Nawat language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Nawat
Nāwat, Nāwataketsalis (Náhuat)
Native to	El Salvador, Nicaragua
Region	Sonsonate, Ahuachapán, La Libertad, San Salvador
Ethnicity	11,100 Pipils (2005 census)
Native speakers	500  (2015)e18
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Southern Uto-Aztecan Aztecan (Nahuan) General Aztec Eastern Nawat
Pipil is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Nawat, also known as Pipil or Nicarao, is a language that comes from Central America. It belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family, which includes many languages spoken across North and Central America. Long ago, Nawat was spoken in many parts of what is now Central America, even before the Spanish arrived. Today, it is mostly found in western El Salvador.

For a while, Nawat was almost completely gone in El Salvador and had already disappeared in other Central American countries. But since 2012, new people are starting to learn it as a second language, which is great news for the language!

In El Salvador, different groups like the Nonualcos, Cuscatlecos, and Izalcos spoke Nawat. It's also known as the Náhua language variety of the migrating Toltec people. The name Pipil is often used by experts around the world to help tell it apart from another language called Nahuatl. In Nicaragua, the Nicarao people spoke Nawat. They separated from the Pipil people around the year 1200 CE when they moved south. Nawat became a common language for many people there in the 16th century. A mix of Nawat and Spanish was even spoken by many Nicaraguans until the 1800s.

What is Nawat?

Most experts call this language Nawat, Pipil, or Nicarao. Sometimes, the name Nawat (or Eastern Nahuatl) is also used for similar language types in southern Mexico. These Mexican languages are like Nawat because they changed a sound called /t͡ɬ/ to a simpler /t/. These Mexican languages share more similarities with Nawat than other Nahuatl languages do.

Many Nawat experts, like Lyle Campbell and Alan R. King, usually treat Pipil/Nawat as its own separate language. However, some, like Yolanda Lastra de Suárez and Una Canger, group Pipil with "Eastern Periphery" dialects of Nahuatl.

Where Nawat Comes From

Indigenous groups in El Salvador when the Spanish arrived.

Nawat is part of a large language family called Uto-Aztecan. This family is divided into eight main branches. Nawat belongs to the Nahuan branch.

Here's how Nawat fits into the Uto-Aztecan family (according to Campbell 1985):

• Uto-Aztecan
  • Southern Uto-Aztecan
    • Nahuan (also called Aztecan or Nahuatlan)
      • Pochutec (this language is no longer spoken)
      • General Aztec

*Core Nahua *Pipil

Experts generally agree on the eight main branches of Uto-Aztecan. However, they are still studying how the higher-level groups fit together.

The Current State of Nawat

As of 2012, there are many helpful online tools to learn Nawat. These include video lessons and a Facebook group created by linguist Alan R. King. There's also a video project working with the Living Tongues Institute. This project focuses on "Pipil culture, such as natural medicines, traditions, traditional games, farming methods, and childhood songs." These videos are made to help people learn the language.

Sadly, the types of Nawat spoken in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama are now gone forever. In El Salvador, Nawat is in danger of disappearing. Only a few older people still speak it, mostly in the Salvadoran areas of Sonsonate, San Salvador, and Ahuachapán. The towns of Cuisnahuat and Santo Domingo de Guzmán have the most Nawat speakers. In 1985, an expert named Campbell thought there were about 200 speakers. By 1987, another report said only 20 speakers were left. However, some official Mexican reports have counted as many as 2,000 speakers.

It has been hard to know the exact number of Nawat speakers. This is because people who spoke Nawat faced difficulties throughout the 1900s. After a large peasant uprising in 1932, many Nawat speakers were harmed, and laws made it illegal to speak Nawat. This made people afraid to speak the language outside their homes. A young Nawat activist, Carlos Cortez, explained in 2010 that this fear is still strong for older speakers.

Since 1990, a few small projects have tried to help Nawat come back in El Salvador. Groups like the Asociación Coordinadora de Comunidades Indígenas de El Salvador (ACCIES ) and Universidad Don Bosco in San Salvador have created learning materials. Monica Ward has also made an online language course. The Nawat Language Recovery Initiative is a local group working on several activities, including recording the language and creating printed materials. So, even as the number of native speakers gets smaller, more people are interested in keeping the language alive. However, as of 2002, the government had not yet joined these efforts.

In 2010, the town of Santo Domingo de Guzmán opened a "language nest" called “Xuchikisa nawat,” which means "the house where Nawat blooms." Here, children aged three to five learn Nawat with help from Don Bosco University.

Also in 2010, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes gave the National Culture Prize to Dr. Jorge Ernesto Lemus from Don Bosco University. He received the award for his important work with the Nawat language.

A 2009 report said that Nawat had started to make a comeback. This was thanks to efforts by non-profit groups and universities to save and bring back the language. Also, after the civil war, more people in El Salvador started to feel proud of their Pipil identity. In the 1980s, only about 200 people spoke Nawat. By 2009, 3,000 people were taking Nawat language classes, most of them young people. This gives hope that the language can be saved from disappearing completely.

Where Nawat is Spoken Today

In the 1970s, Lyle Campbell reported that Nawat/Pipil was spoken in these places:

In 2009, Gordon listed Dolores as a place where Pipil was spoken. Kaufman (1970) said that Escuintla and Comapa in Guatemala used to be Pipil-speaking areas. He also mentioned San Agustín Acasaguastlán as a former "Mejicano"-speaking town. We are still not sure about the exact language family of San Agustín Acasaguastlán Mejicano (see Alagüilac language). However, Nahuan languages are no longer spoken in Guatemala today.

How Nawat is Different from Nahuatl

Nawat has some differences from Classical Nahuatl, an older form of the language. For example, Nawat does not use the past prefix o- in verbs. It also uses other grammar rules differently. For instance, making past tense verbs by removing a sound, which was very common in Classical Nahuatl, is much rarer in Nawat.

On the other hand, Nawat uses reduplication (repeating part of a word) to make nouns plural much more often than the language of the Aztecs did. Also, some grammar features that were active in Classical Nahuatl only appear as old traces in Nawat. For example, Nawat doesn't have postpositions (words like "in" or "on" that come after the noun), even though some words come from older postposition forms.

Nouns and Phrases

Nawat has developed two commonly used articles: the definite ne (like "the") and the indefinite se (like "a" or "an"). The words ini ('this, these') and uni ('that, those') are also unique to Nawat. In Nawat, you almost always have to show if a noun phrase is plural, usually by repeating part of the word.

Many nouns in Nawat don't have a basic form and only appear when they are possessed (like "my hand"). For example, you say nu-mey 'my hand' but not just *mey or *mey-ti. This means there are fewer differences between basic and possessed forms compared to Classical Nahuatl.

Postpositions have been removed from Nawat's grammar. Instead, some short prepositions that came from relational words have become part of the grammar.

Verbs

To make most Nawat verbs past tense, you add -k (after vowels) or -ki (after consonants). For example, ki-neki 'he wants it' becomes ki-neki-k 'he wanted it'. In Classical Nahuatl, you often just removed the last vowel to make it past tense, but this is rare in Nawat.

Nawat has a perfect tense ending in -tuk (which means something has been done), and its plural form is -tiwit. Another ending, -tuya, works as a pluperfect (meaning something had been done, like k-itz-tuya ne takat 'he had seen the man'). It also works as an imperfect tense for verbs that describe a state (like inte weli-tuya 'he couldn't').

Nawat has two conditional tenses. One uses -skia for things that might happen, and the other uses -tuskia for things that are impossible. However, sometimes these two can be used similarly. There is also a future tense with -s (plural -sket), but it's not used often. People usually prefer to say things like yawi witz (or yu-witz) 'he will come'.

In sentences where several verbs are used together, the first verb usually shows the tense (like past or future), but the other verbs often stay in the basic (unmarked) form. For example, kineki / kinekik / kinekiskia kikwa means 'he wants / wanted / would like to eat it'.

There are also some differences in how prefixes (small parts added to the beginning of words) are attached to verbs that start with a vowel. In Nawat, prefixes like ni-, ti-, shi- and ki- usually keep their i sound at the beginning of a word. For example, ni-ajsi 'I arrive' and ki-elkawa 'he forgets it'.

See also

In Spanish: Idioma náhuat para niños