Principal English Translation:
Alonso de Molina:
oncan. ay, o alli, mostrando el lugar, o dende tal parte.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 77r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
ONCĀN there, middle distance / ahí, allí (C) This sometimes has the sense 'within sight/ closer than ŌMPA. One would expect the ON to have a long vowel as ŌMPA does, and in fact B marks the vowel long in two out of six attestations, and X has u for O. Elsewhere it is consistently short. See ON-, -CĀN.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 179.
Horacio Carochi / English:
oncān = where
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 508.
Andrés de Olmos:
Oncan, vel oncano, ay de ay, por ay, a ay.
Andrés de Olmos, Arte para aprender la lengua Mexicana, ed. Rémi Siméon, facsimile edition ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Guadalajara: Edmundo Aviña Levy, 1972), 188.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
particle. can also refer to a point in time. in oncān, where. 228
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), 228.
Attestations from sources in English:
it is at, it is there at
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), 40.
yn oncan = where (not a question). Serves as an indicator that a long phrase or location coming up, the expression following it, tells the where or there. Generally indicates a location somewhat closer than ompa, but the term is almost interchangeable with ompa. Oncan and ompa do not always have to be translated. Oncan can have a meaning of time in context = then, when, at that time. Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.
Ivā oncā = And at that point
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 282–283.