Nēn: "Adverbial particle expressing doubt or antiipating failure. In vain (MOL), uselessly (MOL); perchance (CAR 507:5), probably not, scarcely, hardly.
John Bierhorst, A Nahuatl-ENglish Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos with Analytical Transcription and Grammatical Notes (1985), 233.
Auh ca amo çā nen. ca niquinpehuaz = And not for nothing shall I conquer them. (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. 1, 78–79.
Onen oncatca. Iquac mitoa: intla itla oquinequia noyollo, zan amo uel omuchiuh. = It was in vain. This is said when I desire something with all my heart that cannot be done.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 108–109.
quẽ ҫan nel oc nen = What can be done? Is it yet in vain? (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 84.
Auh in axcan: ça nen tiuhque, ça nen tehoan aiuhtlancaiutl, aiuhqujzqui popolonqui tzatzacquj, aitlaliloia, aitenqujxtiloian: ic toconcuepa, toconjlochia, in amjhijotzin, in amotlatoltzin = But now, thus are we useless; useless are we; unfinished, incomplete, stuttering, stammering, unsettled, unpronounced is that with which we return, with. which we respond to your discourse.
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 138.