Nahuatl:
The Evolution of an Ancient Language
Curated by Erin Richardson (Archives Intern - Spring 2024)
Nahuatl, or Mexicana, is the language of the Nahua people, and was the most broadly spoken language of the Aztec empire. There are roughly 1.5 million Mexican people who speak Nahuatl today. The Nahuatl language has a rich history, beginning in the 7th century and lasting until today.
The Aztecs had a rich oral tradition that transferred to a fully developed pictographic writing system. While very little of these pictographic texts remain due to the destruction of Aztec materials by the Spanish, the few that remain tell of historical, mythical, and cosmological events. With the arrival of the Spanish, the Nahuatl language began to adopt the Latin alphabet into its writing system. Nahuatl words written in the Latin alphabet were used alongside the pictorial writing.
In 1519, the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire lead by Hernán Cortés began and Nahuatl evolved again. Latin alphabetical text started to replace pictorial writing, and some Aztecs began to record orally kept literature, songs and poems. Along with the Spanish conquest came Franciscan and Dominican friars to speed along the Aztec’s forced assimilation to Spanish culture by converting them to Christianity.
By the end of the conquest in 1521, friars were beginning to write books on Nahuatl grammar, vocabulary, and religious material. By 1550, Nahuatl began to borrow Spanish nouns, and created new words to describe imported materials. Spanish also began to borrow words from Nahuatl. Avocado, chili, and chocolate are English words that have Nahuatl origin. Despite the Spanish’s attempted to squash out Aztec culture, the culture has persisted until today, and still maintains a strong presence in central Mexico. The Nahuatl language evolved during the conquest of the Aztec empire and continued to evolve during the colonization of Mexico. Now, it is spoken by 1.5 million people and is revered as a culturally rich language that is one of the most studied languages of the Americas.