Nahuatl

(noun)

The language spoken by the Mexica people who made up the Aztec Triple Alliance, as well as many city-states throughout the region. 

Related Terms

Examples of Nahuatl in the following topics:

  • The Mixteca-Puebla Tradition

    • The term Mixteca (or Mixtecs) comes from the Nahuatl word mixtecah, meaning "cloud people."

  • Codices of the Aztecs

    • The colonial-era codices not only contain Aztec pictograms, but also Classical Nahuatl (in the Latin alphabet), Spanish, and occasionally Latin.
    • De Sahagún worked with the surviving Aztec wise men and taught tlacuilos to write the original Nahuatl accounts using the Latin alphabet.

  • Teotihuacan

    • The city's broad central avenue, called "Avenue of the Dead" (a translation from its Nahuatl name Miccoatli), is flanked by impressive ceremonial architecture, including the immense Pyramid of the Sun (third largest in the World after the Great Pyramid of Cholula and the Great Pyramid of Giza) and the Pyramid of the Moon.
    • The Aztecs believed they were tombs, inspiring the Nahuatl name of the avenue.

  • The Toltecs

    • The later Aztec culture saw the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors, and described Toltec culture emanating from Tōllān [ˈtoːlːaːn] (Nahuatl for Tula) as the epitome of civilization.
    • Indeed, in the Nahuatl language the word "Tōltēcatl" [toːlˈteːkat͡] (singular) or "Tōltēcah" [toːlˈteːkaʔ] (plural) came to take on the meaning "artisan."

  • The Aztec People

    • In 1521 Hernán Cortés, along with a large number of Nahuatl-speaking indigenous allies, conquered Tenochtitlan and defeated the Aztec Triple Alliance under the leadership of Hueyi Tlatoani Moctezuma II.
    • Although the form of government is often referred to as an empire, in fact most areas within the empire were organized as city-states, known as "altepetl" in Nahuatl.

  • The New World

    • Some, such as Quechua languages, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan languages, and Nahuatl, count their speakers in millions.

  • The Aztec in the Colonial Period

    • There are still 1.5 million people who speak the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and part of the Mexica migration story appears on the Mexican flag.

  • The Zapotec

    • The name "Mitla" is derived from the Nahuatl name "Mictlán," which was the place of the dead or underworld.

  • Aztec Religion

    • Like all other Mesoamerican cultures, the Aztecs played a variant of the Mesoamerican ballgame, named "tlachtli" or "ollamaliztli" in Nahuatl.