A colourful language
Colours in Náhuatl: a list compiled by Susana Moraleda, showing the wide range of words in Náhuatl used to describe shades of colours. Many thanks, Susana, for allowing us to upload this resource to our website!
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To read the text more clearly, download the PDF by clicking on the PDF icon (Click on image to enlarge) |
Sources:-
• Karttunen, Frances – An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl – University of Texas Press, 1992
• Molina, Fray Alonso – Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana – Editorial Porrúa, Mexico 1992
• Siméon, Rémi – Diccionario de la Lengua Nahuatl o Mexicana – Siglo XXI Editores, Mexico, 1992
With thanks to Michael McCafferty for providing additional terms from the Florentine Codex.
Graphic presentation by Debs Tyler.
Photo (top, with two lines of poem by Nezahualcoyotl), by and thanks to Scott Hadley.
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The original Word document (Click on image to enlarge) |
Download the original Word document with clearer text as a PDF
Here's what others have said:
2 At 11.58pm on Saturday June 29 2019, Russell Shields wrote:
I read somewhere that literate Aztecs, seeing European writing in simple black ink, deemed it a poor writing method as li lacked color, and therefore omitted much emotional content that went with the color given to any particular Aztec glyph. True?
Mexicolore replies: Highly likely! But we haven’t come across this idea ourselves. We’ll certainly keep an eye open for it... Thanks for sharing.
1 At 6.02pm on Friday April 30 2010, tecpaocelotl wrote:
That’s more colors than I knew.
Thanks for sharing.