Nahuatl, a Rich Source of Mexican Spanish Words, Many Which Live on in English, Too

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kathy.

Hi, Kathy. Where are you calling from?

I’m in San Antonio, Texas right now.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What would you like to talk with us about, Kathy?

Well, I was calling about the topic, the relationship between culture and language. And I think you all put out a call about that. And I just think that it’s interesting. I mean, we know that language is a manifestation of the culture, but I think it’s interesting that language kind of helps to maintain and translate the culture.

You know, here in Texas, I guess in many parts of the country, we’re so concerned about losing, you know, our ethnic language, our ethnic culture, but the language associated with that. And so here in Texas, you know, Amatejana and, you know, part of the Mejia culture, you know, the Aztec nation as it was renamed in the 1880s. But the Chichimeca tribes, the Kahankahua tribes were all here still. And we’re concerned about losing the language of the conquerors, you know, the language of the conquistadores, which is Spanish. But really, our language goes further back than that.

And I think it’s interesting to me that the natural language is preserved in the Spanish language. You know, the TL at the end of a lot of the words that were spoken by the Mahia nation were taken into the Spanish language, but they end in TE. So words like tomate, camote, aguacate, you know, these mean tomato and sweet potato, avocado. All these words are in the Spanish language, but they actually even go back to the Mahia language. And we use them every day in our sayings. You know, we call them dichos. The dichos are the sayings that we have. Dichos en refranes.

Yes, yes. So one that, I mean, our family uses almost every other day is menos burros más elotes, you know, which is fewer donkeys, more corn. The elote is corn, but that’s one of the words that was taken into the Spanish language from the Mejia. Isn’t it interesting how often the words are food words?

Yes, and so many of the other words that I named were from food, you know, or making food. But I just think this one’s really funny because we use it all the time. My mother was saying the other day how her father used to say that when one of the kids said, oh, I don’t want to eat, you know, tortillas or I don’t want beans. And he’d say, hey, menos burros, mas elotes, which meant move over because somebody else will have it.

Yeah, more for me.

Yeah.

You were done with more corn.

Right. And my sister and I were laughing because at every, every holiday or special event, we always have somebody that’s new or a guest, somebody that’s, you know, not necessarily part of the family per se. And so we always have the food that all of us know we like, the traditional food or something. And there’s always a guest that says, oh, oh, I’m sorry, I don’t eat shrimp, or I’m allergic to that. And to a person, we’ll say, menos muros, mas y lotes, because we like this stuff so mubo, you know? So we, it’s so interesting how often we use that.

And so the culture carries on. I mean, it’s in a transformed way, but the words are there. The food heritage is there as well. Elote, right?

Yes.

Coming from that word, E-L-L-O-T-L, a cob of tender corn, is recorded in the earliest relationships between the Spanish speakers and the Aztec language speakers.

Yes. And I initially thought it was just our family or, you know, our extended family. But then I realized, you know, in reading some of the books that are out there, Barefoot Heart by Alva Trevino Hart, she talks about the migrant families. And these phrases were in there. And I was realizing, oh, my gosh, these are from when we were migrant workers. My grandparents came over from Mexico during the Civil War. And they were migrant workers. And my parents were and my uncles. And they took us out to the fields when we were little. And so the exchange of the culture between the people that were migrating across the United States. You know, they didn’t read English, but, you know, my grandfather would drive from Texas up to Michigan to pick cherries and Minnesota for beets, but they’d always come back. And so there was this exchange of information.

So all these dichos are across, you know, our culture, which is spread around the U.S. And it just reminds me that, you know, we’re still here. It’s in the culture. It’s in the food. It’s in our everyday words. In other parts of Mexico, the Maya people are still there speaking a variety of languages that have existed for millennia and still practicing the culture and the food ways and speaking languages that helped decipher the glyphs on the estile and on the artifacts that were found there.

The languages changed enough, but so little that they were able to help decipher this old written language. It was astonishing. But we still see the footprints of that language in words like chocolate, for example, in English now. Or cocoa. Mm— chili and chilaquile and tamales. All of those. Jicama, nopal, sapote. I have a sapote tree in my backyard.

There you go. You know, one of my dad’s favorites was, and again, there’s that, which is a rope. But that one, it just always makes me laugh because it’s every monkey, their rope. You know, and I just always think about this monkey swinging along, but he would say that to us when we’d want to do something a certain way or when, you know, he would just shrug his shoulders and, you know, give people their, you know, moment of grace if they were doing something different. You know, let them do it the way they want to.

But, yes, these sayings, and my sisters and I have been thinking about, you know, putting them down and illustrating them, you know, making them a book because even the next generation, my nephews that aren’t fluent in Spanish know these words. I mean, they’ll say the dichos, you know, and everybody laughs because we know they don’t speak Spanish, but they know the dichos.

What can I say, Kathy, you’re warming my heart because with somebody like you as an evangelist for your culture, spreading it to the new generations and to the broader family members, there’s no chance that this stuff is going to disappear. I mean, you sound so enthusiastic and knowledgeable about it. I mean, you are the truth teller, right? The truth bringer. You’re passing this along, and so bravo to you.

Oh, well, thank you. And I don’t want to take all the credit as the only one because my uncle did that award-winning documentary, Truly Texas Mexican, about our food.

How about that?

The Gastro Obscura has some of the dichos in it as well, the video with that. So I guess each generation is just conscious of passing this on. So I guess that’s also part of our culture is being sure to pass our heritage to the next generation.

But thank you.

Thanks so much, Kathy.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

What are the word ways that represent the folk ways and the food ways of your people and your culture? Share your word ways with us. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.