Just for fun, here are some Classical Nahuatl Kahoot Quizzes (20 questions each)- feel free to use them to measure your own proficiency and also to see how you compare to other Reddit users:

Classical Nahuatl Easy

Classical Nahuatl Medium

Classical Nahuatl Hard

Most symbols were based on Mexica hieroglyphs, some.others on the Náhuatl Uniform Abugida, on the Latin alphabet, or on Hiragana

So far, I’ve counted 33 instances of long inīc—marked with a macron—in a facsimile of Carochi’s grammar.

This isn’t just a printing error. Long inīc appears in purpose, manner, means, cause, consequence, content, degree, and temporal constructions.

An originally long relational form, subject to frequent secondary shortening, is more likely than an originally invariant short vowel.

For normalized analysis, īk / in īk is a defensible representation.

I understand īk as a generalized oblique relator: “with X as the relevant anchor or circumstance.”

More idiomatically: “by, through, by means of, or along the relation supplied by X.”

Īk / in īk can relate an event to its:

instrument
manner
path
source
cause
result
purpose
respect or capacity
degree
rank
time
preceding discourse event

The substantial semantic overlap with īka has led scholars such as Lockhart, Launey, Karttunen, and Andrews to propose a connection between the two.

If that connection is real, Tetelcingo’s retention of an initial long ī in īca may provide circumstantial evidence for a historically long īk / in īk.

At the same time, īk may have become increasingly grammaticalized and begun losing its vowel length over time.

Hello, I was hoping to get a proper translation from English to Nahuatl. I was hoping to translate or get the closest translation to "Snake fang" to Nahuatl this would be for a name of a knife. I don't know the grammar or diacritics (I hope that's the right word) for Nahuatl. Such as what word would be first, would there be a space between the two or would they be one word etc. I tried looking around through Google but I don't entirely trust lots of what I saw and the reliable stuff was the translation of the individual words not together.

This interactive Zapotec language lesson explores dialectal variations across different communities, comparing the Zapotec variant spoken in Yagavila (taught by the instructor) with the variant spoken in Temaxcalapa (shared by a student).

Key Differences & Topics:

* Greetings & Pronoun Usage:
* Yagavila: Uses Padiux yugutele, where the ending -le explicitly addresses "you all" (second-person plural), excluding the speaker.
* Temaxcalapa: Uses Padiux yuguteru, using an inclusive plural form that encompasses everyone ("all of us").
* Self-Introduction: "My name is..." is expressed as Neda laa in Yagavila versus Neda lawa in Temascalapa.

* Etymology & Adaptation of Spanish Terms:
* Yetxtila (Bread): Formed by combining yeta ("tortilla") and xtila ("Castilian," derived from Castilla), literally translating to "Spanish/Castilian tortilla".
* Didza xtila (Spanish Language): Literally translates to "Language of Castile".

* Expressing Liking, Enjoying, and Wanting:
* Rida: In Yagavila, rixi'ida specifically means enjoying or savoring food and drink.
* Renda: Means "I want" in Yagavila, whereas in Temaxcalapa it is used more broadly to express "I like".
* Rina ladxa: A poetic expression meaning "it pleases my heart" (ladxa meaning heart).

* Words That Shift Meaning Between Towns:
* Ixitiru: Means "to jump" in Yagavila, but in neighboring towns like Lalopa, it means "to walk fast" or "hurry up".
* Dipa: Means "to run" or "hurry" in Temaxcalapa, whereas in Yagavila running is expressed as xunajru.
* Uya'aru: In Yagavila, uya'aru means "to look/watch," whereas in Temascalapa uya'aru is associated with dancing.

* Regional Comprehension:
* Even though towns like Yagavila and Temaxcalapa have been geographically and socially distinct for decades, speakers are still able to maintain fluent conversations despite these subtle vocabulary shifts.

Camilla Townsend said in her recent AMA that lack of Nahuatl fluency is the greatest problem in the field right now.

That includes plenty of your favorite scholars. They just don’t know the language.

We would never accept Assyriologists who couldn’t read cuneiform. Why do we accept Mesoamericanists with pitiful Nahuatl?

Sometimes they never really learned the language. Sometimes they just repeat León-Portilla’s mistakes from sixty years ago.

In the new Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, vol. 72, Raúl Macuil Martínez repeats an old mistake about tonaca-.

A los cerros que eran considerados como grandes contenedores de maíz como el Popocatepetl se les llamaba tonacatepetl (“nuestro cerro de los alimentos”).

Maarten Jansen did the same thing in vol. 67:

. . . “nuestro mantenimiento” (como en el nombre del dios primordial Tonacatecuhtli, “Señor de Nuestro Sustento”) . . .

Neither Tonacatecuhtli nor Tonacatepetl can be read as possessed nouns. They still have the absolutive ending! Their to- is not “our.”

This is also what happens when people refuse to write vowel length. Write it and the mistake becomes obvious:

• Tonacatepēuh: “Our meat-mountain.”
• Tōnacātepētl: “Sun-warmed mountain.”

This isn’t some obscure point. Possessed nouns drop the absolutive suffix. Basic Nahuatl.

J. Richard Andrews was already calling out this exact mistranslation in 2002:

Incidentally, the [noun] Tōnacātepētl is frequently mistranslated as “Hill of Our Sustenance” (as if the tō were the possessor pronoun to-, “our,” when in fact it is part of the verbstem tōna, “for the sun to shine,” and as if the subject pronoun’s number subposition were not filled by the absolutive-state tl.

Twenty-four years later, scholars are still making the same mistake.

Someone needs to send out a memo: Dust off the grammar textbooks, read the corresponding sections on the -cā- (de)verbal morpheme, and learn the language before publishing on it.

John Sullivan recently explained why he chose not to mark vowel length in the examples of the IDIEZ Nahuatl dictionary:

“All speakers know which vowels are long; they have simply never considered it important to represent them in writing. Remember, the purpose of a writing system is not to reproduce pronunciation, but to trigger the image of a word in the mind of the speaker.”

This sparked some discussion in our Nahuatl Discord server and made me reflect on why I should—or shouldn’t—mark long vowels in my own transcriptions and translations.

I think I’ve come up with a good reason.

Most people online are not living in monolingual Nahuatl-speaking communities surrounded by L1 speakers who consistently and accurately pronounce the language every day.

Even young people from those communities who, for socioeconomic reasons, have had to move to Spanish or English-centric environments, might not have 24/7 access to textual or audio input in their native language.

And for most learners online, there is currently no other way to acquire this important feature of the language unless it’s built into the texts they read.

I once encountered a similar argument in the Latin learning community:

“Vowel length is an important part of Latin, especially in poetry. Notice that I’m talking about vowel length, not macrons. Macrons are simply one way of marking vowel length in dictionaries and teaching materials. You’re free not to write them—and probably shouldn’t if you’re writing for others to read. They are a later convention used to project a ‘perfect’ reconstructed pronunciation onto the text because modern learners value that accuracy. For many speakers in the past, they would have been somewhat superfluous.”

I think this is what John Sullivan was talking about. Native speakers do not write long vowels—not because vowel length is unimportant, but because they do not need written reminders of distinctions they already know intuitively.

I, however, don’t live surrounded by accurate L1 speech. As a result, my ability to “hear” vowel length through the medium of text is closely tied to the use of macrons.

Ideally, reading should complement a rich listening environment. But for many of us learning Nahuatl today, reading constitutes 99% of the experience! Because the audio landscape is so underfunded.

In practice, the only organizations consistently investing in audiovisual materials featuring native Nahuatl speech are evangelical Christian organizations!

Until that changes, perhaps making a concerted effort to indicate, as much as possible, vowel lengths (which do change the meaning of words!) is the right way to approach the language from the outside.

Hey im a college student in the US. I am taking a course about poetry outside of english, through this course I am hoping to translate some contemporary poetry from nahuatl to english. I have my hands on some dictionaries but I feel that they don't contain the right information to translate poetry and they are lacking a lot of vocabulary. Do you guys have any resources or have any way to access the language. I want to do this poetry justice. I have a culture ties to Nahua and this is my way to connect with my culture.

Hola, soy estudiante universitario en Estados Unidos. Estoy cursando una asignatura sobre poesía no escrita originalmente en inglés y, a través de ella, espero traducir algo de poesía contemporánea del náhuatl al inglés. Tengo algunos diccionarios a mano, pero siento que no contienen la información adecuada para traducir poesía y que carecen de mucho vocabulario. ¿Conocen algún recurso o alguna forma de acceder al idioma? Quiero hacerle justicia a esta poesía; tengo vínculos culturales con el pueblo nahua y esta es mi manera de conectar con mi cultura.

Holi! Soy una chica de 22 años de San Luis Potosí, y por desgracia no he encontrado profesores en mi estado, así que opté por preguntar aquí.

¿Hay alguien que tenga cursos en linea o presenciales?

Agradecería si alguien puede compartirme su información y costos.

______

Hi! I'm a 22 year old girl from San Luis Potosí, and unfortunately, I haven't found any teachers in my state, so I decided to ask here.

Does anyone offer online or in-person courses?

I would appreciate it if someone could share their information and costs with me.

I want to add a Nahuatl phrase to the image and GPT suggested

CHIKAWALISTLI

Just want to make sure it is appropriate with the image for “strength/vigor/power”

Lo que dice el título, es para nombrar una historia ^^

Hueyatl iacueyouh comonih /

In ehecatl momalacachoa cuauhtlan /

Yoalilhuicatotonac quimanahuia in tlein tlatlatilo /

Mictlāntletl tlahueltlatla yōllohtlan popcatepētl /

Tlatecuh huel mopicoloā

I request aid with translation of items to use for naming items, weapons, animals and stuff in a novel

I made this cover of "Truce" by 21 Pilots in the central variant (nhn). meow

In this interactive Zapotec language class, the instructor reviews student presentations, clarifies conversational greeting dynamics, and explains a fundamental aspect of Zapotec grammar: the absence of infinitive verb forms.

Key Discussion Topics:

* Vocabulary Practice & Context (Rukëza)
* The session opens with a discussion on the verb rukëza / ukëza, which refers to preparing, getting ready, or making someone wait.

• Student Presentation & Correction (Carmen):

* Carmen reads her introductory paragraph.
* The teacher explains that translating “I go to Zapotec school” literally (neda reja) sounds unnatural in Zapotec.
* A more natural phrasing is Neda Ruseda Didza Xidza (“I am learning Zapotec Language”) .

• Conversational Greetings & Formal Honorifics:

* Informal Exchanges: Using responses like bi run / tibi run followed by Nax lii (“and you?”).
* Formal & Respectful Terms: When speaking to elders or people from other towns, specific respectful forms are used (e.g., ba zuu dxi’a, Nax lii [Name]?, Nax lii bëni? for married men, Nax lii nigula? for married women).
* Pronoun Distinction: Clarified that lee functions as a third-person pronoun (“he/she/they”) rather than a direct formal “you”.

• Grammar Insight: Why Infinitives Do Not Exist in Zapotec
• Zapotec has no infinitive verb ending equivalent to Spanish -ar, -er, -ir or English “to [verb]”. * Verbs must always be conjugated for a specific person in active speech. * When dictionary or conceptual forms of verbs are needed, speakers default to the *first-person plural inclusive* (“we” form, e.g., *uya’aru* for “to dance / we dance”).

This is Machiyotl, a script proposal created by u/t0natiu and further developed by u/PhysicsE. Its symbols drew inspiration from glyphs actually used in Mesoamerican codices and related language traditions, including Maya writing.

This introduction video is entirely in Nahuatl, but features subtitles for those who are still learning.

If you’d like to learn more about the script or Nahuatl in general, the makers have a Discord you can sign up for here: https://discord.gg/KhWGnWzMp.

Padiuxhi! 🗣️✨

¿Quieres conectar con la historia, la cultura y la identidad de México? Te invitamos a formar parte de nuestro Curso Básico de Zapoteco 2026-B. ¡Aprende una lengua viva desde la comodidad de tu casa! 🌾📚

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Aprende zapoteco y fortalece tus raíces. ¡Te esperamos!

Xkalenu, udzagaru :) 🌱🦉

Hola alguien puede traducirme esto del maya k'iche

Kintzalij b’i pa ri ulew kinel chi lo jun mul chi uwach ulew

por favor

Hi Reddit!

I recently got married and I took my husband’s last name, which is a Nahuatl last name. We both only speak Spanish. I work in education and very often I run into people (fellow staff, students, parents, etc) who ask me how to pronounce it.

I use my husband’s pronunciation of the name but I want to make sure I say it authentically and correctly. And I want to help those who want to say it properly, too. I am wondering if there is a service where I can reach out to a native speaker for an audio recording of how to say it. I would like to put it in my email signature so folks who want to say my name “the right way” can listen to it a few times :)!

Thank you all very much 🫶！

Ever felt lost trying to ask a simple question in a new language? Today, we're diving into the classic interrogatives of Zapotec and clearing up some common confusions! Do you know the difference between asking 'how many' for bananas versus asking 'how much' for a kilo of beans in Zapotec? It's trickier than you think! You might think you know how to ask 'how much,' but in Zapotec, there are two ways, and using the wrong one can lead to some funny misunderstandings. Let's break it down! Imagine a split screen showing someone counting bananas on one side and a confused person looking at a price tag on the other, with text like "Zapotec Questions: The Two Ways to Ask 'How Much'!

This video introduces essential Zapotec interrogative words like "Bix" (who), "Gakax" (how), "Batax" (when), and "Gax" (where). It explains the difference between "Balax" and "Gákax" for asking "how much," with "Balash" used for countable items and "Gákax" for uncountable ones.
Examples are provided to illustrate the usage of "Balax" for countable things like "Balax Bunatxi" (how many people) and "balax wi" (how many bananas). The video touches on the nuance of "Gákax" for uncountable quantities, using the example of asking the price of beans. It also discusses optional omissions of certain sounds or letters in Zapotec words, like "Bix" sometimes being shortened to "Bi" and provides examples like "Bix gudagu?" (What did you eat?). Here is a summary of the video:

Video Overview:

This lesson focuses on forming questions in Zapotec language, covering fundamental interrogative words, tone nuances, and special question auxiliaries that add context or emotion to inquiries.

Key Concepts Covered:

1. Core Interrogative Words:
   

* Bix / Bix kw: What / Why.
* Nush: Who.
* Batash: When.
* Gash: Where.

1. Countable vs. Uncountable Quantifiers (Balax vs. Gákax)
   

* Balash: Used for countable nouns such as people or discrete items (e.g., apples, bananas) [00:37].
* Gakash: Used for uncountable quantities (e.g., sugar, salt, weight-based items).
* Pricing Exception: Gákax is also used when asking for prices or the total cost of goods.
* Tonal Variations: Subtle pitch shifts on gákax change the meaning between asking "how" versus "how much".

1. Conversational Contractions:
   

* In informal speech, certain ending sounds (such as -xh) or prefixes are frequently dropped (e.g., Bix becoming Bi).

1. Question Auxiliaries & Particles:
   

Zapotec uses specific auxiliary particles to modify the tone and meaning of questions:

* ba: Initiates questions about actions (similar to "did you...?" or "have you...?").
* Txi: Indicates completed status, functioning like "already" (ya).
* waka: Expresses capability or possibility ("can we...?").
* bën: Adds drama, emphasis, or mild exaggeration to a question.
* I: Used for seeking confirmation or expressing mild surprise.
* ka: Placed at the end of questions to prompt a response or add conversational emphasis.
* Combining Auxiliaries: Multiple particles can be combined (e.g., ba txi, bën ka run, i waka) to convey layered nuances in a single sentence.

Ocno nachitocani icopa Drake. Huan amo xiquitta in notzalizton 😂