Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [10]
We can get a first inkling of what that might be by comparing more for style than substance those speeches of Motecuhzoma and Cortés. Their languages, Nahuatl and Spanish, are quite distinct from one another, in ways that recall the traits of individual people. Most obviously, just as each person has a recognisable voice, each language has its own sound system or phonology. Consider the phrase ‘your city of Mexico’, in Nahuatl in mātzin in motepētzin, Mešihko, in Spanish Su ciudad de México. The phrase in Nahuatl uses a sound, tz (as in English bits), which is not used in Spanish, just as ciudad begins with a sound, θ (as in English thin), which is absent from Nahuatl. And even where Spanish was attempting to imitate Nahuatl directly, as in the name of México (pronounced MEH-shi-ko), it failed to capture the glottal stop, written with an h in Mēšihko, which probably sounded more like a word that would be spelt in modern English as Meshítko.
But the rules of combination, to create longer words and sentences, are also radically different between the two languages. So the respect implicit in the Spanish use of Su for ‘your’ at the beginning is expressed in Nahuatl by adding tzin at the end of each of the words. In this same phrase, the Nahuatl word for ‘city’ is quite clearly a combination of a-tl, ‘water’, and tepe-tl, ‘mountain’, corresponding to nothing in Spanish, where the word ciudad has more connotations of civic status than geographical eminence. In general, Nahuatl words are mostly long sequences of short parts, often containing as much meaning as a whole sentence in Spanish: ōtikmihiyōwiltih is made up of ō-ti-k-m-ihiyōwi-ltih (past-you-it-yourself-suffer-cause), ‘you have consented to suffer it’, where the reflexive and causative bits (in fourth and final place) actually serve to show special respect, and to raise the formality of the utterance.
But phonology, vocabulary and grammar are just the beginning of what makes languages differ. Just as each person has a distinctive manner of speaking, quite apart from a recognisable voice, there is a characteristic style of expression which goes with each language. This difference may be minimised when languages are in close proximity, and very often translated one into another, as tends to be the case, say, among the languages of western Europe. But it is always there implicitly, and stands out very clearly in the encounter of Nahuatl with Spanish.
The most evident aspect of Nahuatl style is the constant doubling of near-synonyms: ōtikmihiyōwiltih ōtikmoziyawiltih, ‘you have suffered, you are tired’; in mopetlatzin, in mokpaltzin, ‘your mat, your throne’; ahmō zan nikočitlēwa, ahmō zan nikkočitta, ahmō zan niktēmiki, ka yē ōnimitznottili, mīštzinko ōnitlačiš, ‘I am not dreaming, not fantasising; for I have seen you, I have looked upon you.’ By contrast, the characteristic European style of reporting, where a whole speech is retailed curtly in the third person, as in the Spanish account of Cortés’s words, is something quite alien to Nahuatl: not ‘He said: “I do not know how to pay you …"’ but ‘He told him that he did not know how to pay him …’, etc.
These are examples of the characteristic differences between languages in daily use. But then there is the area of language’s past record, in the minds of its speakers as well as in writing.
Both Motecuhzoma and Cortés were in thrall to their verbal pasts. Cortés was soon engaged in giving an impromptu sermon, which would naturally have made little sense, since his audience lacked a knowledge of the Christian texts with which he had grown up in Catholic Spain. But the tlatoani’s speech, too, is a polished production, redolent of the wewe-tlatolli, ‘the speech of the ancients’, which was part of the curriculum at the kalmēkak, the school for Mexican elite youth. This included, for example, a speech on duty, to be delivered to a recently appointed tlatoani: ‘Our lord of greatest serenity and humanity, and our king of great generosity and valour, more precious than all precious stones, even than sapphire! Could it be a dream