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-can.

Headword: 
-can.
Principal English Translation: 

place of; or, when preceded by a number, that number of places

Horacio Carochi / English: 

-cān = place of
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), 499.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

-cān, place where an action is carried out, etc. preceded by a number, that number of places, or at that number of places. p.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 213.

Attestations from sources in English: 

yniquexcan mani tlalli calpilco = a third piece of land is at Calpilco (Coyoacan, 1621)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 19, 112–113.

yniquexcan = the third place (three places, plus the inic, which makes it into an ordinal)

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Auh yn quexcan... Auh ynic nauhcan unpa manih Santiago Tenextatacoyan... Auh ynic macuilcan = Y otro pedazo que hacen tres...Y otro pedazo que hacen cuatro, que está en Santiago, en el puesto que llaman Teneistlatacoyan... La quinta parte (Tulancingo, 1572)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 168–169.

ceccan = en un lugar; occan = en dos lugares; yexcan, en tres lugares; nauhcan = en cuatro lugares; macuilcan = en cinco lugares; chiquaceccan = en seis lugares; matlaccan = en diez lugares; cempoalcan = en veinte lugares; cempoalcan on ceccan = en veintiún lugares; cempoalcan omoccan = en veintidós lugares; cempoalcan omexcan, en veintitrés lugares
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xlviii.

themes: 
Numbers, Math