amo.

Headword:

amo.

Principal English Translation:

no, not; or, a term that negates

Orthographic Variants:

ahmō, hamo, a

IPAspelling:

ɑhmoː

Alonso de Molina:

Amo. no. aduerbio para negar.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, f. 5r.

Frances Karttunen:

AHMŌ negative particle no, not / no. adverbio para negar (M) T and Z have lost the internal glottal stop, and this is true for most Nahuatl outside the Valley of Mexico, but although AHMŌ and also AHHUEL(I) are generally attested in modern Nahuatl without it, other forms with the negative prefix AH- generally retain some reflex of the glottal stop.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 6.

Horacio Carochi / English:

àmō = not
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 497.

Attestations from sources in English:

Auh cuix hamo çenca tetlapololti, yhuā cuix hamo tetzauitl = And it is not confusing and is it not a scandal (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 214–215.

This word has a saltillo (glottal stop) on the first vowel and a long vowel at the end (ahmō).

For further information about its use with the imperative, see Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 106–07; analyzed, 106 n4; with comparative construction, 322–25; main discussion, 404–05 (with n4, n5).

This particle also sometimes has a reverential ending: amotzin.
Notes from Rebecca Horn's card catalog from sessions studying Nahuatl with James Lockhart, 1980s. See below.

àmōtzin = saying no with respect
ca àmō, ca àmōtzin = with greater emphasis
ànihueliti, àmō amonihueliti = I can't
Carochi/Lockhart 405.

àmō nō = nor
Carochi/Lockhart 407 n4.

amo tlacatl = an evil man (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 172.

àmo nicochi = I am not sleeping.
àmo mēxìcatl in cochi = It is not a Mexica who is sleeping. Or: The one who is sleeping is not a Mexica.
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 23.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

amo tla ymueh yn Francisco = no son magueyes de Francisco (Santa Bárbara)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: CIESAS, 1999), 242–243.

IDIEZ morfema:

amō.

IDIEZ traduc. inglés:

no, not.

IDIEZ def. náhuatl:

Tlahtolli tlen quitzacuilia ce tlachihualiztli zo quicamaixnamiqui ce tlatocaxtiliztli zo ce tlapantliliztli. “Naman amo tiyazceh tianquiz pampa nocca ticpiyah tlen ticcuazceh.”

IDIEZ morfología:

ah, mō.

IDIEZ gramática:

quen.

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