Chocolate, tomato, avocado, coyote… what do all these words have in common? They all (are presumed to) come from Nahuatl, the biggest and most influential indigenous language in Mexico. Nahuatl was the primary language of the pre-Columbian Aztec Empire, and it’s still spoken today by more than 1.7 million people, although Spanish threatens its vitality. Today’s Nahuatl is divided into numerous variants distinct enough to be considered separate languages, such as Guerrero Nahuatl.
The biggest Nahuatl language is Huasteca Nahuatl, accounting for over half of all contemporary Nahuatl speakers with around a million speakers. But another major variety is Guerrero Nahuatl, which boasts about 125,000 to 150,000 native speakers. While many Guerrero Nahuatl speakers are bilingual in Spanish, some are monolingual—but still, the influence and ubiquity of Spanish is a threat to the indigenous language. That’s what inspired us at TranslationServices.com to launch our own Guerrero Nahuatl translation team, catering specifically to this variant of Nahuatl.
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A basic overview of Guerrero Nahuatl
If you’re at all familiar with Mexican geography, it’s not hard to pinpoint where Guerrero Nahuatl is spoken—in the southern state of Guerrero, of course! Specifically, it’s native to communities along the Balsas River. Alternatively known as Guerrero Aztec, the language is a member of the Uto–Aztecan language family, which also comprises indigenous languages in the US, such as Hopi, O’odlam, and Shoshoni. Guerrero Nahuatl and its fellow Nahuatl languages occupy the Aztecan side of the family.
Guerrero Nahuatl adopts a subject-verb-object word order, possibly due to Spanish influence, given that Classical Nahuatl is argued to have been a verb-initial language. However, word order is highly variable, with speakers readily able to change the order to emphasize different elements of a sentence. Like other Nahua languages, Guerrero Nahuatl incorporates a great deal of inflection, with many prefixes and suffixes used to add meaning to root words. Verbs are modified to indicate the subject, object, and indirect object, in addition to verbal information like tense, aspect, and mood. Possession is indicated by a personal prefix attached to the noun, with unpossessed nouns explicitly marked as such through an absolutive suffix. Even counting in Guerrero Nahuatl proves tricky, since the language makes use of a vigesimal (base-20) counting system. All these elements can pose problems to translators, but that’s why we hire native speakers of Guerrero Nahuatl—they’ll ensure a high-quality translation every time.
We’re ready to provide Guerrero Nahuatl translation services of any kind.
Our recruitment for our Guerrero Nahuatl translation team has taken us all over the state of Guerrero, seeking out the best translators in the region. Growing up with the language has given our translators an intimate understanding of its intricate nuances, and since we’ve hired translators who represent the various dialects of the language, we’re confident we can cater to your specific needs. With great care and passion, our translators deliver careful translations both to and from Guerrero Nahuatl, for any type of project.
Indeed, we aim to work with any type of project you may have, populating our team with translators who have experience in different areas of translation. If you want academic translation services, we can do that, translating to and from journal articles, research surveys, and other texts in a variety of disciplines. If you’re looking for business translation services, allow our team to help you with everything from business proposals to press releases and web copy. If you’re seeking literary translation services, our team members can transform your stories—whether in the form of books, poems, games, apps, or more—to Guerrero Nahuatl or English, for any genre or topic.
Our goal is to be the best Guerrero Nahuatl translation services you can find. If you’d like to get started, order now!