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Throwback Thursday: Nawatl Language Mistranslations! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:00
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  SPEAKER_03: And now, on with the show.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: You must excuse me.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_05: I've grown quite clear at it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: This hasn't been easy, I know.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_05: But you've learned a lesson.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: A lesson in honesty.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: Honesty to yourself, and honesty to others.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_05: That lesson must Benjamin could step on your mind.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: I think we've all learned a good lesson.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_04: I've always heard that honesty is the best honesty.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm catching on why that's somehow, why that's somehow, why that's some, why that's some, why that's something, why that's something, why that's what's that.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yamelino Chimen, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantes, the show where we explore Mesoamerican pseudo history, new age nonsense, and other stories of adventure.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Ruben Ariano, also known as Tlacateka.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Ostlantis.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is episode number 20, the final episode of season one.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: So to everybody who's been listening this far, I thank you for giving us a shot, and we hope you've enjoyed season one of Tales from Oclantis.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: My co-host, Ruben Arellano Tlacateca, is busy.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Today, it seems that school at the university is about to start back up in Texas, and he is busy trying to get all of his classes together.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: So he will not be joining us today.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I am joined by two guests.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: So this is we're switching it up.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: We have two guests today, two friends of mine who I hope you will enjoy.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: The topic today is bad Nahuat.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: And what can we do about it?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: So joining us is Jan Garcia, the author of Learn Nahuat, the language of the Aztecs and Modern Nahuaz, which is now in its second edition.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I gotta tell everybody out there if you haven't gotten this book yet, you need to go out and get it.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is my go-to book for studying modern Nahuatl of the um the Huasteca variety.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I really recommend that you get this.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for joining us.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Jan Garcia also joining us today is Dr.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: Magnus Hansen.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Magnus is an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen and a professional linguist specializing in the Nahuatl language.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, gentlemen, thank you both for coming on the show.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: So today we're going to be talking about bad Nahuatl.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: And this is something that I see a lot because, you know, coming out of the Mexicayot, I was introduced to a lot of really bad Nahuat from uh from a uh a young age uh in my teens.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I didn't know any better, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I had these people that they looked, they presented themselves as native speakers of Nahuatl, and I didn't know.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: They sounded legit, they looked legit.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: I was going to these ceremonies, and but later in life I started realizing that the stuff that I was learning was um not really grounded in any sort of linguistic reality.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then now with uh the advent of social media, we get all of these memes and videos that are passed around online.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I'm not blaming people for sharing these things because they probably don't know any better, they have good intentions, they want to share the language, they wanna, they're proud of the language, they want to pass it on to others.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: But the problem with a lot of these memes and videos is that it's not grammatically correct Nahuatl or it's Nahuat that you know doesn't mean what they think it means, or it's Nahuat that was completely made up.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: And you see a lot of that um coming from the uh the MCRCA and early Mexicayot organizations.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, Jan, you had made a video recently where you tackled this subject.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: What was the um how's the response been to that video?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's been pretty good.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of people said and commented on that that they were looking for something like that for some time now.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I get messages all the time from people who say, Finally, you know, I see now what that's actually spoken, and it's not just you know chants or songs, which are great, but oftentimes in early times in in you know the social media, that was all that was available when it came to Nahuatl.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And little by little you're starting to see more of the actual now and how it's spoken.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just a few people who, of course, you know, you're gonna have cognitive dissonance when you've been you've grown into this and you've been using these words all your life.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And for someone to tell you that, hey, by the way, you know, native now speakers don't use it or doesn't mean that, or it doesn't mean what you think it means, or it's not actually a word, uh, it's not gonna be easy for everyone to respond to that.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so oftentimes not everyone's gonna comment that and you know, let the ex and talk about how they feel in that sense, but uh, you know, a few a few people, uh, a few people might will will do that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: So was there any word in particular that people pointed out like, man, that that one tripped me up.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't I had no idea that that word was incorrect.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was just uh the general, everything in general.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no one said specifically this is the one thing that that I got, but there are just so many examples.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's just so much stuff that's constantly out there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the things that you might notice is that it it almost feels like you you know we're working against a giant wave that's pushing against us.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because you know, the the stuff that's not real and has been around so long is just so easy to just put out there into a meme.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and given the right aesthetics or whatever, it'll be compounded and multiplied.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what people will end up seeing, the stuff that's easy to make mistakes on, easy to repeat.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The it's almost like the more fake something is, the more likely it's it is to be out there.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we certainly have a lot of work ahead of us for, you know, what we're trying to do is promote the language, revitalize it, um, you know, encourage people to speak it again if it was part of your heritage, part of your ancestry, or if you're a lost diaspora native uh from Mexico or Mexican ties, you know, it makes a lot of sense, I think, to regain this language and and bring it back.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's unfortunate the the first people who started with trying to promote the language, maybe in the 70s and 60s, or even before that, uh, you know, they had a shaky foundation and everything's been built on top of that foundation.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, as much as possible, it's it's best to make these corrections is as hard as it is for some of us to accept sometimes.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, when you when you start having the future generations, you know, think of uh someone, a child who might be given a name by birth.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in the future, maybe they'll find out that it's not you know legitimate name.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how's that going to be good for the movement?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: How's that gonna be good for encouraging the child to continue down this path, you know, thinking about our future generations?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's just there's there's a whole bunch of categories I can get into in in a bit, but there's different categories of of uh of these words, there's different patterns I've noticed in how you can categorize these mistakes.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: So, Magnus, in in your work, um, and I know that you do a lot of um research regarding uh Chicanos re-identifying, uh reconnecting with their indigeneity and and trying to learn Nahuatl.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: Are there um words that you've come across that are are glaring examples that Chicanos seem to get wrong a lot?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I I I know I've gotten quite a lot wrong in my efforts to uh to learn Nahuatl.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I'd like to start by saying that that really I think that all Nawah is good Nawa, and any Nawah is good now.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um I don't wanna I don't wanna be a judge of what is and isn't uh good nawa.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Good man.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think the thing is it it it's good that it's being spoken, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: But what is sometimes bad are claims about Nawah that end up being false, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So when when people take on an authority to say that that this is the right way or this is the true way, or this is the way it's supposed to be, or this is the true origin of something, and when it's it's uh maybe not, I think those to me are the more problematic things.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: How people pronounce words or if they give them new meanings, I think don't go ahead and do that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, as long as you don't go and tell other people that they have to use it in that same way, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um though to me, some of those claims that sometimes come come come out of the the Mexicai movement is uh more problematic to me when they start telling, for example, even sometimes uh uh now it's speakers from Mexico who grow up speaking the language that they're they're doing it wrong, right?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is that is the that is the real uh heavy problem because it is actually a hindrance for making the language um stronger, because you you don't make it stronger by going around pointing fingers at people and saying that they don't speak it right.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to to native speakers.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so to me those those are the things that I've I reacted more strongly to when I found those claims, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that could be uh well one of the things that I've always uh sort of railed against is the the idea that uh um now it's uh documented in the colonial sources is the real now what and that the what is spoken in Mexico now is sort of the uh uh a degenerate debased version of that, which is uh both untrue and also uh a very uh um well it's insulting, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's it's a very colonialist idea to take.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so those things are are what I've mostly uh been annoyed at.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then sometimes you also get certain things that uh sort of seep into the way that that the language is used.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, uh historians um will often because they they read Nawak from books but they don't hear it spoken, so they'll have them like very uh very um some pronunciations that are very close to the letters as you would read them in in English or Spanish, but not the way that they're supposed to be pronounced in in Nahuatl.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you get a very common pronunciation, for example, of the word for Lord, um, which is written, of course, T-E-C-U-H in the in one of the common orthographies.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And many historians and and other other people also pronounce that as tekutli or something like that.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: But really, um since there's no U vowel in in uh colonial now uh that U represents just lip rounding on the K.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's usually it would be pronounced as something like Teutli, but probably more likely as Tectli.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's how I've heard that word um uh pronounced by by native speakers, for example.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that that pronunciation can get a little bit um uh heavy because it has a whole extra syllable, right?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a whole extra syllable uh and a vowel that doesn't exist in in the language.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then you will get people uh uh like even correcting other pronunciation, so it's it's takutli or whatever.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if you look at like the word um uh motexoma, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, or montezuma or motekusoma, there's like I've seen at least three or four different ways of writing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a that's a famously problematic word, right?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because because Montezuma with that M that comes in from nowhere became very widespread very early.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then motezuma, uh yeah, and then you have the one with the K switched in front of it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So of course some of those so some of those go back like way to the to the actual uh moment of of colonization when Spaniards just didn't uh know how to pronounce things.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you get the guatemus for guaute and uh and all those uh those weird uh names and temistitan for tenustitlan and all the well I've I've noticed that one mistake a lot of people make when they're making claims about Nahuatl, and I see this a lot um in particular from people who've come from the Mexicayot.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: So when I first got involved in Mexicayot, one of the first things that I heard or that I was taught was that Nahuat was outlawed by the Spaniards, right?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: That our ancestors were punished for speaking Nahuatl, that that the speakers were, you know, you would have your tongue cut out.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: I I heard that claim made that they would cut your tongue out if they caught you speaking Nahuatl or singing Nahuat songs.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: And this just, I mean, it's factually incorrect to make that assertion, right?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's simply not true.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: They did not outlaw the speaking of Nahuatl.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, the Spaniards needed that language because they were using it as a tool of conversion, they were using it as a way to communicate with other indigenous peoples, even if the other indigenous peoples weren't Nahuat speakers, they would rely on people who spoke Nahuat and another language to act as interpreters.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: So the idea that Nahuat was outlawed is just is just not true.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to um expand on that?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, and in fact, yeah, so so in fact, uh as you say, it it it it's uh yeah, it it has never been outlawed um as such.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And especially not in the in the colonial period, because in 1570 Felipe II even uh decreed that that the use of of uh now it should be the official language of New Spain.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it it it was actually made an official language in in the period.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Then later on it was made unofficial again, but it it was still used in a lot of official capacities.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it definitely wasn't um outlawed in this period.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, what we maybe are um mixing up a little bit is of course we know that they've burned a lot of books in uh uh indigenous books, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we may have the idea that these books were written in Nahuatl and that they were burning them because of the language.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh but these were of course uh mostly pictorial codices that didn't in directly encode uh the Nahuatl language, and they were burned uh because of the pictures, because they were considered to be idolatrous pictures, not because uh they had a connection to the language.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there's that one famous image of the priests burning the the codices, and you could see uh spirits right coming out of the burning books.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: So there was a reason the reason they were burning those books, they were religious reasons, not not because of the Nahuat language.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's an important point.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Where it comes to be a little bit more correct, is if you think about Nahuatl uh now, of course, um thousands and thousands of Nahuatl speakers have grown up being punished for speaking Nawa in school.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it from the 40s and 50s on, maybe even earlier um since the establishment of the school system in in Mexico, school teachers have punished children who spoke Nawat and discouraged them from speaking and that is that is absolutely true, but that's that's the last 100 years more or less.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and that I think is probably the main reason that NASA has has been become a declining uh uh language in the way that it has.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so this part of it is true, but it's not true that it was so in in the uh colonial period, because in the colonial period um indigenous people in Mexico were organized into these um what they called republicas de Indios, which were basically self-governing little republics uh that would uh have a lot of freedom to organize themselves um and speak their own language.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't even have scribal schools where they taught how to write their own language, uh only as long as they communicated with the Spanish colonial administration in within Spanish usual, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but within the Republic, um the the indigenous languages were always um allowed.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and some and sometimes people conflate that with uh with with the experiences of the Sioux people and the Lakota and and people in the north, where you know there was a lot of banishing of the languages, but also again in the school system, when there was a policy of you know whitewashing everyone and assimilation basically.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that goes in hand with the same experiences in the schools in Mexico, except in Mexico it wasn't through the Catholic Church most of the time, but through government-sponsored, uh government-run schools that again had the policy of trying to assimilate everyone to speak Spanish.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that I think conflation they're happening too.
• 19:14
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• 19:16
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• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Now, back to the show.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I th I think both so both in in the US and Mexico, this is a 20th century phenomenon.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um this this idea of assimilating uh the indigenous populations uh by force and by taking away all their ties to to to culture in in in all of those horrific ways that that uh that this has been done from boarding schools, which were also uh used, although not a lot in in Mexico.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and um just general uh discouragement and and prohibition of using the language in in official uh capacities.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: But this is a 20th 20th century phenomenon mostly.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Jan, you had mentioned that you had made uh a list of some of the common misconceptions or mistakes people are making when they're approaching the Nahuatl language.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um the first thing that I see, just to start us right off, is the mispronunciation of the TL, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: So you'll hear Nahuatl, Ketzlkowatl.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, they they make it rhyme with bottle, like axolotl.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it what it does is it creates two uh sounds instead of one, right?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: That the TL should be one sound.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: So do you want to um and the way I tell people to do it is if they they put the their tongue to the roof of their mouth and breathe out the sides.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's probably kind of close, right?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Na what?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: Na what?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can coach most people to get to it, you know, when I'm working with people in person.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so I know a lot of techniques about you know how to look at what people are doing with their mouths to try to get them to help up do it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Other people who struggle will just get it after practicing with us for some months and it'll just click at one point.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: So almost everyone who I worked with will get it at one point.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and like Magnus said, there's many correct pronunciations and many correct nawas.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it when people can't say the TL, we say, you know, it's also acceptable just to say T, you know, tlacat or tacat.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are varieties that say that.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even within the Huasteca, there's a couple of towns that say that.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not wrong to have to say the TL.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um in Michoacan.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: have the West Coast varieties that say L instead of that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So lakash.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a different kind of L still.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like the Navajo sound lakash that you'll get.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of sounds like a T in a sense, but it's just that L with the air coming out of it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah we coach people to get through that sound get the T L and it it is kind of like a T, the plosive sound happening at the same time that you're having that kind of L sound together.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: The L sound, your tongue is in the position of an L.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you're not voicing it like an L with your throat.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Instead the air is coming out the sides of your tongue.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like pretend you're making an H sound while your tongue is making an L sound.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that'll help you get that L sound.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like a slushy L that we say with kids when we work with kids.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like that lisp that's a the lateral lisp that we some kids have in school the slush sound.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's that thing we we we help them out.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: But that one at least you know that's a pronunciation thing that people get after some time.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: In English I get it you know when people say axolato because they're speaking English not speaking now you're speaking a different language.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they call it the Klamath River instead of the Klamath River that had the TL sound originally but the Anglos couldn't do it.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: They heard it as a K.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when people are trying it sometimes they'll they'll pronounce it like a K sound.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So people might say tlakak or siwa like a K sound when they're starting starting learning.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we just say you just do a T sound or or we'll coach through the TL sound.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to pronunciation what does come up often and you'll see in the spelling and it's kind of a uh I'll I'll put I'll put a little bit of the blame here in the Spanish language.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's no fault of its own but the Spanish language usually only has that the ch sound.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have the sh sound anymore today the ch sound unless you're in you know in the northern parts of Mexico you know of course there's there's gonna be uh exceptions but so we get confusion between when is it in and when is it the ch sound?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you hear a lot of the the elder like you know the Chicano elders you could say that they'll come you'll they'll say uh you know mexica for mexicas right um though that's that's how you'll hear a lot of the older people say it I think a lot of the younger people even in Mexico or in the city are are getting better at making the sh sound when they're saying mexica or mexicas.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a lot of confusion and that leads to confusions between the word chocolate like chocolate which Magnus has a great article on why it's chocolat or chocolat in some varieties.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: But again because people think oh now it has an X everywhere so people have a tendency to put that everywhere.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of recognizing that the word was spelled chocolat and chicolat in a lot of varieties it's like oh it must be with an X because everything in Nahuatl has an X.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: It looks cooler.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: The X makes it real um and people when they're saying the word chochi the flower right if you speak Spanish then you you know my sister's name is Sochi you know and that's how we pronounce it because that makes sense in Spanish.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if of course if you're going to speak it in nahuat then you want to try and make the native pronunciation it's sho and chic.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And beginners will have difficulty with that because we want to simulate those two sounds we want to say chochi or chochi one or the other we want to carry make everything an X or make everything a ch and that's when it gets tricky where we have to keep in mind in our head one the within the same word there's two different sounds sho and then chic.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'll see miscreant for chili which people say is chili expelled with an X but chili is a kind of crayfish in a lot of modern varieties not chile so right so yeah chili and chili those are different sounds uh misspellings of chikome with chikome and I don't I don't almost no variety will say chikome for chikome.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the that's the categorization I see of of pronunciation errors in in our one thing I I tell people is that chochit is actually a really good word to master because you get the sh sound you get the ch sound and you get the TL at the end right so if you could say shochit that gives you kind of a a good framework of how the language works and the sounds that the way you're supposed to move your mouth when you're saying the the sounds definitely has all the tricky parts into it all in one that and uh you know so yeah you do have to train yourself to uh memorize long patterns of sounds long sequences so another thing we might we might talk about is that like the the agglutination part because it also does sometimes uh lead people astray so you get people to think that oh because now it lives an agglutinating language so that means you can just stick anything together in any order you like and then you have a new word and that's not exactly how it works right because it has some very strict rules for how to stick things together because if you don't have uh strict rules for how you do that then you can't uh interpret new words so a now speaker wouldn't be able to understand a new word without having understood also the rule for how it's strung together those different parts and it works both ways so sometimes it's very uh enticing for people when we try to understand a word to try to to cut it up into bits that we can uh understand so you get for example the the name of the deity uh tlalook and you'll get people saying oh so tlal that's that's earth and pok oh that sounds like the word for purke so it must be it must originally mean earth poke or and then you can invent sort sort of a way for how earth pulke makes sense um if you want right but but really just because uh you can cut something into pieces doesn't mean that it's actually made of those pieces right um so many now words are very long and you can segment them in different ways um so uh if you don't respect the rules of of the grammar that the that the uh was used to make the word so you can segment it in different ways uh if if you want to and make up fanciful new etymologies for words yeah well um this one uh linguist was very kind when I was you know when I was young and I was like yeah well tlaloc that means licor de la tierra right like you know tlali and oktli and he just looked at me and he's like well I I would consider that more of like a folk etymology that's what he called it a a folk etymology you know and he wasn't judging but he was like nobody really knows what tlaloc means there's some hypotheses about the word means but he wasn't able to tell me he he told me he um he he believed it meant um something that lays on the earth maybe like um because it's the rain right laloq is the rain yeah that's another way to to cut up that word um and and it's adding it's absolutely possible I think it it's certain it's probably more possible or uh uh plausible than than the polke uh etymology but really yeah they could they could be correct uh but only one of them would be uh correct though I guess um but also it could be a complete just a complete word um a name these deity names are very old and and they can have been carried over from a different stage of the language where it it didn't it could it it didn't come from either of those roots that you can cut it into now.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah it's some sometimes it's just a word right in itself without any deeper meaning this tends to happen easily in Nahuatl because um one those long words that agglutinate like Magna said and the other thing that goes with that is that Nawat has less consonants than English does.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's got like 16 continents English has like 25 Nawat has like four vowels English has like over 10.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very easy to make these assumptions where you see these pieces and words and think it must break apart into that just because you recognize that word as a beginner without understanding how the word works together without understanding the rules that go into play for all these things.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So um you know having more contents by the way doesn't make a language better or worse in case anyone gets that interpretation.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you know the tools the language chooses to use um or it just happens to come across um but you know you can have like and you'll see this very commonly where people will think oh tlaso sounds like tlasotla and it there is a connection in there but then they see the Kama and they say oh well Kama means mouth and then they see the mati and they know mati means to know.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it means so people think oh so it must mean to know someone's love through your mouth or something like that.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can piece this together in a billion different ways you know or to love someone's mouth.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: That sounds really dirty by the way it can.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just the way people make these interpretations and you know obviously that word wouldn't even be that it would be first of all so it wouldn't even be the right word.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is you can't just stick those two things together.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have a good understanding of the language from the base of how things are put together and expand once you get to higher levels because it's gonna be put together in ways that are very different from English or Spanish.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just put things together and there you go.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just Lego pieces.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what are you gonna do?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna take a class in Nahuatl and you know hope you have a good teacher that explains these things to you at a beginner level where you dedicate all this time to it or am I going to go with the meme I just saw on on Instagram or something that that broke it down.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot easier to go it's a lot easier.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds authoritative so how would you break down how would you break down the word lasokamati?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the I uh the it does the mati does mean to uh is often used in compounds for to know like asikamati to as to reach to alcanza like you you've reached a place right completed something and then mati is to know and I think the glue there you can talk about is is the ka particle there.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have something similar there with tlasoka mati.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if it's using tlaso as in the verb form of tlasoa tlasoa or if it's using the noun form of tlasotli.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's definitely following the same pattern of asika mati.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: What do you see there Magnus is that you think that's tlasotli or tlaso I think I think the the ka as you say is now it works sort of as a ligature but it I think it's really the same thing as the um as the preterity agent for morphine so it I would take it from something like something that is loved or from the verb and then you get klasoki.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you put a key keep uh form together with a different uh verb you it always becomes uh I have an explanation for that but it is uh it doesn't really matter because you see it as you say in asik kamati you see it in uh in uh mohkatzatzi to me to to scream in fear uh so mohki is someone who is fearful and screaming but when you put those together you get mochkatzatzi um so you have those uh yeah it's it's a grammatical process right that when you glue things together something self has to happen um and and that's one of the reasons that you really need to to um appreciate the grammar a little bit before we start uh interpreting uh new words or building uh words out of of uh another one I saw was tlaquache where people said it means uh small things that eat fire small thing that eats fire and it's like well yeah this there's a story about the tlaquachi and it brought fire to the people and its tail got burnt in that process that's a real thing but that doesn't mean that the word breaks up into that it you'll see it has nothing to do with the word fire in there it doesn't fit in there and it doesn't mean eater like fire eater either and so you see this all over the place.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Chihuahua nawiat another thing is you have to pay attention to the vowel length right so most books are not gonna modern books my book didn't even talk about it because it's not really important in modern Nahuatl there's very few words where it matters um but in older Nahuatl it they made sure to often well sometimes even they would include letting you know hey this is the short vowel this is a long vowel and that does make a difference when you interpret something like the word nahuat does it mean nawiat four waters that sounds cool you know everyone talks about fours the four directions and water because there's water all over the place it's very easy to lead late lead yourself down that path and people teach that stuff but you know the the truth is sometimes not as as sexy as that um or or maybe it is depending on how you perceive it but nawa is a clear clear sound and when you look at other languages or well the the the truth is always sexier than the made up stuff man I'll always go with the truth over the made up stuff.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I like to yeah I should say more like the things that uh are easier for people to that that fit in with people's perceived notions I guess.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of languages will call themselves so you what you were saying about Nawat meaning clear sound.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and that's pretty common along a lot of languages you know our language is either related to our state or identity you know or our our language is going to be called what's understood you know what I can understand is Nawa.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: What I don't understand that's mumble that's populoka or something else or some language associated with um so what about the word chichimeket?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's one word that I see people throw around a lot um and I've I've mainly seen it broken down as either um chichiltic plus mekat right so meket being rope so meaning like lineage and then chichiltik meaning uh red so like the red lineage and then I've seen that expanded upon as like well it's the red road and they they start trying to associate it with like northern natives following the red road yeah and then the other breakdown was just from chichit like dog right um and mekhat so like the dog lineage so what so so I'll let and I don't think either of those are true.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so I'll let I'll let Magnus talk about the mekat what I want I was just going to mention is like you want to look at the patterns of how other people are named right before you just break something down on Nawat without understanding the context at least there's the language here but there's also the context.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Look at how other people are named by the Nawas the Masawa their name is the the owners of the deer the tepewa the owners of the hills okay so there's a certain construction you see when you talk when how the Nawas refer to the people then you have you know uh then you have like the uh people who come from a certain town names that's very common like sapotecat person from sapotlan or sapotlan mistekat person from Mishlan um there's so many names that end in that have that tekat ending um and that's the most common pattern you know person from this town or person from this political entity or you could consider like a tribe that holds the people together.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the pattern you're gonna see.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then the Meket uh Magnus well so just as you have the you the one you mentioned the with the where you have a place name that ends in Tlan and then you have the name of the people who come from there is Tekat right so you have uh Mish tekat from Mishlan.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well then you have a very few uh uh but important um place names that end in man um that's another locative ending that is used on place names and when you come from a place that ends in man then you're not a tekat but you're a mekak so for example someone who comes from olman uh the place of rubber is an olmecat and if someone who probably comes from akholman which was the place where they had the big dog market up in Tlatelolco um is an akormecat um so by that extension uh in extending that uh pattern then a chichi mecat would be some someone who comes from chichiman uh and that is not I believe a place name that's actually attested but so you'd have to re-back form it or reconstruct it based on that word if you wanted to say that Chichimecat means um a person from Chichiman which I think is is a plausible explanation so it would be a person from the dog place or the place where dogs are abound.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand and this is uh this is the the um the the dog lineage uh interpretation to me is not completely uh implausible for two reasons so you do have the word mekat to mean uh lineage so tlaka mecat it's a it's a lineage of people you talk about all your ants just going back as a as a as like a rope of people um but then you also do have a myth that's pretty common in some uh different mesoamerican peoples but specifically uh I've found it to be common in in uh the west of Mexico among the the coras and the uh which or it's uh which has uh story about how after the the deluge um when the world world had been flooded the the world had to be peopled again and it was peopled by a man and um a woman who was actually a dog who had taken the shape of a woman um and all people in that in that um in that story um come from this uh primordial couple of of uh of a dog woman and a man uh so that would sort of lend a certain credence that story to to the idea of having a lineage that is is um part part dog and i don't think i think we probably when we think about uh dogs uh it sort of has a very pejorative connotation that i don't think it would have had necessarily or probably uh in olden times in Mesoamerica where the dog was an extremely important uh animal that had um a lot of respect around it really um in a way that it it it doesn't have in in English so i i i i about the word chichimacet i i would not discard either of those uh interpretations they can both be well one of them can be uh can be correct so the the two that you're talking about are uh people from chichiman yeah and then the dog lineage yeah okay and so there's one word that I love because you see it pop up all the time in the mexikayok and that is diawi right and you see this all over the place it's like um almost like a wamanos right like let's go let's you know adelante you know it's it's mexica tiawi or or tiawi mexika is almost like saying viva la raza but you know in in nahuat is kind of the way it it's caught on um in modern use but the way that I understand it is well at least in the Huasteca I think that Matiakan would be more in line with saying like let's go forward or let's go as a as a people so in where does tiawi come from and and how should it be used?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure about the origin of it you just you know it it's more about how it's used.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the equivalent the grammatical equivalent to thiawi in Huasteca would be tioi and you do say that um not as a command not as like telling people we should do this.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: It literally means we're going or we will go.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's how it would mean we are going the yoi with an H at the end to imply that it's it's it means us, not not you.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone uses in that sense I I I it would make sense to me grammatically to say it in that sense like saying like we're going you know as a statement like you know we're we're getting ahead we're going along we're we're going you know we're going.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you know that if you interpret it as that then it makes sense to me.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a command.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not saying let's go.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go would be Matiyakan in most varieties it'd be something like that So that's that's how you would use that in in that sense.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mathyaka.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it just depends how you use it.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: That makes sense.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's one of those words that raises a lot of points of contention.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um because I know that um uh who did they attribute it to?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: Was it David Vasquez?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh David Vasquez.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um it may have been that when he was involved uh with a poetry group, that there was a strike going on at that time, like a student strike, and that the students wanted like a slogan to rally the program, but they wanted the slogan to be in Nahuatl.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so the the legend has it, right?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I wasn't there, but that he introduced, you know, uh Mechikatiawi as as as the way of not that he invented it.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying he invented it, but I'm saying that he introduced it, he popularized it amongst uh the Chicano community.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes that that makes I have heard that as well.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, since it was just through things I heard, I haven't been able to confirm it, but that's something I heard.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and then and we'll say I'll say rest in peace to to the man who passed away earlier this year.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, it's sad to always lose a teacher.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: And he was a cool dude.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: I got to meet him because of Magnus.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Same here.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh same here.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was trying to remember right now if he said anything about at that meeting uh about whether he had uh used that phrase in the in the day his work, but I don't remember him saying it specifically myself.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it might not have been on his mind because we not everyone was just using it then that moment.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: So Magnus, um Jan had brought this up earlier with um chocolate.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: I I did read your paper where you give a very compelling argument that it should be um Chikolak, right?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Chicolac.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not that it should be, but that it probably originally was.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um but and it's not my argument, it's an argument my Karen Dake and Sarn Bichman, who are two um linguists who argued that in a paper uh about 20 years ago.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I think that is that is the most uh credible etymology of that word.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because the other one that people tend to give as bitter water.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh bitter is is shokok.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you could uh maybe think that shokok a uh could become uh or shokok could become uh chocolate, chocolate.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's often used as as uh sour, right?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a difference there between sour and bitter, between chichik and shokok.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sour.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's it's sometimes translated as bitter, but of course, because that's how uh like the chocolate is more bitter than sour.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: So uh exactly the are one of the arguments against this etymology is that it's not it's not a bitter tasting drink or a sour tasting drink.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bitter tasting drink, so it wouldn't work, it's not chichigat.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's so and and also you have actually a word chocolate, which is a sour uh uh drink made of um what are they called?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh ciruellas, what are they called?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Prunes, plums, plums, right?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're like plums, right?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sour plums.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: A type of native fruit to the Americans.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you can make a certain water made made out of those, and um and and that is sour, but it's nothing to do with chocolate.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um those are those are some of the reasons why the the uh etymology with choco doesn't work because it's it that would be sour water, and also because uh all of the places where the word is documented, it's documented as as Jan says with a cha sound.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's either chocolat or in some places chikol chikolak.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so what Karen Daken and uh Siren Wichman argue is that the the the chikol ad chikol is a sort of uh a uh a stick with a hook on it that you can use for different purposes uh as a tool.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there's arguing that probably this kind of chikole stick was also used to um make um chocolate drinks foamy, so you would call it the Chikol drink, the Chikol water, what the the the um when you'd make the chocolate foamy with with uh the chikole stick.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I don't know if that's necessarily the best uh uh interpretation of the origin of the word, but what I do know is that it's uh there are places where it's called chikola.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um the only time when we get a cha sound in our is when it is uh in front of an eye, an e um originally historically.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um uh all all almost all chess cha sounds come from the sound t before an e.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: So so would be to become ch and then what also happens is that uh when you have uh an i in one syllable and an o in the next, then very often you get the i becoming o.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, you also get that in in uh dramatically, so that um what's a good example?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um so where the t, for example, becomes to.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you have, for example, if you have a verb that starts with ticon, uh will do something to something.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Tikonitas um that can become very uh like regularly toconitas in where so the e is colored by the uh o in the next syllable.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you you get that a lot, and you especially get that a lot in the eastern varieties where uh uh short e and short a will become uh take on the the sound of the next vowel in the next syllable.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: So chicolat could become chocolat very very easily.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um but chocolat uh with a sho that that that's just nothing to suggest that it ever was that.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's probably the most common um interpretation that I've seen as far as like meme nahuat goes.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a chocolate company now that's selling uh chocolate with ek ek X, right?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um Most of them do.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most most chocolate companies do nowadays.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: If they're selling as artisanal, cashing in.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so I wanted to run a uh a word by both of you, and I'm gonna get into some uh some words that I encountered as an early student of the Mexicayot and get you guys' feedback on some uh some Nahuatl.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_03: I have this book called Mexicayot, uh, which is attributed to María del Carmen Nieva Lopez.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was probably written by Rodolfo Nieva Lopez, but it was published after his death.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he was the founder of the MCRCA, one of the fathers of the Mechi- the modern Mechicayot movement, and they published this book.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: And um it's just full of really bizarre pseudo-historical claims.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: But one of my favorite pseudo-historical claims is that the ancient Nawaz traveled to Egypt and took culture and teaching to all the people of Egypt.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: But in this book, they introduced this word, and uh I'll read you the quote.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: It says uh how do you say Egyptian Atlantes a los because for our other non-Spanish speakers like myself, basically what they're saying is that the Egyptians referred to the Nahuas as Atlanteans, right?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: As Atlantes, because when they asked the Nahuaz where they came from, the Nahuaz responded in Nahuat, Atlantique, which is supposed to mean you know the the pe we came from the place of a lot of water, or the from the place where there's a lot of water.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously not true, but where would you even get this word?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do you think they're trying to break down Atlantique?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've also seen it as Atlantico, depending on who's writing the story.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it's changed through time.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to add tick, probably.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably probably trying to add tic at the end of Atlan.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Atlantic, but um you you can't you can't really do that.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can't put tic at the end of Atlan.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to stretch it, you can find something like Atlantiak.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: We went to the water.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could stretch this a million ways.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: As much as you can get creative, you can make up different ways.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're conforming yourself to the the way that the grammar works, it's it's pretty obvious, it just doesn't make any sense.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: You you'll never see tic after a location ending like clan to fuse together into one word.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't happen.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: But it it's definitely one of the words where it where you get like this is amazing that it like it means having to do with water and it sounds like this, like and and of course, like when you have so few sounds, as you say, um there will be these combinations that just reoccur and give you an idea of something.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, it must mean something like this, and then you your association start running, right?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that that one is is just very interesting, right?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's another one that always comes up is that the teo, right?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the which means deity or whatever how you want to uh end up translating that word, but it sounds sort of like dios or sort of like uh Greek teon, right?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then you even have like um teopan, which is uh like uh uh in in uh now it's originally means like at the God place, that like a place where you would uh worship, um Theopan, um which we use for churches uh primarily.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then that sounds quite a lot like uh the syllables of pantheon in Greek just reversed, right?
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you get these odd combinations of words, and and that this is the stuff of folk etymology, but and it's also the stuff of these these linguistic conspiracy theories where you can can make up uh um stories about ancient travel based on just um uh the the likeness of words.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have a friend, I have a friend, I'm from Denmark, um and I have a friend, and he he he um he he's a storyteller and he loves telling stories about any place in the world that has the syllable Dan Dan in it, and say that those were Danish people who went there long ago, and like like there's a place in South Korea that has Dan in it, and he'll say he's uh the Danes went there and they founded this place, and it'll make up the data stuff.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you can do those things all of the time, and and it's uh in a way very satisfying to make up the stories, but not if you actually say if you want the sexy truth of things instead of whatever you can make up yourself, right?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I'm gonna throw four words by you guys.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: All of these I heard in ceremony, by the way, when I was uh active in the meshikayot.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh one of the first words uh was that sitlali means it comes from se tlali, the first land, because our ancestors came from the stars, right?
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_03: And what I like about that one is when I bring it up to people, they're like, Well, you know, you know, Carl Sagan said we're all stardust and we are in the stars.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: So technically, and I'm like, yeah, but that's not what they're saying.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, in the ceremony they were saying specifically our ancestors came from the Pleiades and came down, and that's why, you know, it's called the stars called Tlali, because it comes from se tlali, the first land.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the first words people learn oftentimes.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you're learning now or exposed to it, you're gonna be exposed to words like tlali, land, and se.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're gonna see those words everywhere.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere you look, you're gonna see those words.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: But like Magnus said, you know, a lot of words in now are made up of smaller pieces.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's very true.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: But there comes a point in time when you can't break it down anymore.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it looks like you could if you really forced it, but it would be like it would be it'd be silly even to do it in English, you know.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we don't do that in English, no one even tries to uh because we know how how ridiculous it can get up to a certain uh point, you know.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like history doesn't really mean you know, a story, it doesn't break down into that, you know.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: His story.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people do that as a point to say, you know, hey, history has often been told by by men, and that's very true.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean, you know, a lot of people would say, oh, obviously no one believe that.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um that people really believe that.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: There are some people that do though.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you get everything in these these days, but it's very easy to do that now when you don't speak it fluently.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I don't, as far as I can tell, you can't break that word down anymore.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the smallest sitlal and then in is the ending there.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: And now don't start.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, now is don't confuse sit lal with setlal.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's not even a common thing in modern varieties.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: So the other the other thing I heard was that Seattle comes from seat, uh, one water, because it's always raining there.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that the story I I was told was that while the Nawas obviously went to Seattle and gave it its name, and that's how we get Seat, the one water, because it's so wet.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think, Magnus?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a no for me.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh I I uh I was just uh just now looking up because I of course I don't remember the specifics of the the way that the town of uh the city of Seattle was was uh named, but I believe it was named after uh Chief Sales.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry if I'm butchering the the language there.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but he was uh a chief um of uh one of the uh sequamish uh or the wamish people, uh and and it was his name, I think, that was used to name that town.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: So so in that way, that would be uh a weird way of appropriating uh uh a place that belongs to the people who we know have lived there for a long time, um, and and it was named in the honor of one of their leaders, uh uh by a people who uh of course there are probably now the speakers in Seattle now, but I'm pretty sure that there wasn't uh when the city was named.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and then I was just I'm gonna come just gonna comment that really quick on then that notice how disrespectful it is both to Nawa and to the native people of that land when they absolutely when they appropriate like that.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: For one year, people are not understanding the culture in which Nawas name places.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Afric doesn't have the ending locations, yeah.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not a place, it's not a place, man.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: You you you would never name a a place like just a town like that, like that.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Never, and so if if you look into the basics, it just that's in the first chapter of learning how to put town names together, you know.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you live in Mexico, you see Tlan, can, can, pan all over the place.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll never see just Seat, you know.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, that I just want to mention that.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the other one I heard was that uh Nacadoches came from Nakat and Tochli, which just on its face is pretty ridiculous.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even want to talk about that one.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing, place names.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: Other place all the place names have this other place names have the same errors here.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: They they don't at least even offer the place ending name.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then the other one is Michigan, which I heard uh claims that it comes from Michwakan and then Michiwacan, and it's like a place where there's a lot of fish.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that's just uh a coincidence in sounds, and that it does not have any basis in reality.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I think it comes from like Michigan, Michigan, like the people, the the indigenous people that live here.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Something like Big Lake or something like that in uh in one of the uh uh Algonquian languages.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh I'm not completely sure which one, but it would make a lot more sense for it to be an Algonquian word.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the meaning big lake is also more well, I'm sure there's fish there, of course.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that doesn't matter much.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: You also have to make sure that there were now speaking people there at the time when the place was named.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh because yeah, otherwise it it it just makes more sense to go with whatever the people who actually live there called it.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_03: Are there any uh other words that that you've noticed, Jan?
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like you just in terms of stuff that sounds alike or there's a whole category of just the wrong meanings, right?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you have words that either are nawah um and are real nawa names, but they when they get out into memes or circles, they take on a whole new meaning.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the meme that's very popular is apapachar.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you know regardless of it's yeah, exactly.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless, so you have the word patsoa and pachoa now, which is usually to squish something, and maybe it was used for massage if you repeatedly squish it, right?
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: Papachoa or whatever, but there's nothing in the word that means soul, right?
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's if you study the now worldview, there's not one word that means soul, it's compartmentalized into different kinds, and all these things.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there's not one word that means soul, and it's not even in that word if you try to say it is all right.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's got it, it is this is no, it's just giving a massage basically.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's it, that's it.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, awakat, right?
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: So people say, Oh, that must mean testicle, right?
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: Awakat, because all right, so maybe there's a town, let's just suppose there's a town where they refer to the male testes as awakat, and that's very possible, right?
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: So now sometimes a very indirect, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he there that there there is that connection being made sometimes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that when people saw the fruit, they named it after the testicles.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's also possible that you know, in a lot of cases, that first people saw um that you you have your own word for testicles, and then to be kind of like when it becomes a taboo word to say it out loud, you look for another way to say it, right?
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Indirectly, right?
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning my little bird, or no wilo, right, referring to the other kind of bird, right?
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's all these kinds of things you could use.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you could do the same thing with with private parts.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, saying no a waka would just mean saying these are my you know, my things, but referring to the tree, not necessarily that people saw a tree and then called it that.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: So you can have Yeah, well, it's like in English calling uh testicles nuts, right?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you don't look at the word nuts and say, Oh, did you know that nuts you know comes from the word for testicles?
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's like no, it's the other way around.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was just uh a word that was used.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: And no one would make that because we like slang we we know English, so it it's obvious to us, but because you know now it's it's not as well known to others, it's easy to follow that.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and then there's the most popular one, which which this one I Seen it not just in Mexicayot circles but also in in Mexican or Hispanic or whatever you want to call it Chicano um fraternities where they have to give each other secret names.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's some of them are doing it in Naot now.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I see the word yawl be popularized in that in that space is as a real now word, but everyone wants to use it as only meaning warrior when the the meaning of yawl is is more generally to enemy, and so you build words upon that to build everything else, right?
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yaoyot, right?
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Eneminess meaning war, right?
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then people who and then from there you have all these different words they can mean to mean warrior, like Yao Tekat, person who lives or is from the war place, Yao Kiski, the one who went to the war, and there's there's a bunch of other ones, but uh there's a distinction there.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you see though, but in all those words, you do see the word Yao, but it's part of the construction of it.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yao by itself wouldn't usually refer to to a warrior, usually be referred to your enemy.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is attested as a name in in early colonial time, though.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I I guess I it would maybe be a little bit weird.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: Give it credit for that.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: Your son enemy.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I and then yeah, I don't know.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that probably that that's not too far-fetched to also say that it may have like the general meaning of warrior, but it's it's not like it's true, it's not this the most usual word for warriors.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the most meaning, yeah, it's not the most common meaning for it.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some varieties in Puebla that still maintained Yao as your enemy.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: You I seen that in translation modern varieties.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then again, uh, you know, Magnus has a great list of Nawa names that are official real Nawa names look in documents, and just look at the way that Nawas named each other.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they have some some names that are fairly dispensive.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: So so that there's a there's a guy who was named uh old dirty yellow old breech clout, you know, the mashtlat who's old.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: That was my rap name, by the way.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: How you know, how would you have that?
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, little fish is the name of little kid sometimes.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you even, you know, he has no friends.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was someone's name.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: He has no friends, you know, he's all alone.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: But where did he come from?
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where did he come from?
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's another name that you had.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we think every name has to be a powerful warrior, but a lot of names are are silly and and funny.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta think about well, one of my favorite historical names is uh Mashishkatsin.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a great one.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: The the wetter, the wedder of himself.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_03: He who he who pees himself, right?
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I saw one theory that might be something about how they were viewed on their birth.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like if during their birth they somehow had pee, maybe he was called that or quitlawa, maybe he was born with a little bit of excrement on him, and maybe that's why he was named Quitlawa.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really sure about all those, but but you can have all sorts of names in that one.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, going through my uh my family tree, I have an ancestor whose parents were named Akat and Shochi.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_03: And when they were baptized, like pretty general names, right?
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're day names, their date names, uh huh.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, they're their day names.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_03: So Shochi and Akat, and then when they were baptized, they were um given the names like Inez and Jose, and so on the records he's name he's listed as Jose Akat, and she's Inez Shochi.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then their daughter, um, who was like my fourteenth great grandmother or something like that, they gave her the name In Isabel Shochi Akat.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_03: So they combined like the names of her parents, the original names of her parents, as yeah, as her new last name.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_03: So it was Isabel Shochi Akat.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought that was pretty interesting.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_03: But they're very, you know, simple names, right?
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's not it's not always magic.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_03: So one of my Yeah, it it doesn't always have to be like, you know, when a lot of times when you see people get Nahuat names, they usually pick them for themselves.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_03: And they usually pick the most ostentatious name that they possibly can, right?
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_03: So they'll name themselves like or something.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_03: When in reality you you you probably would have been named like akat, you know, something very simple.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the true meaning, everybody knows that the true meaning of akat is read that flies into the heart of the conqueror.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing I will say though is that uh historically, you know, the the Maya lords all had those ostentatious names.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like it's not just what's your favorite animal, it was like it was all of them.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like you know, uh spear thrower, owl, jaguar, you know.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Throw in three throwing three animals in there.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Throw in three names in there that that are awesome animals.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jaguar club of the night.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They did have the Maya where the Maya lords, you know, trying to keep themselves in power.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_00: They did have these big ostenations names, but I think they took those.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the the warrior who was named um born into fire.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: And he he was the general of the spear thrower Al, right?
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_03: And he just went down and just carved a path through uh through Maya territory.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible history.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not often talked about, but yeah, there's there's a lot in there.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then we there's there's one word.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, go ahead.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was gonna get to Ishachilan, but I don't know if you were gonna get to that right now.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that was gonna be the next word.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_03: I was just gonna say, I want to end on this one word.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um so when I got involved in in the in the Meshukaiot, I bought this book um called Juicio a Espana.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_03: I got it right here.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it was written by a guy named Choconochtlet, who's famous for leading all the protests in Europe for trying to get um uh the feathered headdress of Motexoma returned to Mexico, right?
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_03: So Shokonochtlet wrote this book, and in it he talked about, he mentions this word, isachachilan, and I was like, huh, I've never heard of that word.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_03: And he claims that it that it means uh that it's the name of the Americas, right?
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_03: Both North and South, just that the Western Hemisphere in general, the Americas were called Isachilan.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And in my research, I traced it to a man named Juan Luna Cárdenas, who appears to have been the inventor of this word uh in the night the 1950s or 1960s.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_03: He wrote a book called The Prehistory of America.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually has a connection to the Pueblo that uh Magnus is uh where you did your research, I believe, in Weapan.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um Juan Luna Cárdenas went down there and and um interacted with the people there, but he was the person who invented this word isachilan.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I want you to uh take take it away, Jan.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think about that word?
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll start with uh, you know, all the dictionaries in the beginning had words for, you know, refer to everything, you know, that you have your semanawak.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and those words were written down and they were never hidden or excluded, and there was no reason to hide them.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if it it just didn't exist before this Garanas character person, uh, as far as we can tell, was the first one to use it.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I believe they're trying to make it from the word ishachi and tlan.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and ishachi meaning like you know, everything, and like the place of everything or something like that.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um ishachi being an adverb though.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think you can put tlan at the end of adverbs.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Magnus can explain what it's true.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_01: You uh you're like yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I should say that the we've talked about the logative endings, uh, and the tlan, it goes on nouns, and the shacchi is not a noun.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's not how you would uh make uh uh a toponym in in an hour.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that word just does not work at all.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't it doesn't work in that sense, but well I guess it works if people use it and they like to use it, but it's not an a word I've ever encountered uh now speaker using uh in that sense.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um so even today is semanawak used commonly by modern speakers?
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not commonly, but occasionally I I hear uh um clackli a more common like for the entire Earth planet.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe semanawak more like Mexico or like the yeah.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no the world.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: It it is used for the world as well as well, I think.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um so could it have been used in like um I believe the Romans had this view of like the known world?
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_03: Could it have been used that way?
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_03: Semanawak, instead of just meaning like a planet or the world as far as you know the worldview of the of the Nawa people using semanawak to refer to as the known world, just basically what they knew of.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just spitballing.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that that would be the logical way of using it, because why would you include the pl the parts you don't know?
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you how would you do that?
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think yeah, it's it's the yeah, the the same which means all or one or united or full suggests that it that they it has the the meaning of all everything that's around the lake or a nawak, it's it's close to the water, right?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Everything that's close to the water in it.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what isn't it?
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:16:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a prescriptivist either.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't tell people what they have to say or what they have to use, but for me it's very easy to use semawak if you wanted to refer to the Americas, if you had to fit that in.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have tlatipakkli, which everyone uses to mean the world, like the rest of the world.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you have the inclusive tlatipakli, and and you could use semawak if you wanted to in a more restrictive sense, like that.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: But at least both of those are words that have been around for generations and could really uh on really do come from the ancestors.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And which and which most now speakers I think would probably understand.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, whereas ishachitlan, they wouldn't.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not sure how ishachitlan then became ishachitlan with an L afterwards, but it might be pronunciation of people from back then who didn't speak Naun.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've also seen it as um Ishachilatlan, um Ishachitlan, Ishachilan.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've seen a lot of different variations of it, but Ishatlan I know specifically comes from Juan Luna Cardanas in his book.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I would guess that's the original one.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you when you have trouble hearing it or don't know how to represent it, sometimes you you might misspell it then again from there as Ishachi Tlan or something.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think the Tlan again already when I already has Tlan.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, cool guys.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_03: I want to thank you both for joining us on this very special episode of Tales from Atlantis, episode number 20, the final episode of season one.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna take a little break over the next few weeks as we record new episodes, line up new interviews, get more research done, and we'll be back to get in everybody's brains.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, do you have uh I know you have a website and a YouTube channel, Jan.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_03: Would you like to promote that?
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've got in Spanish Canal Nahuatl and the English version, the Nawat channel where I'm posting lessons.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone can, you know, they're free, obviously.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone can subscribe, watch them, check them out, and Tlachtol Tapasoli, which is an organization I work with where we promote on teaching the Nahuatl language as fluently, you know, not just teaching words, but we try and focus on communication and using it in real life with people.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Tlachtolta Pasoli.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_03: And and it's and it's great, by the way.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_03: All of the classes from your guys is fantastic.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_03: I take classes with uh with Diego, and um that guy's awesome.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I recommend anybody who wants to learn Nahuatl to check out your organization.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you also have your book, Learn Nahuat, Language of the Aztecs and Modern Nawas.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh now when it's second edition, you could buy that on Amazon, or um, I'm assuming you could have your local bookstores order it as well.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_00: This one's not the most linguistic book, but it I wanted to make it as something for the people, for the community, where it's not as linguistically heavy, it's more about exercises and getting you to practice the patterns of the language, which when I started now, that was totally lacking.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, everyone check that out if everyone's anyone interested in learning networks, which I hope more people do.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I highly recommend the book.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I am by no means fluent, but I can tell you with using your organization's uh tools and this book, I uh I speak a lot more uh than I used to, and uh I feel more comfortable with it.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_03: And Magnus, you have a blog.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_03: What um would you care to plug your blog, sir?
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's now at studies at dot blogspot.com.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's just uh my uh different um sort of um reflections about now what that I think might be more interesting uh for people to read about in blog format than as a as a scientific article going through peer review and all those things.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sort of an outlet for for my uh my ideas that aren't uh necessarily um publishable in article format.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, speaking of published, are you converting your um your dissertation into a book?
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Is that something we could look forward to?
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, um I hope uh very much that within a couple of years, I think I I'm uh planning to send it to the press uh later this month.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then peer review and everything, so it'll probably be at least a year or two before it it's anywhere near um where anyone can read it.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, it's in the works.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I want to thank both of you for joining me and Magnus.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_03: I know you're in Denmark, so thank you for doing this.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going back to Denmark.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_03: You're you're you're well divert you well deserved sleep.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thank you, Jan.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate it.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_03: Timoitase.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for listening to Tales from Ostlantis, a project of the Chimali Institute of Mesoamerican Arts.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_03: If you enjoy the show, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.
• 1:21:52
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• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_03: Your continued support will help keep the podcast ad free and independent.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Until next time, Timo Itate.