y manel yehuatl ychcatl amo yntech huallacia yn mexica ynic cenca motoliniticatca çan yehuatl yn cequintin macehualtzitzinti mexica yn quimoquentiaya yhuan cequintin quimomaxtlatiaya yn amoxtli yn atitlan = At least the cotton never reached the Mexica since the Mexica were very poor. Only some of the poor Mexica commoners clothed themselves, and some wore breechclouts of marsh plants that grew by the water. (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, 118–119.
çenca otitechmotolinili = you have greatly mistreated us (Xochimilco, 1586) (201)
tleica tinechtolinia = Why are you pestering me? (59)
netoliniliztli = affliction, poverty, bother, etc. (227)
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)
totoliini = to take trouble with, to take the trouble to
netoliniloc = everyone suffered
Çequintin çan quicochcauaya quitlatziuhcauaya ic motolinia = some neglected their tasks by sleeping, they neglected their duties out of laziness; hence they were miserable
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 165.
ynic amo nechtolinizque noyaohuan = so that my enemies will not afflict me (mid 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), 121.
itoliniloca, in itlaihiyohuiltiloca = his pain, his suffering; tolinia = to suffer, to be impoverished (Juan Bautista, ca. 1599, Mexico City)
Susanne Klaus, Uprooted Christianity: The Preaching of the Christian Doctrine in Mexico, Based on Franciscan Sermons of the 16th Century Written in Nahuatl (Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien e. V. c/o Seminar für Völkerkunde, Universität Bonn, 1999), 247.
titotoliniao tle titocuepazque = we are poor (afflicted). What is to become of us (what are we to turn into)? (suggesting a possible alternate translation of a passage from the Cantares Mexicanos, Bierhorst, 346–47, verse 17)
James Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 147.