Tetelcingo Nahuatl

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Tetelcingo Nahuatl
Mösiehuali
Pronunciation	[mɔasieˈwalɪ]
Spoken in	Tetelcingo, Morelos, Mexico
Total speakers	3,500 (1990[update])
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Southern Uto-Aztecan Aztecan General Aztec Aztec Tetelcingo Nahuatl
Writing system	Latin alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	nah
ISO 639-3	nhg
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Tetelcingo Nahuatl, or Mösiehuali, is a Nahuatl variety spoken by 3,500 people (as of 1990^[update]) in the town of Tetelcingo and its colonias, Colonia Cuauhtémoc and Colonia Lázaro Cárdenas, in Morelos, Mexico. Tetelcingo and its colonias are (as of 2008) practically absorbed into the urban area of the city of Cuautla, Morelos, and the Mösiehuali language and culture are under intense pressure.

The work of SIL International began with William Cameron Townsend's 1935 study of Tetelcingo Nahuatl.

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Vowels 1.2 Consonants 1.3 Honorifics 2 External links 3 References

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Vowels

Tetelcingo Nahuatl has converted the distinction of vowel quantity found in more conservative varieties into one of vowel quality. The short vowels /i e a o/ are reflected as /ɪ e a o/ in Tetelcingo, while the long vowels /iː eː aː oː/ become /i ⁱe ɔ^a u/.

[edit] Consonants

	Bilabial	Apical		Palato-alveolar	Velar		Glottal
		Central	Lateral		Unrounded	Rounded
Stops	p	t			k	kʷ
Affricates		ts	tɬ	tʃ
Fricatives		s		ʃ			h
Nasals	m	n
Approximants	(w)		l	j		w

Additional consonants may occur in loanwords from Spanish.

[edit] Honorifics

Another striking characteristic of Tetelcingo Nahuatl is the pervasiveness and complexity of its honorifics. Generally every 2nd or 3rd person verb, pronoun, postposition or possessed noun must be marked honorifically if its subject or object, designatum, object or possessor (respectively) is a living adult (the speaker's wife or adult children being exceptions). Extra-honorific forms of several kinds exist, especially for addressing or referring to godparental relations, high officials or God. Many third person honorifics use morphemes that in Classical Nahuatl were used to mark non-active (passive) verbs or unspecified or plural participants. Not infrequently a different (suppletive) stem is used for honorifics, or the honorific form is in some other way irregular.

A few examples are given below, using the orthography of Brewer and Brewer 1962. Where more than one form is listed, the second is more highly honorific.

Stem Meaning	2nd person sg	2nd person sg honorific	3rd person sg	3rd person sg honorific
pronoun	taja	tejuatzi	yaja	yejuatzi
one's house	mocal	mocaltzi	ical	tiecal, tiecaltzi
before	mixpa	mixpantzinco	ixpa	tieixpa, tieixpantzinco
go	tiya	tomobica	yabi	biloa, mobica
come	tibitz	timobicatz, tihualmobica	ibitz	biloatz, hualmobica
notice it, get it (a point)	tiquijtilia	tomojtililia	quijtilia	quijtililo
say it	tiquijtoa	tomojtalfia	quijtoa	quijtulo

[edit] External links

• Ethnologue
• Mösiehuali (SIL Mexico) — includes sound recordings
• Mösiehuali Honorifics — includes sound recordings
• Spanish loans in Mösiehuali — includes sound recordings
• Texts in Mösiehuali

[edit] References

• Brewer, Forrest, y Jean G. Brewer. 1962. Vocabulario mexicano de Tetelcingo. Vocabularios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves” 8. México: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
• Pittman, Richard S. 1948. “Nahuatl honorifics”. International Journal of American Linguistics 14:236-39.
• Pittman, Richard S. 1954. A grammar of Tetelcingo (Morelos) Nahuatl. Language Dissertation 50 (supplement to Language 30).
• Tuggy, David. 1979. “Tetelcingo Nahuatl”. Modern Aztec Grammatical Sketches, 1-140, Ronald W. Langacker, ed. Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar, vol. 2. Arlington, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington.