The most well-known words in Nahuatl were not pronounced by an indigenous person at all.
Instead, they were purportedly spoken by Mary herself, the mother of Jesus, when she appeared for the fourth time to a man named Juan Diego Cuāuhtlahtoātzin near the hill of Tepēyac.
The story goes that the Virgin had begun appearing to Juan Diego on December 9th, urging him to get Bishop Zumárraga to build a chapel upon that hill (where a Nahua goddess had been worshiped for centuries).
Having failed, Juan Diego tried to avoid Mary’s apparition on the morning of December 12, 1531.
But she found him, purportedly, and gently chided him with a string of lovely Nahuatl phrases that I want to deconstruct, if you’re willing to follow along with me.
“Cuix ahmo nicān nicah nimonāntzin?” she began.
“Am I, your beloved mother, not here?”
Let me break down the Nahuatl for you:
- “Cuix” is sentence particle indicating a question.
- “Ahmo” is the adverb “no/not.”
- “Nicān” is the adverb “here.”
- “Nicah” is made up of the singular first-person subject prefix “ni-” (“I”) and the verb “cah” (“to physically be somewhere”).
- “Nimonāntzin” contains that same “ni-” plus “mo-” (possessive prefix meaning “your”), “nān-” (“mother”), and the reverential suffix “-tzin” (“beloved”).
That elegant initial phrase is inscribed above the entrance to the Basilica of Guadalupe (which was, indeed, built upon that hill).
Interesting, by asking Juan Diego “cuix ahmo … nimonāntzin,” Mary echoed the title “Tonāntzin” (“our beloved mother”) given to several Nahua goddesses, including the one worshiped at Tepēyac, possibly Tēteoh Īnnān, “Mother of the Gods,” known as Tocih, “Our Grandmother.”
But there’s more.
“Cuix ahmo nocēhuallōtitlan, nehcauhyōtitlan in ticah?”
“Is it not my place of shadow, my place of shade, where you are?”
You’ll see again the “cuix ahmo” (indicating a negative question) and the verb “cah” (with singular second-person subject prefix “ti-” or “you”). There’s also the super flexible “in,” here introducing a dependent clause.
The full phrase echoes a line in the Florentine Codex describing the chief of merchants:
“Cēhualloh īehcauhyo, īcēhuallōtitlan, īehcauhyōtitlan.”
“Full of shadow is his shade, his place of shadow, his place of shade.”
Note that “-tlan” is a suffix meaning “place of.”
The root “cēhual-” means “shadow” and by extension “freshness” or “coolness.” Metaphorically, it can mean “protection.”
The same is true of “ehcauhyō-”
In fact, with the possessive suffix “-oh,” the two roots together form a “difrasismo” or dual kenning:
“Cēhualloh, ehcauhyoh” — “shelter” or “protector” (literally “one who has [gives] shadow, shade”).
The expression is used in the Florentine Codex to describe a tlahtoāni (king/queen).
As a result, a Nahua hearing this second phrase would understand something quite different:
“Cuix ahmo nocēhuallōtitlan, nehcauhyōtitlan in ticah?”
“Is it not under my protection, in my shelter, that you exist?”
Very different nuance. She sounds like a ruler.
The third phrase in this famous purported utterance is “Cuix ahmo nehhuātl in nimopāccāyeliz?”
Here we have the emphatic pronoun “nehhuātl” (I/me). You only include it for emphasis or clarification (it is *I* who).
Once more, “in” introduces a clause and “nimo-” means “I am your.”
But that “pāccāyeliz-” … stumps some translators.
It contains pāccā (happy) and yeliztli (nature/state/way of living).
I see it rendered “source of joy” or “razón de alegría,” but more accurately, it’s “joyful state.”
“Is it not I who is [causes] your joyful state?”
The fourth phrase is “Cuix ahmo nocuexānco nomāmalhuāzco in ticah?”
Now we see the prefix “no-” meaning “my” (like “mo-” means “your”).
The rest is another difrasismo:
“Cūexantli, māmalhuāztli” or “skirts, backpack” meaning (once again) “protection.”
Let me unpack it.
“Cuēxantli” literally means “lap,” but also a skirt/robe, folded up to carry something, and thence “packing bag.”
“Māmalhuāztli” (from the verb “māmaltia,” carry on one’s back and “-huāztli,” tool) is a backpack or other device for carrying things.
This is also an allusion.
In the Florentine Codex, a tlahtoāni is said to “tēcuexānoa” or “carry people in [the folds of] his robe” (to metaphorically protect, care for them).
Grammatical note: when you drop the -tli ending and add -co, you get a locative meaning “in X.” So “nocuexānco, nomāmalhuāzco” *literally* means “in [the folds of] my skirt, in my carrying bag.”
But when Mary purportedly tells Juan Diego “Cuix ahmo nocuēxanco nomāmalhuāzco ticah?” it sounds like a parent or ruler addressing him.
He hears “Aren’t you under my protection?”
Then this lovely piece of rhetoric wraps up (well, she goes on, but I’m focusing on this one verse), with a final phrase:
“Cuix oc itlah in motech monequi?”
Which, okay, actually is more colonial Nahuatl than Classical.
“Oc itlah” is literally “[an]other thing.”
BUT
In Classical Nahuatl it would be more correct to ask “Cuix oc tleh” — “what else?”
“Motech monequi” is a phrase meaning “your-sake is-needed” or “you need.” (The “mo-” in “monequi” is a reflexive pronoun, not the same “mo-” as in “motech,” where it means “your” — like in Spanish, reflexive third person can be a passive construcion, so “monequi” is the same as “se necesita.”)
“In” once more serves to open a dependent clause.
So “What other thing is it that you need?”
“What else do you need?”
Just her motherly, sovereign protection.
These phrases make up verse 119 of the document known as the Huēyi Tlamāhuizōltica (“Through a Great Miracle,” the first two words of the text). The 36-page tract was published in Mexico City in 1649 by Luis Laso de la Vega, the vicar of the chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepēyac.
The Virgin’s purported words are recorded in a subsection called the “Nicān Mopōhua” (“Here Is Recounted,” also the first two words of that portion of the text).
It should be noted that this section of the document was written almost three decades after the events it purports to describe. (There is a shorter, rougher document that may have been composed earlier.)
But arguably the elegant Nahuatl of the “Nicān Mopōhua,” with all its Classical nuances and difrasismos, helped to cement the Virgin of Guadalupe as a royal, motherly figure for Nahuas, heir to the same traditions as pre-Colombian rulers and gods.
Why? That’s up to you.
