nehuatl.

Headword: 
nehuatl.
Principal English Translation: 

I (first person, singular) (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
nehual, nehuala, negual, nejual, neuatl, nevatl, nehuantli, nechual, nehhuatl, nehuatli
IPAspelling: 
nehwɑːtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

nehuatl. yo. pronombre.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 65v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

NEHHUĀ-TL first person singular pronoun, long form I, me / yo, pronombre (M) When this appears without the absolutive suffix, the Ā is subject to the general rule of word-final shortening. The sequence NEH, NEHHUĀ, NEHHUĀ-TL represents increasingly emphatic 'I, me.' See NEH.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 161–162.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

Independent pronoun. Shortened forms nehhua and neh.
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), 226.

Attestations from sources in English: 

"1596 13 Tecpatl...Yn icuac honnipiltzintli nicatca in nehuatl Andres Garcia...." = "1596 13 Flint-knife (year)...It was when I, Andrés García was a child." (Anales de Diego García, 1502–1601)
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 4, p.25 , Ph.D. Dissertation draft written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

"1601 5 calli Ypan in xihuitl onimotlacatili nehuatl notoca Diego Garcia ipan inin xihuitl de 1601 años (p. 989)" = "1601 5 House (year). In this year I, whose name is Diego García was born, in this year of 1601." (Anales de Diego García, 1502–1601)
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 4, p.25 , Ph.D. Dissertation draft written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

Nohmatca nehhuātl = It is I in person. (Atenango, between Mexico City and Acapulco, 1629) Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, eds. and transl. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 79.

Nechual Notoca franco Juan = I named Francisco Juan (Calimaya, Toluca Valley, 1712)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 207.

In the Valley of Toluca, one will often see nehual, the most common and obvious sign of this regional variant of Nahuatl, where the syllable-final -tl is softened to -l. Pizzigoni also writes that she has seen nehuala. One testament of 1699, in San Luis, has negual, which is rare. Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 37, 38, 56.

nechuatl (San Juan Bautista, Toluca Valley, 1784)
Stephanie Wood collection, notes in a folder about Bills of Sale; citing AGN Tierras 2301, exp. 10, ff. 5r.–6v.

Fernando Horcasitas found "nihua" for nehuatl as used in the language of dances that were recorded in various pueblos by ethnographers. (twentieth century)
Fernando Horcasitas, "La Danza de los Tecuanes," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 14 (1980), 239–286, see especially p. 256.

Nehuatli was the preferred form of Nahuatl that was often used in the valley of Toluca. Miriam Melton-Villanueva, The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799–1832 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 80.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Ni quitoa nehual ni cobernador = Yó también, declaro, yó el Gobernador (Estado de Hidalgo, ca. 1722?)
Rocío Cortés, El "nahuatlato Alvarado" y el Tlalamatl Huauhquilpan: Mecanismos de la memoria colectiva de una comunidad indígena (New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Colonial Spanish American Series, 2011), 31, 43.

nehuantli notoca don Francisco Ximenes = yo, llamado don Fransisco Ximéniz (San Francisco Temascalapan, Edo de México, 1598)
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), 306–307.
nejual notocan don Fransisco Sanches = Yo me llamo don Francisco Sanches (Tecamachalco, Puebla, "1548", transl. 1717)
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), 82–83.
yoan neuatl escribano = y yo el escribano (Ciudad de México, 1563)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 102.
nitlaCuilo nehuatli Do nicolas fco, fiscal mayor, sata yglesia Acolma ypaxihuitl 1731 = Lo escribí yo, don Nicolás Francisco, fiscal mayor de la santa iglesia de Acolman en el año de 1731. (San Agustín Acolman, 1731)
Benjamin Daniel Johnson, “Transcripción de los documentos Nahuas de Tezcoco en los Papeles de la Embajada Americana resguardados en el Archivo Histórico de la Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México”, en Documentos nahuas de Tezcoco, Vol. 1, ed. Javier Eduardo Ramírez López (Texcoco: Diócesis de Texcoco, 2018), 200–201.

themes: 
Writing, Literacy