
Socioeconomic Influences on Nahuatl and Nahua Communities
This section summarizes and cites information from “Mixed grammar, purist grammar, and language attitudes in modern Nahuatl” by Jane H. Hill and Kenneth C. Hill.
According to their extended sociolinguistic survey of Nahuatl-speaking communities in Tlaxcala and Puebla, Mexico, Jane H. Hill and Kenneth C. Hill have drawn several illuminating conclusions about how language shifts in response to changes in cultural attitudes. Given the lack of space for Nahuatl in mainstream Mexican society, Nahuatl has adopted the purpose of being a language of solidarity, which has little functional range.
In this context, it is highly valued, and every attempt is made to keep it ‘pure’; when it is perceived as impure, it is abandoned… Spanish, on the other hand, is highly valued for its own functional range as the ‘language of power’ that can be used to advance oneself economically through employment outside the community and through entry into the public arena of politics (322).
In particular, purist attitudes are held principally by scholars trained in classical Nahuatl texts and individuals within Nahua communities who are literate in Nahuatl and aware of the classical tradition.
The purism of such people usually takes the form of attempting to abolish hispanisms by replacing them with Nahuatl coinages, [also referred to as neologisms]. Every adult Nahuatl speaker is aware of some of the most salient shibboleth hispanisms, such as tren 'train' (the neologism is tepoztlahuilani) and sombrero 'hat' (tiacecahuiloni) which are used to test the goodness and purity of people's Nahuatl (323).
To understand how Nahuatl has become a language of solidarity and the attitude shifts that accompanied this, the politico-economic situation of Nahuatl-speaking people in Tlaxcala and Puebla, specifically in the Malinche Volcano area, is essential context.
The politico-economic situation of the Nahuatl-speaking people of the Malinche Volcano area can perhaps best be understood from the point of view offered by dependency theory (cf. Baran I957; Frank I969, I972). Dependency theory states that the poverty and conservatism of indigenous communities in Latin America are not the result of "backwardness," defined as a delayed reaction to economic advances in the world system, such that indigenous communities are somehow "left behind" in a feudal stage of development while the rest of the world is in a stage of industrial or late capitalism. Rather, poverty, dependency on highly traditional techniques in crafts and agriculture, ideological conservatism, etc., are in fact precisely the result of the involvement of these communities in the world system. They find themselves at the very bottom of long chains of metropolis-satellite relations, wherein each level exploits the population below and expropriates its resources, leaving the bottom-ranked, most peripheral communities often below even a subsistence level. Under dependency theory, the more involved with its metropolis a satellite indigenous community is, the worse off it is likely to be economically, since expropriation can proceed more efficiently if, for instance, products are sold to the metropolis at the metropolis's price rather than recycled into local subsistence, and if goods are bought from the metropolis rather than in the indigenous economy (325-326).
The degree to which the population is proletarianized varies throughout the Malinche Volcano area. However, in the communities in which economic expropriation is felt most acutely, a strategy of ethnic solidarity is adopted to withstand economic stress. Furthermore, another consequence of ethnic solidarity is a greater tendency toward egalitarianism within these communities. The functions of the Nahuatl language reflect this strategy in the following ways.
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Attitudes about Hispanization
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...hispanization in today’s usage is stigmatized everywhere in our field area. Virtually all speakers interviewed remark that today’s usage is revuelto 'topsy-turvy' and mezelado 'mixed-up' in contrast to the purer legitimo Mexicano 'genuine Nahuatl' used by the ancestors. Many speakers state that it is hardly worth speaking their broken-down and hispanized Nahuatl… This contradiction between the presence of a high rate of hispanization, with much evidence as to its prestigious role (which is to some degree preserved in modern speakers), peakers), and the universal stigmatization of hispanization seems to lend credence to our claim that a shift in the function of Nahuatl into a "solidarity" code, emphasizing ethnicity as the source of solidarity, is taking place. The first and most widespread linguistic manifestation is the change in attitude toward Spanish-language lexical material in Nahuatl speech.
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Use of Nahuatl in Boundary Marking
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In this case, shibboleth testing, which refers to a custom or tradition that distinguishes one group of people from another, is conducted to differentiate between those of Nahuatl ethnicity as opposed to outsider Spanish ethnicity.
Many of these usages are said to express a quality of communities which are called cerrado 'closed': communities in which outsiders are made to feel uncomfortable… A community which is cerrado will often express this by testing outsiders with obscene remarks in Nahuatl such as Putoh mitztlacatilih in monanah 'Your mother bore you in whoredom' or Xnechmaca mohuelti 'Give me your sister.' Almost all women interviewed in the Northern communities commented on these usages in the context of an interview question about whether or not it was useful to know Nahuatl. These women would reply that a child should learn Nahuatl because if he doesn't, people might say bad things (as above) to him, and the child "might think they were just saying 'Good morning'." Hay que defenderse, 'you have to defend yourself' is often offered by such people as a rationale for speaking the language. Some people know only enough Nahuatl to offer and respond to such stereotyped obscenities (331).
There are other spheres in which Nahuatl is used even by very marginal speakers for the purpose of Nahua solidarity include the area of drinking, in which drinking displays often invoke Nahuatl toasts, and the establishment of ritual kinship known as compadrazgo.
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Usage of Honorifics​
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The communities in the Malinche Volcano area which are closest in proximity to the mainstream economy and consequently under the most economic stress are more egalitarian, which is reflected in the reduced range of honorific usage in these communities.
The full range of the honorific system is intact in direct address in all the communities in our field area. However, in many communities, the range of honorific usage has undergone considerable attrition in reference. This difference may be because honorific usage is highly constrained by politeness in direct address. In reference, however, where it is less likely that the person being discussed can hear, the embellishment required by the system can be relaxed without the immediate fear of giving offense (333).
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Grammar of Numeral-Noun Constructions
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The grammar of numeral-noun constructions, or the process of constructing a phrase that describes a numerical quantity of a certain object, varies significantly between Nahuatl and Spanish; as such, it is often the focus of purism in Nahuatl.
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In addition to lexical differences and differences in counting systems, the grammar of numeral-noun constructions differs in the two languages. Spanish requires number agreement on the noun; Nahuatl does not. In Nahuatl, nouns in numeral-noun constructions need not be pluralized except in a few cases such as kin terms (e.g. chicuacen nopilhuan "six my-children') and nouns with diminutive or honorific suffixes (e.g conetzitzin 'four children', with the honorific suffix being -tzin) (337).
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Conclusions
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As a consequence of Nahuatl becoming a language of solidarity, the language and its usages have shifted to realize a more egalitarian community and self-conscious ethnic identity. However, purist language attitudes that accompany this shift in Nahuatl’s function may also propagate a self-defeating prophecy in which strict adherence to the language’s grammar and lexicon discourages younger speakers from learning the language entirely. Of course, a lack of separation between Nahuatl and Spanish and overuse of hispanizations may also contribute to language decline, so forgoing purist attitudes altogether would not be a solution either.
Bilingual Maintenance Programs
This section summarizes and cites information from "Language Death in Central Mexico: The Decline of Nahuatl and the New Bilingual Maintenance Programs" by Kellie Rolstad.
Recently, la Secretaría de Educación Pública (the Mexican Ministry of Education) have promoted the establishment of bilingual education programs in Mexico, the details of which are discussed in a 1994 government publication titled “Orientaciones para la enseñanza bilingüe en las primarias de zonas indígenas” (Guidelines for bilingual education in primary schools in indigenous areas).
The stated goals of the bilingual maintenance programs promoted by the Mexican Ministry of Public Education (SEP 1994) are to aid students in attaining similar levels of competency in the indigenous language and Spanish, to facilitate the re-diffusion of the indigenous language in all local social communication spheres, and to establish regional-ethnic, national-universal cultural content for speakers of the indigenous language. In addition, the Ministry suggests that local communities and teachers should take the initiative to protect and develop their indigenous languages. The stated community recommendations from SEP (1994) hold that teachers should take the responsibility to create indigenous language texts in any way possible (writing down oral stories, for example); that teachers should advocate the use of the indigenous language in the community; and that the general community should post signs in the indigenous language, and push for TV, radio, and general broadcasts in the indigenous language (14).
Still, many problems need to be addressed before bilingual maintenance programs could truly counter the decline of Nahuatl. Some factors include the previously discussed limited space for Nahuatl in mainstream society and the emphasis on Spanish in lucrative economic or social pursuits. Additionally, there exists the lack of qualified teachers and resources, issues with establishing bilingual programs in either remote Nahua communities or urban Mexican centers, and scornful and dismissive attitudes toward Nahuatl and Nahua culture. This last point may prove to be the most crucial in preserving this language.
In order to obtain grassroots support, the negative perception of Nahuatl, linked to historical disadvantage and oppression, must be attacked at every level, particularly in the majority community. Without such increased, positive social and educational support, it is unlikely that the language of the Aztecs will survive (16).
Worldwide Change
Despite the precarious position Nahuatl now finds itself in, there has been a shift in attitudes towards indigenous languages and cultures — more and more, indigenous people are embracing their cultural identity and taking pride in it while non-Nahuatl speakers are taking on increasing awareness and appreciation for the diversity of other cultures. As the history of the conquered is no longer silenced by the narrative of the conquerors, as initiatives in the present seek to amend the past and stride toward the future, that is where change begins.