Do you remember the three ships that sailed for Christopher Columbus? Or what a numerator is? You might have no trouble recalling these terms, even though you might be a long time removed from sitting in an elementary classroom. Most middle school graduates in the United States can recall the three major Latin American empires: the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztec (there are also the Olmecs, and this supports the point to be made). Can you recall anything about them? Maybe some of their geography (the Aztec people spread through central Mexico), or bits of culture (such as the elaborate cities and temples). It seems strange that we can spend large portions of time in school learning about these peoples and yet come away with so little. So, I thought a perfect place to begin would be a topic that is evocative to many people, but also a topic in which most lack any true knowledge: Aztec greetings.

Most languages have a word or words dedicated as an understandable, universal greeting. There are then extensions, idioms, and cultural specific ways to greet, all of which serve as a way for language to not only be a part of but to help enrich different regional dialects. Traveling across a highway of the United States, we can go from a standard “Hello” to any number of historically regional greetings, like “How you doing?” “Hey y’all,” or “Howdy.” The language of the Aztec people, Nahuatl, also contains varied dialects, language mixing, and evolution.

Nahuatl writing was originally pictographic, written in symbols and pictures, with a combination of syllabic signs. Translations are most commonly found from the past five centuries, as the language was familiarized with European languages only after the Spanish invasion of the Aztecs in the 16th century, at which point the Latin alphabet was introduced and translations and grammar guides began to be assembled. These texts became important to the Spanish as they attempted to facilitate trade and missionary work with the Aztecs (both before and during their imperialistic conquest). Following takeover and genocide at the hands of Spain the Aztec people lost many of their original written works and pictographs to burning at the hands of Spanish authorities. There is a wealth of information available on the Aztec language, but the dearth of original texts is a shameful hole in history.

Many think of the Aztec people as an ancient tribe, but the existence of the empire stretched from the 15th to the 16th century, overlapping with The Renaissance in Europe. At that time Nahuatl was a dominant language in what is now Mexico, and the spoken language is still alive today. Blended with Spanish influence, modern Nahuatl is said to bear a strong resemblance to its historical cousin (we might think of this like the relationship between modern American English and the English of Shakespeare). This provides many available sources for study, including the ability to actually hear the language, something that is no longer true of many other indigenous languages of the last millennium.

I have one final note before finally discussing Nahuatl greetings. We should keep in mind with any studies of history a key point. History is viewed through a very specific lens. With any empire, preservation of records, language, culture, etc. will be predominantly tilted in the favor of the wealthy and powerful. That means the dialect of the king is the preserved tongue. Another is that we in the present are at the mercy of the record keepers. For the Nahuatl, that is predominantly the Spanish, and there are inherent biases that an imperial people are going to have that are difficult to filter out.

Now, let’s start with a really simple premise: our word “hello” has very straightforward origins. The word holla (like holler) is a word for calling attention to something. Hello then became the word to call someone’s attention to yourself when meeting. Classical (pre-Spanish) Nahuatl doesn’t have a direct translation for that. The two that seem to be most common now are pialli and niltze. From related vocabulary, pialli seems to have a meaning related to “have person” or “be a person.” In other words, something like “here I am.” The word part pia- also may mean watch after or protect. So, the phrase might also translate to “Protect me,” or even “watch me,” something you might say to someone you do not know. It makes me think of a person trying to win trust. The word part -tze, on the other hand, is described as a less formal ending to a word, something you would include in a phrase directed at your children or other family. Niltze, then, would be a friendlier version of hello but may not have been used before Spanish influence. More common seemed to be the use of short questions for greetings, something that should be very familiar to an English speaker: How are you? What’s up? How do you do? These expressions are where we find so much variety in the greetings of different languages. A common welcome phrase in modern Nahuatl is tipatica, or “are you happy?” Its translation is not very far from an understandable English greeting, but supposes a lot more positivity than our more emotionally vague terms. I hate to speculate too much about the emotions of the Aztec people as a whole, but like any language (including English) there are a lot of beautiful phrases that simply would not exist if not for our worldwide variety of language.

As for the information in this post, some comes from an indirect translation (Nahuatl to Spanish or French, then to English). Some comes from forums and lessons that modern Nahuatl speakers have generously uploaded. Some comes from piecing together translations from missionaries, or from scholars. With how impermanent languages are we are totally reliant on historical artifacts to reveal the information accurately and first hand. Nahuatl is a challenging language to review, but there is great beauty in seeing a language like this kept alive by native speakers in Mexico today. That the language and some of the culture was able to overcome imperialism and genocide is incredible, and a testament to its importance as a symbol of its people.