Nahuatl Language

Nahuatl is a language indigenous to central Mesoamerica, but over the centuries it has changed due to Spanish influence. Scholars have identified three board stages of the Spanish influence on Nahuatl, each reflecting a different degree of contact between the two languages. Stage I, from the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519 to about 1550, reveals a time of no to little change in Nahuatl., shows a time of the massive adoption and borrowing of Spanish nouns. Stage III, from 1700 to the present, reflects widespread bilingualism in ingenious communities as Spanish influence has deepened beyond vocabulary. While the Nahuatl documents you encounter in this paleography tutorial come from Stage II, the history behind the Nahuatl language is further explained in each of the respective stages.

The Spanish arrived on the shores of present-day Mexico in 1519 and made their way to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, an island city built in Lake Texcoco (present-day Mexico City). Despite its large population of about 200,000 inhabitants, Tenochtitlan fell quickly in the summer of 1521. This was made possible because the Spaniards allied with indigenous groups who were already enemies of the Nahuas (the Aztec people).

Non-violent contact between the Spanish and the Nahuas was limited primarily to the indigenous servants of Spaniards or the students of Spanish ecclesiastics. While there was virtually no change in Nahuatl, the Nahuas saw and experienced new things for which they had no words. For example, xicocuitlaocotl, “beeswax torch,” for candle and tlequiquiztli, “fire trumpet,” for a European firearm.

Primary sources written in Nahuatl from Stage I are extremely rare, as the alphabetic writing of Nahuatl only began developing at the start of Stage II.

In Stage II, the Nahuas began producing alphabetic texts on a regular basis while simultaneously adopting hundreds of Spanish nouns in every category, including law, religion, and economics. Lockhart describes this as a “cultural and linguistic revolution” as the Nahuas became dependent on these words. Lockhart writes, “To function without Spanish names of the days and months would have been an impossibility.”¹

Borrowed words are words taken from one language and adopted into another, sometimes with slight modifications to fit the borrowing language's phonetic or grammatical patterns. An example seen in colonial Nahuatl parish records is the word “testigos,” meaning witnesses. In some records the Nahua scribes wrote it as “testigohuan.” The Spanish word “testigo” is still preserved, but the suffix “huan” is added to make the testigo plural, meaning “testigos” and “testigohuan” mean the exact same thing. While borrowed Spanish nouns flooded the language in virtually every category, Nahuatl grammar and syntax remained largely intact, meaning the language's underlying structure continued to function as it always had even as its vocabulary expanded dramatically.

Stage III involved a deeper and broader Spanish influence reflecting widespread bilingualism among Nahuatl speakers. Unlike the relatively rapid vocabulary borrowing that characterized Stage II, Stage III was more gradual, with Spanish influencing verbs, particles, and grammar, and introducing new sounds absent from classical Nahuatl. Spanish plural constructions began to dominate as well, gradually displacing the older Nahuatl pluralization patterns (like testigohuan). Furthermore, older Nahuatl vocabulary began to disappear including terminology related to social and political rank that had been central to pre-conquest and early colonial life. It is also worth noting that Nahuatl is not a single uniform language. Nahuatl has regional dialects that exist across Mexico today, reflecting the diverse communities in which it is spoken.

James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 262-325.

Molina, Alonso de. Aquí comiença vn vocabulario enla lengua castellana y mexicana. Mexico City: En casa de Iua[n] Pablos, 1555. Internet Archive. Accessed 2 July 2026. https://archive.org/details/aquicomienavnvoc00moli/mode/2up

Náhuatl en Nuevo León - Facebook: Tlamantlahtolli itlalmachiyo / Mapa de variantes del náhuatl, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=166479287