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Updated: June 17, 2025
It is evident from these words, all of which belong to the ancient language, that the distinction between the one who composed the poems and those who sang them was well established, and that the Nahuatl poetry was, therefore, something much above mere improvisation, as some have thought.
The first two verses appear to be addressed to him by the nobles. They ask him to bring forth his drum and sing. He begins with a laudation of the power of music, proceeds to praise the noble company present, and touches those regretful chords, so common in the Nahuatl poetry, which hint at the ephemeral nature of all joy and the certainty of death and oblivion.
It is, however, evident from this example that the quantity of Nahuatl syllables enters too much into the strictly formal part of the language for rules of position, such as some of those above given, to be binding; and doubtless for this reason the eminent grammarian Carlos de Tapia Zenteno, who was professor of the tongue in the University of Mexico, denies that it can be reduced to definite rules of prosody like those of the Latin.
He holds in his grasp some animal form which he is represented as eating. Across the body is a kilt, or ancient blanket, with four diagonal figures which are said to represent flint arrowheads. It is a remarkable fact that these latter symbols are practically the same as those used by Nahuatl people for obsidian arrow- or spearpoints.
Brasseur de Bourbourg says: “In the histories written in the Nahuatl language, the oldest certain date is nine hundred and fifty-five years before Christ.” This, he means, is the oldest date in the history of the Nahuas or Toltecs which has been accurately determined.
Of all ancient dialects and languages it is only in those of the American aborigines that you constantly meet with such combinations of consonants as pl, tl, etc. They are abundant especially in the language of the Toltecs, or Nahuatl, whereas, neither in Sanskrit nor in ancient Greek are they ever found at the end of a word.
It was hard now to think back to Nahuatl as if the Vye Lansor who had been swamper in that den of the port town was a different person altogether. In that patch of memories into which Rynch Brodie still intruded he hunted for the proper answer. "I couldn't hold the state jobs. And once you get the habit of eating, you don't starve willingly." "Why not the state jobs?"
Sometimes both types are used in the same language, as in Yana, where "beef" is "bitter-venison" but "deer-liver" is expressed by "liver-deer." The compounded object of a verb precedes the verbal element in Paiute, Nahuatl, and Iroquois, follows it in Yana, Tsimshian, and the Algonkin languages. Of all grammatical processes affixing is incomparably the most frequently employed.
The Nahuatl word for a song or poem is cuicatl. It is derived from the verb cuica, to sing, a term probably imitative or onomatopoietic in origin, as it is also a general expression for the twittering of birds.
Vye shrugged and then winced at a warning from the tender skin over ribs. "I make no claim, and no tape," he repeated. And he intended to go on saying that as long as they asked him. This was the second visit in two days and he was getting a little tired of it all. Perhaps he should do as prudence dictated and demand to be returned to Nahuatl.
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