Principal English Translation:
to carry, bear (see also our entry, meme)
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), 224.
Alonso de Molina:
mama. nite. (pret. onitemama.) lleuar acuestas a otro, o regir y gouernar a otros.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 51v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
mama. nitla. (pret. onitlamama.) lleuar carga acuestas.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 51v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
MĀMĀ vt; pret: MĀMAH to bear something to carry something on one’s shoulders, to govern someone / llevar carga cuestas (M), llevar a cuestas a otro, o regir y gobernar a otros (M) Although there is agreement across sources that the vowel of the second sylleble is long (as it must be to form the preterit as it does), the corresponding vowel in TLAMĀMAL-TI ‘burden’ is short, and B also marks the corresponding vowel short in TLAMĀMALŌNI ‘someone who bears a burden.’ T gives doublets for derived forms with long and short vowel variants. This vowel length variation in verb and derived nouns parallels that in the verb CUĀ to eat´ and TLACUAL-LI ‘food.’ MĀMĀ may be derivationally related to the verb MĀ ‘to take someone captive,’ since captive were bound and borne on the shoulders. The preterit is homophonous with that of MĀMAT(I) ‘to be embarrassed.’ MĀMĀLIĀ applic. MĀMĀ MĀMĀLŌ nonact. MĀMĀ
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 134.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
māmā, nic. Class 4: ōnicmāmah. 224
Attestations from sources in English:
ihuitocauh, quimamaticac = on his back he bears his flaring feather adornment.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 109.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
yn coahuitl quivalmemeya micquetl = la leña que venia cargando el difunto (Tlaxcala, 1564)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 31.
ticuique cecen pouamatl on chichiquacen auh yn titomacacque zacatl catca = sembramos veintiseis brazas cada quien y nos repartimos el zacate que habia (Tlaxcala, 1563)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 26.