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14 - Nahuatl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 December 2025

Ilan Stavans
Affiliation:
Amherst College, Massachusetts
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Summary

Dictionaries of Nahuatl, the largest indigenous language in North America, have been produced since the mid sixteenth century. The first were written to facilitate Catholic missionary activities, and Evangelicals continue this production today. Works containing lexical documentation for scientific purposes began to appear in the nineteenth century. Across time, Nahuatl dictionaries have proceeded from manuscripts, through the various stages of printing, to modern, searchable databases. Traditionally, the two most influential works have been Alonso de Molina’s Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana (1555–71) and Frances Karttunen’s An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (1983); however, students and researchers today tend to consult Stephanie Wood’s Online Nahuatl Dictionary (https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org) and the Gran Diccionario Náhuatl (www.gdn.unam.mx). With one exception, the grammatical information and definitions contained in all Nahuatl dictionaries have been in languages other than Nahuatl; in other words, they have not been written for the purpose of helping Indigenous people to engage in critical and creative thinking within their own language and culture.

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  • Nahuatl
  • Edited by Ilan Stavans, Amherst College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Conversations on Dictionaries
  • Online publication: 25 December 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392433.015
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  • Nahuatl
  • Edited by Ilan Stavans, Amherst College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Conversations on Dictionaries
  • Online publication: 25 December 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392433.015
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Nahuatl
  • Edited by Ilan Stavans, Amherst College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Conversations on Dictionaries
  • Online publication: 25 December 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392433.015
Available formats
×