Talk:Nahuatl orthography

Orthog vs transcription
Note that 16th-century Spanish, which is the one upon which Classical Nahuatl orthography was modelled (and not very obviously upon modern 20th/21st-century Spanish), did have an SH sound, and it spelled it precisely "x". The French spelling Don Quichotte for Don Quixote, was not a fanciful alteration, but a reflection of the fact that even as late as at the beginning of the 17th century, "x" was still pronounced SH by most Spanish speakers, and it was only around that time that the pronunciation began a general shift towards the velar/uvular fricative that nowadays is spelled "j/g" (the old spelling with "x" is only maintained in a very few orthographic archaisms such as "México", and not even "Don Quixote" is spelled with an "x" any longer but as "Don Quijote" in current Spanish orthography). The sound system and orthography of 16th-century Castilian Spanish also explains why the scribes chose to spell the laminal sibilant of Nahuatl as "z", "ç" or "c", instead of "s" as would seem more straightforward to an English speaker and even to a modern Spanish speaker ("s/ss" stood and still stands for an apical sibilant in Castilian pronunciation, while "z/ç/c" then stood for a kind of laminal sibilant before it shifted towards its current interdental pronunciation, so the latter and not the former was the one representing for them the sound that more closely resembled that of Nahuatl).

On the other hand, most of the content of this article looks like original research. I think that what is needed here is an article (named "Nahuatl orthography" rather than "Nahuatl transcription", because Nahuatl has possessed a latin-script orthography for centuries, which may or may not need to be adjusted for the modern varieties but that's a different task from that of transcribing an as-yet unwritten language or one commonly written in a non-latin script) offering a factual account of the orthographies already used or in use for the different varieties of Nahuatl, with the traditional orthography for Classical Nahuatl explained first and foremost because it is by far the most important. Original research on what would, could or should be an "ideal" reformed or all-new orthography or "transcription" for Nahuatl doesn't properly belong in the Wikipedia IMHO. Uaxuctum 20:41, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Writing System for Contemporary Nahuatl
I would like to point out that the Ministry of Education of Mexico (Secretaría de Educación Pública), has been, since its creation, the institution in charge of regulating the spelling and writing system for contemprary náhuatl and in fact has established a system for today's nahuatl. Some sounds of the nahuatl language of the 16th century have disappeared, and this system takes that into account.

This system is widely used in the bilingüal primary schools in rural indigenous communities in Mexico, and in different publications (like recently translated Bibles into some náhuatl dialects), and it is fact the system used in the Wikipedia in Náhuatl.

Therefore, I would suggest presenting this system in the article, along with the historical classic system which is only used in some academic programs in univeristies when studying classical náhuatl, and not contemporary náhuatl.
 * As far as I know SEP do not govern the orthography of modern nahuatl, they susggest orthographies that may be helpful in the alfabetiztion of nahuatl and other indigenous communities. I have also only seen that they have elaborated orthographies for nahuatl of Puebla.

On their own page they write about "educacion indigena ":
 * Para que las maestras y los maestros cuenten con técnicas para enseñar a leer y escribir en la lengua materna de las niñas y los niños indígenas, se han elaborado propuestas didácticas de la enseñanza de la lectura-escritura en las siguientes lenguas: Hñahñu de Hidalgo, Totonaco y Popoluca de Veracruz, Yaqui de Sonora, Mixteco de Guerrero, Chinanteco de Oaxaca, Náhuatl de Puebla y Zapoteco del Valle de Oaxaca. Dichas propuestas contienen procedimientos didácticos para la alfabetización.

Also if you read this page from the nahuatl wiki you will see that not even the SEP is in agreement with it self nor are the people of the Nahuatl wiki in harmonoius agreement. There sismply is not standard orthography. And this article should help people read how nahuatl has and is written, not propose a standard for how it should be written

Maunus 17:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

The section entitled "Contemporary orthography" has a confusing chart--it shows the phonemes in IPA as well as what I presume are orthographic letters (enclosed in <..>). If that's true, the IPA-specific characters should be removed from this chart. Mcswell (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Cleanup
I've cleaned the page up a bit, but I still have a lot of problems with the page. A lot more could be sourced, in English if possible, and, as Uaxuctum pointed out above, some of the article looks like WP:OR. The literature section at the bottom is in desperate need of being put into an actual citation style. Also, as Uaxuctum said above, this page should probably be moved to Nahuatl Orthography. --Lim e tom 09:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

"Modern Wikipedia Nahuatl language edition transcription" section
I seem to recall this being discussed before somewhere, but I don't think that the above-named section in the article should be here. It's rather too self-referential, and I don't quite see how orthographical choices made by wiki editors have relevance to (what's supposed to be a) description of nahuatl orthographies in the Real World. It might be fine as an explanatory meta-note at nah.wiki, but I think it's not appropriate content here. See in particular the guideline, Avoid Self references. --cjllw ʘ  TALK 01:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)