Nahuatl dialects Totally Explained

Everything about Nahuatl Dialects totally explained

The Uto Aztecan Nahuatl language can be grouped into two rough dialect continua, labelled the central and the peripheral dialects.
   The nucleus of the central area is the Valley of Mexico, where the Aztec empire was founded and where it expanded from. Classical Nahuatl, the enormously influential language spoken by the people of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was one of the central dialects, as are the dialects spoken in that area today. The central dialect area also includes variants spoken in Morelos, Estado de México, Southern Hidalgo, Northwest Puebla, Tlaxcala, and (perhaps) Southeastern Puebla and the Orizaba-Zongolica region of Veracruz. The central dialects are generally considered to have been relatively innovative.
   The Peripheral dialects are spoken in areas more distant from the center of the Aztec empire. There is much diversity within the peripheral dialects and various subdivisions among them have been proposed. Peripheral dialects are spoken in Durango, La Huasteca, Guerrero, Tabasco, Veracruz, and the southern Pacific coast as far away as El Salvador.
   In her article "Nahuatl dialectology: A survey and some suggestions" (IJAL 54.1. 28-72.) Una Canger summarises research in Nahuatl Dialectology and suggests some diagnostic traits serving to establish central and peripheral dialect continua. Her suggested classification is supported, in general outline, by the enormous dialectological survey conducted by Yolanda Lastra de Suárez, published (1986: UNAM) as "Las Áreas Dialectales del Náhuatl Moderno". Lastra subdivides the Peripheral dialects into an eastern, a western and a La Huasteca area. Her classification stands as the most accepted to this day.
   Lastra's detailed classification is as follows:

Western periphery
- West coast
- Western México State
- Durango-Nayarit
Eastern Periphery
- Sierra de Puebla
- Isthmus
- Pipil
Huasteca
Center
- Nuclear sub-area
- Puebla-Tlaxcala
- Xochiltepec-Huatlatlauca
- Southeastern Puebla
- Central Guerrero
- Southern Guerrero

All these dialectal areas constitute what may be called General Aztec or Nahuatl proper: it's generally accepted that Pochutec (now extinct) is different enough from all of these to warrant being counted as a sister Nahuan language to General Aztec.

Difficulties of classification

The dialectal situation is very complex and most categorizations, including the one presented above, are, in the nature of things, controversial. Lastra herself says, for instance, that "The isoglosses rarely coincide. As a result, one can give greater or lesser importance to a feature and make the [dialectal] division that one judges appropriate/convenient" (1986:189). And after giving the above classification, she immediately makes the caveat: "We insist that this classification isn't [entirely] satisfactory" (1986:190).
An early attempt to classify the Nahuan dialects was made by Juan Hasler, on the basis of the variance of the phoneme which in Classical Nahuatl and many other dialects is /tɬ/, in some eastern and southern dialects is /t/, and in a few dialects /l/. He assumed that since the /tɬ/ had been shown by Benjamin Lee Whorf to be derived from proto Uto-Aztecan */ta/ that the group of /t/ dialects were conservative and the /tɬ/ and /l/ dialects more innovative. However, it was later established that at least some t-dialects had also undergone the */ta/>/tɬ/ change and had later changed /tɬ/ back to /t/ in some positions. Hasler's "tetradialectology" is now considered less than fully useful because it's based on this one sole trait, which doesn't coincide usefully with other isoglosses, and because the crucial assumption which gave that trait extra significance has been contradicted.
Some of the isoglosses used by Canger to establish the Peripheral vs. Central dialectal dichotomy are these:

Central	Peripheral
#e- initial vowel e	#ye- epenthetic y before initial e
mochi "all"	nochi "all"
totoltetl "egg"	teksistli "egg"
tesi "to grind"	tisi "to grind"
-h/ʔ plural subject suffix	-lo plural subject suffix
-tin preferred noun plural	-meh preferred noun plural
o- past augment	- absence of augment
-nki/-wki "perfect participle forms"	-nik/-wik "perfect participle forms"
tliltik "black"	yayawik "black"
-ki agentive suffix	-ketl/-katl agentive suffix

None of these isoglosses is without its problems, of course. For instance, Tetelcingo Nahuatl, a rather solidly nuclear Central dialect, has ye- and nochi, has neither h nor ʔ nor -lo for marking plurals (but presumably had and lost h), uses (reflexes of) both -meh and -tin, uses the past augment optionally, has both -nki/-wki and -nik/-wik, and uses neither tliltik nor yayawik. On the other three isoglosses, it's solidly Central, however!

Intelligibility

The differences among the dialects are not trivial, and in many cases result in very low intelligibility: people who speak one dialect can't understand or be understood by those from another. Thus by many people’s criteria they'd be considered different languages. The ISO divisions referenced below respond to intelligibility more than to historical or reconstructional considerations. Like the higher-level groupings, they also are not self-evident, and are subject to considerable controversy.
Nevertheless these variants all are clearly related, and more closely related to each other than to Pochutec, and they and Pochutec are more closely related to each other than to any other Uto-Aztecan languages (such as Cora or Huichol, Tepehuán and Tarahumara, Yaqui/Mayo, etc.)

List of Nahuatl dialects recognized in ISO 639-3 by number of speakers

(name [ISOsubgroup code] – location(s) ~approx. number of speakers)

Eastern Huasteca [nhe] – Hidalgo, Western Veracruz, Northern Puebla ~450,000

Western Huasteca [nhw] – San Luis Potosí, Western Hidalgo ~450,000

Guerrero [ngu] – Guerrero ~200,000

Orizaba [nlv] – Central Veracruz ~140,000

Southeastern Puebla [nhs] – Southeast Puebla ~135,000

Highland Puebla [azz] – Puebla Highlands ~125,000

Northern Puebla [ncj] – Northern Puebla ~66,000

Central [nhn] – Tlaxcala, Puebla ~50,000

Isthmus-Mecayapan [nhx] – Southern Veracruz ~20,000

Central Puebla [ncx] – Central Puebla ~18,000

Morelos [nhm] – Morelos ~15,000

Northern Oaxaca [nhy] – Northwestern Oaxaca, Southeastern Puebla ~10,000

Huaxcaleca [nhq] – Puebla ~7,000

Isthmus-Pajapan [nhp] – Southern Veracruz ~7,000

Isthmus-Cosoleacaque [nhk] – Northwestern Coastal Chiapas, Southern Veracruz ~5,500

Tetelcingo [nhg] – Morelos ~3,500

Michoacán [ncl] – Michoacán ~3,000

Santa María de la Alta [nhz] – Northwest Puebla ~3,000

Tenango [nhi] – Northern Puebla ~2,000

Tlamacazapa [nuz] – Morelos ~1,500

Coatepec [naz] – Southwestern México State, Northwestern Guerrero ~1,500

Durango [nln] – Southern Durango ~1,000

Ometepec [nht] – Southern Guerrero, Western Oaxaca ~500

Temascaltepec [nhv] – Southwestern México State ~300

Tlalitzlipa [nhj] – Puebla ~100

Pipil [ppl] – El Salvador ~100

Tabasco [nhc] – Tabasco

Nahuatl variants recognized by the Mexican Government

This list is take from the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI)'s Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales, published in the Diario Oficial on 14 January 2008,(External Link

) pp.106-129.) The full document has variations on the names especially as “autodenominaciones”, or names the people themselves use for their language. It also has lists (in many cases long lists) of towns where each variant is spoken.

náhuatl de la Sierra, noreste de Puebla

náhuatl del noroeste central

náhuatl del Istmo

mexicano de la Huasteca veracruzana

náhuatl de la Huasteca potosina

náhuatl de Oaxaca

náhuatl de la Sierra negra, sur

náhuatl de la Sierra negra, norte

náhuatl central de Veracruz

náhuatl de la Sierra oeste

náhuatl alto del norte de Puebla

náhuatl del Istmo bajo

náhuatl del centro de Puebla

mexicano bajo de occidente

mexicano del noroeste

mexicano de Guerrero

mexicano de occidente

mexicano central de occidente

mexicano central bajo

mexicano de Temixco

mexicano de Puente de Ixtla

mexicano de Tetela del Volcán

mexicano alto de occidente

mexicano del oriente

mexicano del oriente central

mexicano del centro bajo

mexicano del centro alto

mexicano del centro

mexicano del oriente de Puebla

mexicano de la Huasteca HidalguenseFurther Information

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