Nahuatl (Aztec Empire)

Nahuat is a group of related languages and dialects of the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Collectively they are spoken by an estimated 180 million Nahua people, all of whom live in the Aztec Empire. All Nahuan languages are indigenous to Mesoamerica. The Classical Nahuatl word nāhuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound". This language name has several spellings, among them Nahuatl, Naoatl, Nauatl, Nawatl, and Nahua. Nahuatl has been spoken in the Aztec Empire since at least the 7th century AD. During the preceding century and a half, the expansion and influence of the Aztec Empire had led to the dialect spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan becoming a prestige language in Mesoamerica. With the introduction of the Latin alphabet (who was introduced in 1790), Nahuatl also became a literary language and many chronicles, grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents and codices. This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan dialect has been labeled Classical Nahuatl and is among the most studied and best documented languages of the Americas.

Today Nahuatl dialects are spoken in scattered communities mostly in rural areas. There are considerable differences between dialects, and some are mutually unintelligible. They have all been subject to varying degrees of influence from other local languajes, as Zapotecan, Mixtecan and Mayan, principally. No modern dialects are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of the Anahuac (Tenochtitlan) are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery. Under Aztec's Law on the Linguistic Rights of the Monorities promulgated in 1995, Nahuatl along with the other indigenous languages of the Aztec Empire are recognized as national languajes in the regions where they are spoken, enjoying the same status as estandar Nahuatl within their region.

Nahuatl is a language with a complex morphology characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination, allowing the construction of long words with complex meanings out of several stems and affixes. Nahuatl has been influenced by other Mesoamerican languages through centuries of coexistence, and with them forms the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Many words from Nahuatl have been borrowed into English and thereby have diffused into hundreds of other languages. Most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexica region which the English heard mentioned for the first time by their Nahuatl names. English words of Nahuatl origin include "avocado", "chili", "chocolate", "coyote" and "tomato".