Written Standardisation of Nahuatl Aimed at the Generation of Reading and Learning Resources

Abstract

This paper proposes an alphabet that can be standardized for writing the Nahuatl language in Mexico. Due to the extensive alphabetic dialectal diversification, each Nahua population writes its variety in a unique way, so there is no written consensus on the language as such, making it difficult to generate academic and other resources for teaching and learning it and even for access to basic services such as public healthcare. A compendium of resources is presented, composed of samples from the writing of diverse Nahua communities and from the institutionalized variety, which went through an evolution across the viceregal colonial period that spans from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, until Mexico’s independent existence from the Spanish crown. Subsequently, a comparative analysis of their spellings and the relationship they have with phonetics is carried out to finally generate a standardizable writing alphabet. Only certain aspects of the dialectal varieties present in communities, municipalities or regions, ranging from the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí to Tlaxcala, are mentioned, and their crucial elements are taken for their harmonization with the historically institutionalized writing form, without delving deeply into each alphabetic dialectal variety because of how extensive this would be, apart from this not being necessarily aligned with the purposes of the project in the making. By combining graphic elements of the varieties mentioned here, an alphabet capable of being understandable both in Nahua communities and in the academic environment is proposed, facilitating the study of Nahuatl both among people who are beginning to learn it and those who speak it partially, as well as anyone seeking to complement their knowledge.