Manuel Nájera’s De Lingua Othomitorum Dissertatio: decolonising the foundations of a modern account of Hñähñu language

Abstract

ABSTRACT De Lingua Othomitorum Dissertatio by Manuel de San Juan Crisóstomo Nájera was the first linguistic study of modern Mexico and it paved the way for the study of original languages both within the academy and within other state institutions. The text also marks the end of a three-century-long interaction between Latin, Ancient Greek and indigenous languages and reveals a time in which Latin had lost its prestige and was becoming a language deemed to be of philological and academic interest only. A case can be made that Nájera’s Dissertatio foreshadows the epistemology currently used to explain linguistic politics in present-day Mexico City, which places not only an urbanised nation state at its core, but also continues to privilege Indo-European western languages over hundreds of living Mexican original languages. Focusing on the contact between Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hñähñu, this paper will analyse the responsibility of contemporary classical scholars to engage with the original languages of Mexico and will argue that this engagement can also lead to the decolonisation of classical studies themselves.