THE DEEPER MEANING OF ATLATL
By John F. Schwaller (SUNY at Albany, NY)
In The Atlatl 2019 32(3):1-2
As most folks know, the word atlatl, meaning a spear thrower, comes from Nahuatl, the Aztec language.1 Its origins in the language are clearly documented and on the surface it has the distinctive –tl, suffix that denotes the singular absolutive form of a noun. In Nahuatl, when a thing was owned or possessed, it would lose the suffix and gain a prefix that would indicate who owned the object. Thus, “my atlatl” becomes nahtlauh.2 Nahtlauh also means “my atlatls” (plural) since in Nahuatl there is no plural form for things that are not animate. In reality, the word ahtlatl also contains a consonant that we do not mark in English, or in many European languages, namely the glottal stop, formed by closing the throat to stop the flow of air momentarily, allowing a small puff of air to emerge when opened again. Spanish observers of Nahuatl in the sixteenth century call it the “saltillo,” or little jump. Using the orthographic system preferred by most modern scholars of Nahuatl, the word should be written ahtlatl, noting the glottal stop after the first ‘a.’3 At the same time, the vowels of Nahuatl (a, e, i, o) can exist in either a short or long form. By “long,” scholars mean that the vowel is actually held slightly longer in speech. The Spanish who wrote out the language in the sixteenth century did not notice this feature and so the original orthography lacked such a notation. In the ACK system, vowel length is marked by a macron (-) over the vowel: for instance, ātl, means water.
In writing Nahuatl, there are far fewer letters than in many European systems. Nahuatl lacks the sounds for “d” and “r,” for example. As a result, many words contain a similar combination of letters, but may have very divergent meaning. In addition, Nahuatl has many words that consist of combinations of morphemes, irreducible units of meaning. A common example is the word for precious metal, teocuitlatl, which contains two morphemes: “teo-,“ which in this instance means divine, and “cuitlatl,” which means excrement. In this instance the teo– serves as a modifier of the base noun, cuitlatl.
Lastly, Nahuatl has a highly evolved system of metaphorical speech wherein two independent words are combined to create a third meaning. Scholars call these diphrases. The classic example is the word for city-state or polity: āltepētl. It consists of two different words: ātl meaning water and tepētl meaning hill. While the word frequently appears in its combined state, the two words can be separated but still convey the combined meaning. For example, to say my polity or my city, one could either say nāltepēuh, or nāuh notepēuh, essentially “my water, my hill.” Indeed, several diphrases use the word for water. For instance, the metaphor for the battlefield or for war in general is teoātlachinolli. In this instance there are three morphemes and two words. The two words involved are teoātl meaning divine water and tlachinolli meaning conflagration or fire. But in general, there are very few true metaphors using ātl, water, as the first element.
Since, the morpheme “atl-“ (including “-ahtl”, “-atl” and “-ātl”) is very common in Nahuatl, since there is a Nahuatl word ātl meaning water, and since there is a tradition of combining words to create extended or metaphorical meanings (the diphrase), many have naturally wondered if atlatl (sic.) means “water-water” or if, perhaps, it is a diphrase made up of “water-water”, meaning “spear thrower.” There are two strong arguments why the word atlatl (sic.) can be neither. As seen, the word for spear thrower should be spelled ahtlatl; there is a consonant following the first “a.” On the other hand the word for water, ātl, has a long “a” vowel and no glottal stop. These two features make it simply impossible, given the rules of Nahuatl grammar, morphology, and phonetics, for ahtlatl to mean water-water. Secondly, the word cannot be a diphrase for the same reason. When morphemes are combined to make a diphrase, they retain their spelling, except for the absolutive “-tl” which is dropped. This is seen when ātl meaning water and tepētl meaning hill become āltepētl. The “-tl” is dropped from the first word in the combined form. Thus ahtlatl cannot be a diphrase based on ātl because it is spelled incorrectly and the “-tl” remains in the supposedly combined form, two things which do not happen in Nahuatl. Therefore, the word ahtlatl must be seen as a single word meaning spear thrower, a word that cannot be broken into smaller parts.
One other feature of Nahuatl that causes difficulty among speakers of European languages is the prevalence of the digraph consonant “-tl.” A digraph is any sound that requires two letters to write. For example, a common digraph in English is “ch.” The digraph “-tl” represents a consonant that is produced not by the vocal cords (hence it is unvoiced) but rather by the turbulence caused by forcing air through a narrow passage. It is created by placing the tip of the tongue behind the upper teeth, as in making the sound of the letter “t”, and then allowing the air to flow on either side of the tongue, as in the making of the sound of the letter “l”. If produced correctly to the casual listener it will sound like a somewhat sloppy “t” with suggestions of the “l” sound. When non-native speakers begin to practice, they tend to produce quite a bit of spittle.
In English this particular consonant does not appear in a word final position. We always need a vowel to follow it. The best simple example of the voiceless “-tl” in English is found in the word Atlanta. The “-tl-“ in the middle of the name is a close approximation of the sound. For instance, we do not say “a-tul-anta.” Unfortunately, in the United States and now even in many places in Mexico, the digraph is pronounced as a voiced consonant, that is one that uses the vocal cords. This pronunciation sounds like the “tl-“ in “bottle”. The “-ul” sound at the end of “bottle” is the voiced component. Nonetheless, as noted, very few people in the United States or Mexico are either aware of the original pronunciation or are able to achieve it, and so Nahuatl names come out with the “-ul” sound at the end. Thus, the correct pronunciation of ahtlatl is “AHTL, ahtl,” since in Nahuatl the natural emphasis always falls on the next to last syllable. For accuracy it would be best to avoid: “AH-tul, AH-tul” or “AT-ul, AT -ul.”
Footnotes:
1 Most scholars who study the “Aztecs” prefer to use the term Mexica when referring to the political entity that was centered in what is now Mexico City. The language they spoke was Nahuatl. They belonged to a larger cultural group of Nahuatl speakers whom we call the Nahua.
2 For the spelling of the word, see below.
3 Many scholars have adopted the name ACK system for this orthography, honoring three modern scholars who have popularized its use: J. Richard Andrews, R. Joe Campbell, and Frances Karttunen. Additionally Karttunen lives on Nantucket, whose three-letter airport code is ACK
Bibliography:
Andrews, J. Richard. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Revised ed. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Karttunen, Frances. An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. Revised edition. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
About the Author: Professor John F. Schwaller’s career in higher education spans more than 30 years. A nationally-recognized scholar of early colonial Latin America, and of Nahuatl and the Nahua (the Aztec language and people), Dr. Schwaller is the author or co-author of eight books.
Note (by Pettigrew, 2021): To listen to a pronunciation of atlatl watch Kurly Tlapoyawa’s YouTube video.