Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 December 2025
Dictionaries of Nahuatl, the largest indigenous language in North America, have been produced since the mid sixteenth century. The first were written to facilitate Catholic missionary activities, and Evangelicals continue this production today. Works containing lexical documentation for scientific purposes began to appear in the nineteenth century. Across time, Nahuatl dictionaries have proceeded from manuscripts, through the various stages of printing, to modern, searchable databases. Traditionally, the two most influential works have been Alonso de Molina’s Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana (1555–71) and Frances Karttunen’s An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (1983); however, students and researchers today tend to consult Stephanie Wood’s Online Nahuatl Dictionary (https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org) and the Gran Diccionario Náhuatl (www.gdn.unam.mx). With one exception, the grammatical information and definitions contained in all Nahuatl dictionaries have been in languages other than Nahuatl; in other words, they have not been written for the purpose of helping Indigenous people to engage in critical and creative thinking within their own language and culture.
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