nahuatl (Mdz19r)
This element for speech (nahuatl) or the verb "to speak" (nahua) has been carved from the compound glyph for the placename Huitznahuac. The visual captures what scholars call a speech scroll. This one rolls horizontally to the right, with the curling part down. It is painted turquoise.
Stephanie Wood
The speech scroll is a visual meant to evoke the phonetic -nahuac, a locative, which means "near" or "next to." Its coloring may suggest a reverence for the spoken word. In Nahua culture, the ruler was the tlahtoani, the one who speaks. See below right, for other examples of the speech scroll, which can present itself to the left or to the right, but usually curling under. One presentation of nahuatl has many curls and a yellow color, and this one awaits fuller analysis. Also below, right, the viewer may see some examples of how nahuatl might be used to represent the locative -nahuac.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
nahua(tl), speech, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahuatl
nahua, to speak, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahua
-nahuac (locative) near or next to, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahuac
Codex Mendoza, folio 19 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 48 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).
