Irwin

Nahuatl La Resurrección, Puebla, Mexico

Nahuatl is an Uto-Aztecan language, distantly related to the Paiute languages of the Great Basin. During the 15th century at the height of the Aztec empire, Nahuatl served as the language of culture, commerce and administration across a vast region of Mesoamerica. Originally written in pictographs, Nahuatl came to be written using the Latin alphabet after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Nahuatl literature continued to flourish throughout the colonial period despite the widescale destruction of ancient texts by the Spanish colonizers. Many Nahuatl words were borrowed into Spanish, and from Spanish into English, giving us “avocado,” “chili,” “tomato,” “chocolate,” and “coyote”, among others. Although Nahuatl is one of the most widely spoken and best studied indigenous languages of the Americas, it nonetheless struggles to hold its ground against Spanish monolingualism due to centuries of suppression and forced assimilation.

Irwin Sanchez is a chef, poet and language activist. He been one of the very few native speakers to teach Nahuatl in New York and has managed to combine his dedication to his mother tongue with his love for native cuisine through an ongoing program called Tlaxcal Kitchen which introduces one through the other.