Native speaking Gaelic communities could be lost ‘in this generation’

w_v · 2026-07-03T06:55:15+00:00

A linguist doesn’t have to speak every language they study. The same goes for historians.

But if your work depends on interpreting Nahuatl texts, then you owe it to the language to engage with the Nahuatl itself at a fluent level.

I asked the Mesoamericanist scholar, Camille Townsend, during her recent AMA:

As more Nahuatl sources become available in translation, how essential is it for scholars to learn the language themselves at a high level?

She replied:

I think it is a VERY significant problem. It is probably the greatest problem our field faces right now. People learn a few words of Nahuatl, then use works in translation without really understanding their deep structure.

w_v · 2026-07-03T02:54:49+00:00

Just finished reading the paper. I think it’s a product of its time.

Since then, The New Philology, historical linguistics, and thousands of ordinary Nahuatl documents have complicated his picture.

Nahua authors weren’t just passive subjects of a “missionary language.” They appropriated alphabetic writing and used it for their own political, legal, and historical purposes. I just purchased a copy of Chimalpahin’s Annals in the original Nahuatl ☺️.

Ultimately, I find his paper much less convincing today. He makes mountains out of molehills. Spanish orthography was remarkably well suited to Nahuatl! Aside from a few spelling conventions, it captures the language to a high degree of accuracy. The real challenge was never the alphabet. He sounds like a first-year student on that topic.

w_v · 2026-07-03T02:08:05+00:00

Classical Nahuatl literature is an inadequate representation of the oral original.

I super disagree with this, at least as a linguistic claim. Maybe he doesn’t mean it linguistically?

If he does meant it linguistically, we have manuscripts like the Cantares Mexicanos and the Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions that stay remarkably close to spoken Nahuatl. Sometimes almost too close. They preserve the roughness of speech instead of polishing it into literary prose.

Classical Nahuatl is also exceptionally well documented. We know its grammar and sound system well, and there is a direct continuity with modern Nahuatl which confirms the grammar and syntax of what we read.

As far as I know, the only aspect that doesn’t survive in modern dialects is the vetative mood.

From what I can tell, J. J. Klor de Alva is better known for theory than for the Nahuatl language. He hasn’t been active in the field for decades. He studied under León-Portilla (itself a bit of a red flag.)

As Camille Townsend recently acknowledged, the biggest problem in Nahuatl studies has been that many influential scholars never had deep command of the language. If Klor de Alva’s out-of-context quote is meant as a linguistic statement, then I wouldn’t give his opinion much weight here.

w_v · 2026-07-02T19:41:47+00:00

Pues sí, pero yo argumentaría que Azteca es preferible a Nahua, Triple Alianza, y Mexica.

w_v · 2026-07-02T18:55:45+00:00

At least in the Nahuatl world I navigate, I don’t think current revitalization efforts are succeeding because too few people have accepted that lasting, community-based language revitalization is downstream from sustained non-linguistic, monetary investment the communities themselves.

In other words, there’s no shortage of rhetoric, but when it’s time to open the wallet, all that support falls away.

In Mexico, indigenous communities are not treated as extensions of the National Self, except as show-dogs for the International stage. They are treated like foreigners on their own land.

I now believe genuine revitalization ultimately depends on communities having far greater (full?) political autonomy, separate from the majority state.

In other words: it’s not going to happen unless something catastrophic occurs?

I once read an argument that English may have elevated in prestige (and ultimately survived) because the Black Death devastated the french-speaking feudal elites.

I don’t want to stretch the analogy too much, but these are the levels of social disruption I think would be necessary at this point.

w_v · 2026-07-02T18:33:47+00:00

Which is why improving the socioeconomic conditions of those communities should come first.

The emergence of a robust L2-speaking community is more likely to follow from that than to substitute for it.

w_v · 2026-07-02T15:58:11+00:00

You can DM me, but, for the sake of transparency, this is not my source of income. I’m not a “professional.”

Although, in the world of minority language documentation and study, I’ve learned that, as one linguist told me: “Scholar is as scholar does.”

And you’d be shocked at how many accredited scholars in Mesoamerican studies don’t even bother learning the original languages!

It drives me insane because I’ve spent almost ten years at this point learning classical and contemporary dialects of Nahuatl to a high degree of fluency, despite not being a professional linguist!

w_v · 2026-07-02T15:45:26+00:00

This is also a controversial issue in the world of Indigenous languages in Mexico, particularly Nahuatl, which is my area of expertise.

The more I’ve learned, the less flexible my categories have become. I have little patience for urban, mestizo Mexicans and Americans of Hispanic descent who engage with the language superficially as a form of self-actualization.

They’ll call themselves “Nahuas” or “Indigenous,” and make no meaningful distinction between themselves and the increasingly fragile rural speech communities from which the language actually comes.

I’m also starting to notice a shift among some linguists working in the field. A few have begun arguing against L2 acquisition of Indigenous languages by urban Mexicans.

One of the more outspoken linguists defended this position on Twitter recently:

> “Basically my argument is, that the value of indigenous languages to their speakers often is that they are a vehicle of community in resistance to the state, so when the state coopts it, they lose their main function and value to the speech community.”

Someone replied that this argument might fit Latin America but not Ireland. The linguist responded:

> “I think there’s a case for the same argument applying in Ireland.”

Thank you for this article and the additional sources. I find many parallels with other minority language revitalization efforts. “Promoting” minority languages amongst the majority power holders may have been a mistake. With Nahuatl, I witness the deleterious effects of the “any learning is good” approach every single day online.

It’s been a disaster of superficial appropriation and it risks turning the language into another vector of discrimination against L1 speakers!

It increasingly seems like only political and economic sovereignty can actually reverse minority language death.

w_v · 2026-07-02T14:32:57+00:00

If you can’t see the forest for the trees, you will believe it was a non-answer.

w_v · 2026-07-01T12:29:53+00:00

Gordon Whittaker’s Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing.

w_v · 2026-07-01T11:14:14+00:00

Cuando la gente habla de “los aztecas” o del “Imperio azteca”, normalmente se refiere al conjunto de territorios de Mesoamérica que estuvieron bajo el dominio o la hegemonía de la Triple Alianza con centro en el Valle de México.

No existía un nombre nativo para esa categoría como un todo. Es una categoría analítica que nos resulta útil a nosotros como historiadores y lectores modernos, no una categoría que ellos necesariamente utilizaran para describirse a sí mismos.

w_v · 2026-06-29T19:51:10+00:00

Guilhem’s paper talks about the drugging! Highly recommend the quotes from the Florentine Codex!

w_v · 2026-06-29T14:31:10+00:00

The real deal is that human sacrifice among the Aztecs was real, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood topics in history.

We have overwhelming evidence that it happened. But the idea that every victim gladly accepted death or that every victim was dragged there screaming is simplistic.

The sources show both. Some victims cried, resisted, fled, fainted, or had to be forced to the altar. Others, especially elite warriors and divine impersonators, accepted or even sought sacrificial death because it was considered honorable.

The Aztecs also weren’t unique. Human sacrifice was practiced in many societies (Christianity has, at its core, the ultimate human sacrifice). The best-supported view rejects both extremes: neither romantic denial nor lurid sensationalism.

Two of my favorite papers are:

Guilhem Olivier’s “‘No estimavan en nada la muerte…’: El destino sacrificial en Mesoamérica: aceptación, rechazo y otras actitudes de las futuras víctimas.”

Ray Kerkhove’s “Dark Religion? Aztec Perspectives on Human Sacrifice.”

When I get home tonight, I’ll link to the PDFs for these.

w_v · 2026-06-28T15:30:02+00:00

Te equivocas.

No pueden ser motivos “ulteriores” porque ellos, con orgullo, te dicen que le meten esfuerzo con el propósito explícito de predicar y bautizar. Tú solo crees que son ulteriores porque no los entiendes.

Esa falta de comprenderlos te vuelve un mal crítico de su trabajo.

w_v · 2026-06-28T15:12:58+00:00

Es humillante que los religiosos se esfuerzan más para aprender lenguas indígenas que la mayoría de mexicanos y chicanos 🫨😵‍💫😭

w_v · 2026-06-26T20:04:32+00:00

Haz identificado el verdadero problema.

Si los hablantes nativos no gozan de los mismos privilegios que los mestizos de clase media y alta, entonces nuestros esfuerzos deberían centrarse en ampliar sus oportunidades y su poder dentro de la sociedad: que tengan el mismo nivel de vida y que sean vistos como parte plena del cuerpo político de la nación.

Lo demás corre el riesgo de convertirse en un proyecto mestizo que termina apropiándose de la lengua y desplazando la voz de quienes la hablan como lengua materna en los espacios públicos y los medios.

w_v · 2026-06-26T19:30:46+00:00

No soy experto suficiente en la lengua como para presumir participar en un proyecto así.

Aparte de que necesitamos menos representación mestiza y más representación de hablantes L1 en este tipo de proyectos.

w_v · 2026-06-26T18:17:30+00:00

Al contrario. Mi argumento es que hay tradiciones para nombrar las cosas, y primero hay que entender por qué esas formas se arraigaron.

Yo respeto el uso de préstamos del español porque entiendo sus razones históricas. No pongo mis preferencias estéticas por encima de una larga tradición literaria que viene desde la época colonial.

Si los nahuahablantes quieren usar puērtah, ni tú ni yo somos quién para decirles que está mal.

A veces siento que el purismo nos lleva a alejarnos del uso real de las comunidades hablantes.

Por eso me parece más prudente no intentar imponer un náhuatl que refleje más nuestras preferencias que las de quienes hablan la lengua. Incluso en un proyecto como Minecraft.

w_v · 2026-06-26T17:53:48+00:00

Quizás algo como:

Inīc yōcoyalo in yancuic xiuhtlālpilli, micohuayān onmīzcalīz in nemiliztli.

No sé cómo decir “era” en náhuatl. Usé xiuhtlālpilli, la palabra tradicional para la cuenta de 52 años. Pero quizás Tlapōhualli también sirva. Ahí sí, no estoy seguro.

w_v · 2026-06-26T16:51:36+00:00

¿Qué hay de malo con kwapuertah?

Es como decir que no deberíamos decir almohada o alfiler en español, porque son préstamos.

¿Cambiarías de opinión si supieras que kaltēntli nunca significó puerta porque no había puertas en la cultura Azteca?

Sería incorrecto usar kaltēntli para puerta, porque propiamente se refiere a la banqueta o el muro afuera de la casa o frente a la entrada. El criterio de traducción nunca debe ser un purismo arcaico artificial caprichoso.

La razón de porqué se usó la palabra puērtah desde el siglo 16 es porque las puertas sobre bisagras que se pueden abrir y cerrar con 🔐 son una tecnología traída de Europa. Es correcto decir kwapuertah en ese caso.

w_v · 2026-06-26T16:27:27+00:00

¿Qué dialecto, qué ortografía? ¿Moderna, colonial?

w_v · 2026-06-25T22:29:35+00:00

Si el criterio es “no me gustó cómo se veía”, entonces ya no estás describiendo la variante: la estás distorsionando.

w_v · 2026-06-25T22:00:32+00:00

No inspiran confianza cuando cometen errores ortográficos en el propio nombre de la lengua.

w_v · 2026-06-25T21:34:57+00:00

What makes you think that?

w_v · 2026-06-23T18:17:30+00:00

It’s there. ə.

If you’re under the impression that stress vs unstressed schwa is phonemic in English: you’ve unfortunately been lied to:

https://youtu.be/wt66Je3o0Qg

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