- published: 15 Nov 2014
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Pochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan (or Aztecan) branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct. In the 1970s another investigator found two speakers around Pochutla who still remembered a few of the words recorded by Boas.
In the early 20th century, scholars disagreed as to the origin of the language within the Nahuan family. Most thought Pochutec was distinct from Nahuatl, and this was proven in 1978, when Campbell and Langacker gave new arguments from Boas' data. Their conclusion was quickly accepted. Nahuan thus consists of Pochutec and General Aztec, which consists of Nahuatl and Pipil.
Bartholomew (1980) suggests that some of the divergent traits, for example last syllable stress, are due to influence from Chatino, an Oto-Manguean language. She argues that at the time of the 16th century Spanish conquest of Mexico the settlement of Pochutla did not fall under the Aztec Empire's domain, but instead was part of the Mixtec state centered at Tututepec. Thus, the Chatino linguistic influences stemmed from the trade and communication routes between Pochutla and Tututepec passing through Chatino territory.
Nahuatl (/ˈnɑːwɑːtəl/; Nahuatl pronunciation: /ˈnaːwatɬ/ ( )), known informally as Aztec, is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom live in Central Mexico. All Nahuan languages are indigenous to Mesoamerica. Nahuatl has been spoken in Central Mexico since at least the 7th century AD. It was the language of the Aztecs who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. During the centuries preceding the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Aztec Empire had expanded to incorporate a large part of central Mexico, and its influence caused the variety of Nahuatl spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan to become a prestige language in Me...
The John Carter Brown Library Long-Term Fellows Talk || Written in the Land: Cartographies of Long-Term Colonialism in Southern Mexico Wednesday, December 2, 2015 The European conquest of the Americas is still conceived in the academic and popular imagination as the most pivotal turning point in the history of the so-called ‘New World’ civilizations. It was, however, only one of many—and one of the last—of such dramatic cycles of domination and colonialism in southern Mexico, involving Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Aztecs, Pochutecs, and Chontales, among others. The millennial documentary genre of ‘territorial-narratives’ and other colonial cartographies along the Pacific Coast can offer us a unique window into these long-term transformations, and further interrogate such restrictive paradigms as t...