Welcome to www.nahuatl-language.org, a resource center for the study and preservation of the Nahuatl language. This website was created primarily for people of Nican Tlaca descent. Nica Tlaca is the Nahuatl way of referring to us, the people who originally inhabited the so-called lands of North, Central, and South "America." In Nahuatl, these lands are referred to as Cemanahuac.
According to CSUN professor Fermin Herrera, Nahuatl is the most widely spoken "indigenous" language in Anahuac (North America). Nahuatl is a member of the Uto-Aztecan language family, a large grouping that includes, but not limited to, the Huichol language of Nayarit, the Yaqui of Chihuahua, the Hopi of Arizona, the Shoshone of Wyoming, the Comanche in Texas, the Tongva in Southern California, the Paiute of Oklahoma, and the Pipil of El Salvador.
Before the invasion of Cemanahuac by the Spaniards, Nahuatl was written down in books called Amoxtli, and stored in huge libraries called an amoxcalli. In an amoxtli, Nahuatl was written in a pictographic script, which was used into the 1600s.
As a means of furthering the European colonization of Anahuac, the Spanish began recording the Nahuatl language using the Latin alphabet in the 1520s. As a result, hundreds of Nahuatl manuscripts exist that have preserved the language as it was spoken over 500 years ago.
Aztec Language?
"Aztec names" or "Aztec language" may be the search terms that brought you here, but the correct term is "Nahuatl." "Aztec" is a name conjured up by Europeans. We never called ourselves Aztecs. The Spaniards never called us Aztecs.
Our correct name is Mexica (Meh-sheeh-kah).
Aztec refers to our people when they lived in Aztlan. In Aztlan it would have been right to have used that word. But in the 16th century, "Aztec" was a word that was no longer used because all the people who came from Aztlan now called themselves Mexica, Tlaxcallan, Texcoco, Tlacopan, or any other of the names of the cities in which they lived.
