Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

Popoloca.

Headword: 
Popoloca.
Principal English Translation: 

a person of another ethnicity and language; or, to speak a foreign language, to speak a language badly, or to speak unintelligibly; a barbarian (see Molina and Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
popolokɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

popoloca. barbaro, hombre de otra nacion y lenguaje.
popoloca. ni. (pret. onipopolocac.) hablar lenguaje barbaro.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 83v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Barbaro de lengua estraña. popoloca, pinotl.
Alonso de Molina Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 1, Spanish to Nahuatl, f. 18v.

Frances Karttunen: 

POPOLOCA to speak a language badly, to speak a foreign language, to speak unintelligibly / hablar languaje bárbaro (M) See POLŌN(I).

POPOLOCOHUA nonact. POPOLOCA.

POPOLOQUĪTIĀ caus. POPOLOCA.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 203.