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.

tlatoltia.

Headword: 
tlatoltia.
Principal English Translation: 

to speak for someone

IPAspelling: 
tɬɑhtoːltiɑː
Alonso de Molina: 

tlatoltia. nite. (pret. onitetlatolti.) hazer hablar a otro, o tomar el dicho al reo, o al testigo, o darle tormento para que confiesse la verdad.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 141v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TLAHTŌLTIĀ vrefl, vt to intercede, to speak in favor of someone; to cause someone to talk or confess, to interrogate someone, to read something / hablar, interceder por alguien (K), hacer hablar a otro, o tomar el dicho al reo o al testigo, o darle tormento para que confiese la verdad (M), lo lee (T). caus. TLAHTOĀ.TLAHTŌLTILIĀ applic. TLAHTŌLTIĀ.TLAHTŌLTĪLŌ nonact. TLAHTŌLTIĀ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 267.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Me topan ximotlatolti in titlatlacohuanime = May you speak for use sinners (early sixteenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 117.

themes: 
Speech, Speaking, Oral Tradition