Also his Spanish name drops the tli just as acamapchtli's Spanish translation has no tli. Thanks for the interesting blogpost. Alonso C. I see a lot of similarities here with the Maya script. The Maya script also being very flexible to the point where other languages were represented. The cool thing about all of this is the fact that the reader had to exert effort to decipher the meaning of each part of the script and to know when a symbol should be read as a logogram or syllabary.
Quick question, I thought I read somewhere that the tooth symbol also represented just 'tl" - have you heard of that? Pictography combines pictograms and ideograms—graphic symbols or pictures that represent an idea, much like cuneiform or hieroglyphic or Japanese or Chinese characters. To understand pictography, one must either understand the cultural conventions or the graphic symbol must resemble a physical object.
For instance, the idea of death in Aztec pictography was conveyed by a drawing of a corpse wrapped in a bundle for burial; night was conveyed by a black sky and a closed eye, and the idea of walking by a footprint trail. The codices were made of Aztec paper, deer skin or maguey cloth. Strips of these materials up to 13 yards by 7 inches high were cut, and the ends pasted onto thin pieces of wood as the cover.
The strip was folded like a concertina or a map. Writing in the form of pictograms covered both sides of the strip. Some dialects are so different that speakers can't understand one another! Assuming that you have a real interest and intrinsecal motivation for learning language, it's not too hard to learn , except for a few consonant clusters unique to Nahuatl , such as TL. So, this is how you say " beautiful" in nahuatl.
The language or languages we call ' Mayan '. Today there are about 30 Mayan languages. They all spoke, and still speak , a language called ' Nahuatl ' and this is what unites them. Like English today or French or Latin in the past, Nahuatl spread widely into many other cultural and ethnic areas. Yucatecan branch Yucatec Maya known simply as "Maya" to its speakers is the most commonly spoken Mayan language in Mexico.
The Aztec religion originated from the indigenous Aztecs of central Mexico. Like other Mesoamerican religions , it also has practices such as human sacrifice in connection with many religious festivals which are in the Aztec calendar. The Aztec's spoke Nahuatl. Languages that are simular to the Aztec language have existed in the Central area of Mexico for approximately years.
The Aztec have their letters for the alphabet represented by pictures. The Aztec diet was dominated by fruit and vegetables, as domesticated animals were limited to dogs, turkeys totolin , ducks, and honey bees. Game especially rabbits, deer and wild pigs , fish, birds, salamanders, algae used to make cakes , frogs, tadpoles and insects were also a valuable food source. Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, was the writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered.
Pictographs were used for recording important events, tracing genealogies of the ruling class, recording court processing, and for other details. Aztec writing sometimes also made of phonetic rebuses in order to bring out the meaning of a concept.
This was done when it was difficult to depict a concept graphically. In these cases, a logogram was used for its phonetic value instead of its meaning in order to represent another root, suffix, or syllable which sounded identical to the logogram. In the absence of a proper writing script, this was a reliable way of conveying the meaning of difficult concepts.
Aztec pictographs, which constituted the unique Aztec writing system different from the writing system containing alphabets, were recorded in various codices which acted as a primary source of Aztec culture.
A lot of these codices were actually written in the colonial era but made abundant use of Aztec pictographs existing during the pre-Columbian era.
To keep record of personal names , places, and historical events, Aztec writing made use of pictorial logograms. It consisted of a cycle of days which were represented by a combination of numbers from 1 to 13 in addition to one of the twenty day signs. Symbols of different animals and things were used on the calendar against different alphabets. For instance, 1 is used with crocodile, 2 with wind, 3 with house, 4 with lizard, and so on.
The cycle of numbers and day signs realigned after every days. Aztec writing had its own number system which used 20 as its base. This system was used for the calculation of tax and tribute which was important for the empire.
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