3 ms·

It was disappointing that the article didn't have audio or video so we could hear what it sounds like. Youtube offered some some hokey "learn some phrases" vid

• schoen 8y ago
  Three people if you watch the whole video! There's an interesting code-switching thing for two of them (especially the last speaker) where Spanish "este" ('this') is used apparently at the beginning or end of new thoughts or to relate ideas to each other, including "para este"/"para" ('for this') when describing a reason for something and "pero este" ('but this') when drawing a contrast. I don't think this is quite idiomatic in Spanish when used this way, and I wonder if these are translations of particular Nahuatl words or phrases. I thought the situations where these were used were mostly ones where we might say "so" or "well" in English (I might expect something like "entonces" or "bien" in Spanish). The stories that the people tell in the video involve some maltreatment from other people on account of the use of Nahuatl. I really liked the first speaker's intuition, something like: "If we use our language, people are going to be curious and want to learn it!"