The Evolution and Influence of Spanish on the Nahuatl Language, Exams of Spanish

Download The Evolution and Influence of Spanish on the Nahuatl Language and more Exams Spanish in PDF only on Docsity! Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 9 NAHUATL: THE INFLUENCE OF SPANISH ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE AZTECS Nicolás del Castillo Great Neck, NY The Spanish Conquest of Mexico in the 16th century was responsible for a cultural diffusion in the realm of linguistics. The contact of the conquistadors from the Iberian Peninsula with the indigenous people of what is now Mexico set conditions for the exchange of customs and traditions. One area of culture that served to shape cultural contact is in the field of language. The Spanish came into contact with Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Dalby a writer of the Aztecs, gives a brief background explaining the origin of the Aztecs. He states (436) that Aztec intruders were in the Valley of Mexico in 1256. They founded Tenochtitlan in 1325, and began to expand their empire in the 15th century. Nahuatl was essential to Spanish conquerors and “Nahuatl continued to spread while some other languages died away” (Dalby, 436). Cultural exchanges between Spanish and Nahuatl speakers left neither language unaffected and speakers exchanged portions of their language with each other. An essential fact is that “[n]o distinction between the colonial language and that of today is more immediately apparent than the influence of Spanish” (Karttunen & Lockhart, xi). Groundbreaking examples of this are seen in the extensive usage of loanwords in Nahuatl, the syntactic structure of the language and other key linguistic patterns that can be traced back to the Conquest. Spanish brought by the conquistadors served as a catalyst for Nahuatl to undergo a major transformation like no other factor. Evidence of contact from other indigenous languages did not have nearly as much of influence as Spanish had on Nahuatl. Many elements of the Spanish language would radically transform Nahuatl. This is proven in the great gap between classical and modern Nahuatl early errors in recording keeping, and an inaccurate linguistic account of classical Nahuatl. The greatest factor responsible for the changes in the Nahuatl language throughout the colonial and into the modern era is the influence of Spanish. The infiltration of Spanish into Nahuatl was not overnight but progressive. In the “first three years speakers mainly resisted loans other than proper names” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 49) and they implemented “native elements in various ways: by identification, descriptive circumlocutions, and extensions” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 49). In the following period of borrowing came the emergence of nouns borrowed directly, unlike verbs which were not. In the second phase of borrowing the “surface phonetics of Spanish words […] [was] strongly assimilated […] [into] Nahuatl phonology” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 49). The third phase of borrowing came in the 1600’s when “verbs were borrowed” and several “idioms were translated” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 49). Karttunen states that the third stage continues into the present. The previous statement holds because the “standard conventions of adjustment to Spanish have remained unchanged since the early 18th century” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 49 ). Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 10 A key fact is that Nahuatl by 1700 or 1720 had become capable in principle of absorbing any Spanish word or construction. The rest has been done by continued, ever growing cultural pressures, bringing in more words and phrases as the two bodies of speakers became more intertwined and bilingualism increased. (Karttunen & Lockhart, 50). The concept of cultural diffusion as previously discussed is seen in Spanish contact with the Aztecs. The socio-cultural contacts may be proven by the “Nahuatl strategies of assimilation for the most part came out of regular processes of the preconquest language” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 49). What It’s Called Nahuatl scholars differ in what to call the language; some call it Mexicano, or Mexica in addition to Nahuatl. Another name is the Aztec mēcēhuallohtolli, “the speech of the common people’ (Karttunen, 502). “The Aztecs referred to any speech mutually intelligible with their own as nāhuatlahtōlli ‘clear speech’ or just Nahuatl” (Karttunen, 502). Most speakers today call the language of the Aztecs Mexicano, or Mexica. “Nahuatl (or Mexican, as it is also called)” (Andrews, vii) is the language of the Aztecs. Hill points out that “Mexicano often called Nahuatl is the language of indigenous peoples of central Mexico that has descended from pre-Columbian Aztec” (Hill & Hill, inside jacket flap). In Hill’s work Nahuatl is referred to as ‘Mexicano’. Hill states that “[a]lternate names for Mexicano are rare” (Hill & Hill 91) and “most modern scholars of the language call it Nahuatl” (Hill & Hill, 91) [but] this word appears only once” in their material. Hill’s argument for using the word Mexicano and not Nahuatl continues stating that “[M]exicano is specifically mentioned as a ‘popular name’ for the language as early as 1600” (Hill & Hill, 91) thus emphasizing the traditional usage since the 17th century. Other scholars of the language such as Karttunen and Lockhart prefer to call it Nahuatl. In either case Mexicano and Nahuatl refer to the same language with the stipulation that Nahuatl may be seen as ‘modern Mexicano’. Hill’s preference in calling the language of the Aztecs as Mexicano as opposed to Nahuatl is because “[t]he term Mexicano is very old, in both popular and scholarly usage” (Hill & Hill, 91) and [t]he earliest grammars and dictionaries of the language refer to it by this term, and a survey of major bibliographies of the literature reveals that the most common modern scholarly usage, ‘Nahuatl’, does not begin to appear regularly until the end of the nineteenth century (qtd. in Bright 1967, A. Leon-Portilla 1972). The problem with referring to the same language by different names is that meaning could take divergent paths. For example, The Nahuatl which Marina had used as a child was that spoken in the southern marches of the Mexican empire. This dialect had certain differences from the language of Tenochtitlan. Malinche was [C]hristened “Marina” by the Castillians since her real name [that] sounded like that “L” in Nahuatl is pronounced “R” in Spanish (Thomas, 172). Based on Thomas’ passage Malinche Mexicano is different from Nahuatl. Another problem with research on Nahuatl as the object of study for change is in Muser’s definition of Mexicano which can take Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 13 language from Spanish, Spanish loanwords are often represented, especially in texts of the earlier centuries, with letter substitutions which appear to correspond to pronunciations” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 1). Spanish loanwords that entered Nahuatl were not fully borrowed in the sense that the exact spelling, meaning and sound of the word was adopted: “[n]o phonetic contrast in Spanish represented by b/v, which led to mutual substitution” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 1). Karttunen gives examples of the letter swapping in (vida > bida), (bigornia > vicornia), (caballo > cavallo). The first word is the Spanish the second is the Spanish loanword in Nahuatl. Other Borrowings and features Loanwords may be accompanied a subset of cultural terms such as the measurements of time by Nahuatl that were based on Spanish vocabulary. These changes took place fewer than three decades after the Conquest. Karttunen believes “that as early as 1545 if not earlier, central Mexican Nahuatl had borrowed all the Spanish words for the days of the week and the months of the year” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 53). Their research includes Molina’s Vocabulario of 1571 in their loanwords list. Some of Molina’s words include: escrivano from the Spanish escribano (scribe, notary. What is interesting to observe in this case is the b and the v which in Spanish sound the same, may have been misplaced when incorporated. A consistent pattern can be seen when analyzing the loanwords in the days of the week. Although semana (week) remained the same, the days or week did not. The Spanish words for Tuesday and Thursday are martes and jueves, respectively, while Nahuatl has martestica and juevestica. Tracing language manipulation in the rise of the Japanese syllabaries is comparable to the situations previously discussed in Nahuatl. The Japanese language was only a spoken language until the emergence of the manyoogana syllabary. Manyoogana eventually gave rise to hiragana in that some of its characters were incorporated using the cursive technique that made some characters more aesthetically attractive. The –tica suffix could possibly be the Nahuatl version of a similar aesthetic process. Loanwords involve the problem of voiced and unvoiced sounds which include t, s, k, and p for the unvoiced, and the counterpart of d, z, g and b for the voiced. Some examples from Molina’s vocabulary list that show the pairs of voiced and unvoiced are in the following words, trigo (wheat), drigo, and puñal (dagger), and bunal. Both pairs contain unvoiced and voiced consonants that were switched when creating a loanword. In Japanese there were problems in distinguishing the voiced and unvoiced sounds attached to the manyoogana characters. There was no distinction. In the relatively modern syllabaries of hiragana and katakana there are distinguishing marks that set the voiced apart from the unvoiced. This was accomplished using the double prime and the degree symbol. In Japanese the k sound and hiragana and katakana syllabary change to the g sound when the double prime symbol is added to the character. The Spanish word clérigo (cleric) was transformed into Nahuatl as glericosme. The unvoiced k is traded for the voiced g sound. In a different case in Molina’s vocabulary list is in the word bonete (cap) which entered Nahuatl as ponetes, the voiced b replaced with the unvoiced p. This was the reverse of the previous example. The voiced/unvoiced pattern was an important issue in dealing with the correct pronunciation of manyoogana as was in the direct borrowing of words with regards to the retention of the proper voiced and unvoiced pattern. Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 14 Cultural Transfers Language is closely connected with its society, so any ambiguity in that is particular to the language may be difficult to transfer. Nahuatl “[l]ike many of the languages of the Uto-Aztecan family” (Hill & Hill, 170) has few adjectives. This is seen in the fact that Mexicano speakers today use adjectives of both Mexicano and Spanish etymology sparingly, even in long and enthusiastic narratives. In the acquisition of loanwords for Mexicano, they added the suffix –tic to nouns or verb stems. (Hill & Hill, 171) An example of this is mulahtic from the Spanish word mula (mule). Mula and the suffix –tic combined. The problem with Spanish adjectives is that they could be adjectives or nouns thus making matters ambiguous. For example “the adjective viejo can appear alone as el viejo ‘the old man’, and must be classified in such a case syntactically as a noun” (Hill & Hill, 171). Using an adjective introduces another piece in the puzzle because it is an addition to Nahuatl that was caused by the Spanish language’s impact. The Spanish adjectives borrowed by Mexicano can be classified as comparative and ordinal and “might be said to fill a genuine lexical gap, since Classical Mexicano [or Nahuatl] used various types of conjunctions for comparisons” (Hill & Hill, 173). A Spanish speaker who says mi casa es más mejor (my house is better) would be manifesting an incorrect usage of the language, but in Mexicano it is not. The Spanish comparatives such as más (more) and menos (less) “are very common and often appear doubled with one another and with Mexicano forms and this doubling yields construction such as más mejor ‘more better’” ((Hill & Hill, 174). Another linguistic issue is the tendency “to render Spanish /v/ as Mexicano /w/” (Hill & Hill, 199). Some evidence in the loanwords that from Spanish to Nahuatl in which the transformation of /f/ is /p/ is illustrated “by the Nahuatl loan word Josepa” (Hill & Hill, 200) which in Spanish is Josefa. Another Nahuatl loanword is brijolito (bean) is taken from the Spanish word frijolito (Hill & Hill, 200). When the Spanish /f/ is replaced by the Nahuatl /b/ we have brondosamente (leafy). In Spanish that is frondosamente (Hill & Hill, 200). Both these examples show evidence of imperfect infiltration of Spanish into Nahuatl. Further examples of loanwords do also. The Nahuatl word burgatorio (purgatory) lies in the Spanish purgatorio. The Spanish /p/ was replaced by /b/. aside from the voiced and unvoiced sounds the fundamental nature of the word could easily be traced to Spanish. Speakers of Nahuatl “commonly delete Spanish unstressed initial syllables” (Hill & Hill, 208). Three examples of this are in the Nahuatl huelito (grandfather), pende (it depends), and penas (hardly, suddenly). The Spanish words are abuelito, depende and apenas. Nahuatl loanwords you have seen have not been a mirror image of Spanish words. In Hill’s study is the exchange of words or in the borrowing process, sometimes there are intruders that jump in. Nahuatl adopted the saltillo (little jump) although with a different meaning. The intruders previously discussed are sounds of the letters k and n. In Malinche Mexicano (Hill & Hill, 209) examples of this include the words respecto (respect) and actoridad (authority). In these words the intruder inserted itself in the former case and in the latter replaced the u with a c. Parallel are negoncio (business) and sancerdotes from the words negocio and sacerdotes. The letter n we can say jumped in. The k sound is common “in Malinche Mexicano speech” (Hill & Hill, 209). The intrusive letter n alters the original spelling of the Spanish mucho (much) into muncho as well as así (thus) into Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 15 ansi (Hill & Hill, 211). In Malinche Mexicano there are other cases in which the n can be said to escapes from the beginning of the word. This linguistic phenomenon adds a touch of humor in the study of Spanish influence on Nahuatl. Hill provides some examples of this occurrence, número (number) and nailón (nylon) that became umero and ailoh. We have noticed thus far the why parts but not the how. Now the How There is a pattern in how these words came into existence. A key piece of the puzzle is that in Nahuatl stress in most cases on the penultimate syllable. In Malinche Mexicano timah-tin (blankets) has its stress on the first syllable. That is “an exception to the usual pattern of penultimate stress in Malinche Mexicano” (Hill & Hill, 164). The first syllable of the words abuelito, depende and apenas are unstressed and that gives a possible option as to why the words came to be in the way that they were, since ‘[s]tress in Nahuatl is [almost] always on the penultimate syllable” (Karttunen, 504). A unique characteristic in the Nahuatl language is the saltillo, a sound effected by the quick opening and closing of the glottis. Since the saltillo was something foreign to Spanish and Latin, some recorders of Nahuatl neglected to take note of it in their writings. Hill states that a “phonological feature of Mexicano that confused Spanish scholars was the glottal consonant, called saltillo ‘little jump’ by the early grammarians, who heard it as a glottal stop in the Mexicano spoken in the Valley of Mexico” (Hill & Hill, 63). According to dictionary.com, glottal stop is synonymous with glottal plosive and glottal catch, defined as “[a] speech sound produced by a momentary complete closure of the glottis, followed by an explosive release.” A critical element in the pronunciation and meaning “of Aztec words is the “glottal stop,’” (van Zantwijk, xxii) The inadequate recording of Nahuatl caused a transformation due to the Spanish linguistic limitation when it comes to the saltillo. The he error was not only in modern texts, which if that had been the case then other scholars could use an older reference to understand the saltillo; “[u]nfortunately, most colonial and modern writers do no indicate this glottal stop in their spellings. Therefore we sometimes have to guess whether the saltillo had to be written” (van Zantwijk, xxii). Andrews (xiii) boldly places it in the preface of his Introduction to Classical Nahuatl that “[a]mong the more aggravating problems faced in writing this grammar have been those of vowel length and glottal stops.” His comment on glottal stop is related to the Saltillo. A problem with the proper representation of Nahuatl has been the fact that it is a language that seems strange to those of us familiar with Latin and the Romance languages. Van Zantwijk (xxi) states that the spelling of [Nahuatl] was created by Spaniards and their Indian apprentices in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Therefore, Nahuatl is generally pronounced in agreement with the rules valid for the Spanish language of that time” Because the Spanish language was so different from Nahuatl it facilitated more errors and increased the chance of making a poor translation or misrepresentation. Had the Spanish conquered a land where people spoke Italian or Portuguese matters would have been quite different because all languages concerned trace their roots to Latin. Having a common lineage they naturally would share linguistic similarities. It would not have been as difficult to keep an accurate record of linguistic interaction. Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 18 incorporation of noun loans” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 16). The research of these scholars includes a list of Molina’s loanwords of 1571. In the list there were three main categories labeled as Concrete, Quasi- concrete, and More Abstract. The first category branches off into two sections labeled biological and inanimate. In the first section of the Concrete category plants and animals provided the most loanwords. In the inanimate section an overwhelming majority of loanwords were for “artifacts based on new principles and/or made of new material” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 17). The Quasi-Concrete category is defined as possessing “a concrete referent distinguished by an abstract quality” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 17). The characterization of individuals was the leading category for the most number of loanwords. Lastly, the More Abstract section’s loanwords were religious, trumping all the remaining topics including legal. Aside from the patterns of the loanwords there is also a rule for certain loanwords. The general rule is “that any Spanish word ending in a vowel was pronounced with a final glottal stop in Nahuatl” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 22). This rule was applied by Carochi and his “rule holds true for vowel-final Spanish words in various Nahuatl dialects to this day (Karttunen & Lockhart, 22). Nahuatl was influenced by Spanish but modified Spanish. Dialects of Nahuatl still use Spanish words. Other Influences “Besides Nahuatl, over a hundred languages were spoken in New Spain” (Gruzinski, 98). A ground-breaking opinion formulated by Karttunen is in the uniqueness of the language contact of Spanish and Nahuatl. “It is a remarkable thing that though linguistic and cultural diffusion is a strong characteristic of preconquest Meso-America, Nahuatl gives no unequivocal indication of having had any conventional ways of dealing with language contact before the intrusion of Spanish” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 50). Since there have been no clear signs that Nahuatl had any predictable ways of handling a sudden language contact. Some language contact was with similar indigenous languages, so no major adjustments had to be made or the influence of those other languages was relatively small. In either case no other language could have changed Nahuatl as radically as Spanish and that influence lasted from the 16th century onwards. Karttunen claims that this is so even though “that there are many loanwords from other Indian languages in Nahuatl” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 50). They add that “Nahuatl behaved as though it had never borrowed a word, concept or construction before, going through an entire self-contained process in relation to Spanish alone” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 50). Most likely the other Meso-American languages were more closely related to Nahuatl than Spanish. Two other factors to keep in mind were the fact that Nahuatl “had been a much more [of] a donor [language] than recipient in contact situations” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 50). Nahuatl had been the giver locally and suddenly became the taker. There is not much evidence of Nahuatl vocabulary that came from other Indio languages. Nahuatl had contact with other languages, true, but Karttunen shows that borrowing was very little. Spanish was not the only language that influenced Nahuatl. Dalby states as a historical reference that “[a]t the crossroads of Mexican culture, Nahuatl naturally contains loanwords from other American languages” (Dalby, 437). The early Olmec civilization spoke a Mixe-Zoque language. From this source comes nixtamalli (maize dough), a staple food. From Mixe-Zoque too (proto-Mixe-Zoque kakawa) come the Nahuatl cacao that eventually entered the European languages (e.g., English chocolate, cocoa)” (see Dalby, 437). It is natural for cultures to influence one another, but so great an impact as Spanish on Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 19 Nahuatl, lasting for centuries into the present, is unusual. Minor Mesoamerican languages played a smaller role in the transformation of Nahuatl that evolved over the course of centuries. Proof of major influence of the Spanish language is in the spelling of words. “Soon after the conquest of Mexico, Franciscan friars adapted Spanish and Latin orthographic conventions to the alphabetic representation of Nahuatl” (Karttunen, 502). A second indicator of major Spanish influence on Nahuatl Karttunen notes in that “[a]lphabetic writing was immediately adopted for community record keeping and legal documentation, and there are dated samples of written Nahuatl for every decade from the 1540’s through the first decade of the 19th century” (502). “Nahuatl speakers had used a logosyllabic writing system similar to (and undoubtedly derived from) those used by the Zapotec, Maya and Mixtec” (Karttunen, 502). The Mexican Language A new Mexicano language was evolving as the incorporation of Spanish linguistic elements crept into it. The sequence previously discussed shows that “syntactic innovations may take place which have no precedent in either Spanish or Mexicano” (Hill & Hill, 293). This can be explained as two parents, (in this analogy Spanish and Mexicano, who gave birth to two sons. The first son is mostly like the Spanish parent with minor features of the Mexicano parent. The second son is clearly like the Mexicano parent. The first son may be interpreted as Spanish with influence of Nahuatl or Mexicano. The second son may be seen as the New Nahuatl, new because Nahuatl before the Conquest was different. What makes the influence of the Spanish language so unique is that it went deep to change certain roots of the language. Nahuatl had been affected by other languages but relative to the Spanish those changes were superficial. Cultural diffusion took place despite linguistic difficulties in the adoption of loanwords from Spanish into Nahuatl and the accurate state of Nahuatl phonetics has been poorly recorded because of the great differences in language. Because it has undergone so many changes due to Spanish influence the contact between the languages gave rise to new language, Mexican Spanish. According to Andrews (p. x) Nahuatl has never been presented in its peculiarity. Grammars of the language have presented it from foreign perspectives. Latin, Spanish, French and German have served as frameworks for the description of linguistic phenomena that are meaningless in such contexts. Andrews states that “[t]he result has frequently been that what is merely exotic has become evidently idiotic” (Andrews, x). He argues that there have been misconceptions about the Nahuatl language as some people have tried to play down the exotic nature of Nahuatl by misrepresenting their language system “as if they were merely disguised Indo-European structures” (Andrews, x). A writer on the Aztecs shares similar frustrations in the imprecision of words, for example, “[t]he correct Nahuatl form “Motecuhzoma” has been adopted for the third and seventh Aztece kings, in preference to inaccurate variants such as “Montezuma” and “moctezuma.” An Imperfect Account of Nahuatl. Early Spanish friars attempting to obtain a precise accounting of the indio language realized how different the languages were and “that they had to devise a new terminology for this utterly different tongue” (Dalby, 437). As for verbs, new concepts came out named compulsive or applicative. The introduction of new verb classifications may have helped to play up distinctions from Spanish or Latin verb classifications. Even though this may be true, a perfect account of classical Nahuatl was not Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics Volume 38 2012 20 achieved by the Spanish. The prudent decision of the Spanish friars was seen in their use of new terminology. From the perspective of people with a European language background, their task was not easy and Andrews claims that Nahuatl was poorly represented. Clearly the Iberians had a difficult time in getting a clear account of the language. Not only were phonetics a problem but when Nahuatl was recorded the bias of Spanish speakers skewed recording. Divergence Has Been Little Studied What makes the study of the Spanish influence on Nahuatl challenging is that “[l]ingustic divergence has been little studied” (Hill & Hill, 56). Languages are difficult to translate from one to another. Andrews declares: “To describe the grammar of a Spanish or English translation as if one were describing the grammar of the Nahuatl source is merely to create bewilderment and a willingness to allow nonsensical translations to stand as valid representations of Nahuatl thought” (p. x). The Spanish language placed heavy hand on Nahuatl, yet “inflectional convergence between Spanish and Mexicano had been very restricted” (Hill & Hill, 57). From the inception of the Conquest “Nahuatl was being recorded in writing: in sculpted inscriptions, usually brief; and in picture books” (Dalby, 436). The Aztecs during “the Spanish Conquest, introduce[d] the European alphabet, supplied their scholars with a more perfect continuance for expressing thought, which soon supplanted the ancient pictorial character” (Prescott, 76-77). Prescott supports the statement (p. 82) claiming that “[i]n less than a hundred years after the Conquest, the knowledge of the hieroglyphics had.” It was only in fairly recent times that scholars learned how to read Mayan inscriptions and even when people were around who could more or less tell the Spanish what the names of the old ruinas were the Spanish settled for calling these buildings by Spanish names such as castillo (castle). The zealous Spanish clerics destroyed many indio codexes with their pictorial writings, condemning them as idolatrous and heretical. Only a few such documents have survived. During the Conquest “the Mexicano-speaking Aztecs kept records in a notational system” that “combined pictographic symbols of the rebus type” (Hill & Hill, 61). For example, the Aztecs used “small footprints to indicate travel, or a picture of a face with curlicues issuing from the lips to indicate speaking” (Hill & Hill, 61). Although many of the books were lost, ancient pictograms along with Spanish interpretations are found in the Codex Mendoza, a bilingual manuscript. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (p. 2199) pictograph (which is synonymous to pictogram) is defined as “[a] pictorial symbol or sign; esp. a symbol representing a word or group of words in a writing system.” Dalby states that “Mexican pictograms stood for a sequence of ideas” (Dalby, 437). After the Conquest Nahuatl was supplanted by the “addition of an alphabetic writing system based on Spanish orthography” (Hill & Hill, 61) Karttunen points out that “[t]he orthographic conventions of early 16th century Spanish formed the basis of Nahuatl orthography except in a few details” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 1). An example of the details were in that case that “[t]he affricative [ts], which corresponded to one that had existed in Spanish but apparently had been lost before contact with Nahuatl, was represented as tz” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 1) Evidence of language manipulation and influence by the Spanish in the post-conquest era is seen in fact that in the “18th century Nahuatl orthography followed Spanish changes as to s and made adjustments related to changes in Spanish ll” (Karttunen & Lockhart, 1). These transformations are attributed to the linguistics of Spanish. A relatively immediate change in Nahuatl came when Spanish orthography