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49-406: Life in the telpochcalli was tough. From early morning strenuous activities began. The day began with a cold bath, followed by a controlled and extremely frugal meal. They had to memorize the songs which they offered as praises of their gods and practiced in the use of weapons such as the sling, and the macuahuitl . Students had other obligations, such as carrying the necessary materials to repair

98-455: A blow in the neck, that stretched it dead at his feet. Another account by Francisco de Aguilar reads: They used ... cudgels and swords and a great many bows and arrows ... One Indian at a single stroke cut open the whole neck of Cristóbal de Olid 's horse, killing the horse. The Indian on the other side slashed at the second horseman and the blow cut through the horse's pastern , whereupon this horse also fell dead. As soon as this sentry gave

147-578: A club than it does to thrust with a sword. More space is needed as well, so warriors advanced in loose formations and fought in single combat. Replicas of the macuahuitl have been produced and tested against sides of beef for documentary shows on the History and Discovery channels, to demonstrate the effectiveness of this weapon. On the History show Warriors , special forces operator and martial artist Terry Schappert injured himself while fencing with

196-468: A few noble boys, attended the school for youths at the telpochcalli . which were located in each neighborhood ( calpulli ). Each family in Tenochtitlan regarded their children as a gift from the gods; children would continue the lineage, collaborate in the activities of the family and learn to respect their elders and venerate The Gods. Someday the family would celebrate their marriage, thus forming

245-426: A language without judgement as to right and wrong, with a scientific understanding that orthographic standardization exists on a spectrum of strength of convention. The original sense of the word, though, implies a dichotomy of correct and incorrect, and the word is still most often used to refer specifically to a standardized prescriptive manner of writing. A distinction is made between emic and etic viewpoints, with

294-427: A macuahuitl; he cut the back of his left leg as the result of a back-swing motion. For SpikeTV 's reality program Deadliest Warrior a replica was created and tested against a model of a horse's head created using a horse's skeleton and ballistics gel . Actor and martial artist Éder Saúl López was able to decapitate the model, but it took three swings. Blows from the replica macuahuitl were most effective when it

343-422: A new pillar in the social organization of the calpulli. It was very important that within the family that children learn in the generation of the universe, carried out by the supreme gods, the male and female energies had been joined to enforce the creation of life. Women therefore educated their daughters, while men instructed their sons; that way through the process of informal education which had been imparted in

392-460: A number of detailed classifications have been proposed. Japanese is an example of a writing system that can be written using a combination of logographic kanji characters and syllabic hiragana and katakana characters; as with many non-alphabetic languages, alphabetic romaji characters may also be used as needed. Orthographies that use alphabets and syllabaries are based on the principle that written graphemes correspond to units of sound of

441-716: A possible variant of the macuahuitl. Some attestations of a type of macuahuitl are also present dating to Olmec times. By the time of the Spanish conquest , the macuahuitl was widely distributed in Mesoamerica , with records of its use by the Aztecs, Mixtecs, Tarascans, Toltecs and others. It was also commonly used by the Indian auxiliaries of Spain, though they favored Spanish swords. As Mesoamericans in Spanish service needed

490-466: A premium on the capture of enemy warriors for live sacrifice. Advancement into the elite cuāuhocēlōtl warrior societies of the Aztec, for example, required taking 20 live captives from the battlefield. The macuahuitl thus shows several features designed to make it a useful tool for capturing prisoners: fitting spaced instead of contiguous blades, as seen in many codex illustrations, would intentionally limit

539-443: A special permission to carry European arms, metal swords brought Indian auxiliaries more prestige than maquahuitls in the eyes of Europeans as well as natives. The macuahuitl was sharp enough to decapitate a man. According to an account by Bernal Díaz del Castillo , one of Hernán Cortés 's conquistadors , it could even decapitate a horse: Pedro de Morón was a very good horseman, and as he charged with three other horsemen into

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588-484: A two-handed sword, but with the hilt not so long; about three fingers in breadth. The edges are grooved, and in the grooves they insert stone knives, that cut like a Toledo blade. I saw one day an Indian fighting with a mounted man, and the Indian gave the horse of his antagonist such a blow in the breast that he opened it to the entrails, and it fell dead on the spot. And the same day I saw another Indian give another horse

637-584: A type of macana , was a common weapon used by the Aztec military forces and other cultures of central Mexico. It was noted during the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the region . Other military equipment recorded includes the round shield ( chīmalli , [t͡ʃiˈmalːi] ), the bow ( tlahuītōlli , [t͡ɬaʔwiːˈtoːlːi] ), and the spear-thrower ( ahtlatl , [ˈaʔt͡ɬat͡ɬ] ). Its sides are embedded with prismatic blades traditionally made from obsidian (volcanic glass); obsidian

686-565: Is a set of conventions for writing a language , including norms of spelling , punctuation , word boundaries , capitalization , hyphenation , and emphasis . Most national and international languages have an established writing system that has undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. These processes can fossilize pronunciation patterns that are no longer routinely observed in speech (e.g. would and should ); they can also reflect deliberate efforts to introduce variability for

735-450: Is also considerably more brittle than steel; obsidian blades of the type used on the macuahuitl tended to shatter on impact with other obsidian blades, steel swords or plate armour . Obsidian blades also have difficulty penetrating European mail . The thin, replaceable blades used on the macuahuitl were easily dulled or chipped by repeated impacts on bone or wood, making artful use of the weapon critical. It takes more time to lift and swing

784-418: Is capable of producing an edge sharper than high-quality steel razor blades. It was capable of inflicting serious lacerations from the rows of obsidian blades embedded in its sides. These could be knapped into blades or spikes, or into a circular design that looked like scales. The macuahuitl is not specifically a sword or a club, although it approximates a European broadsword. Historian John Pohl defines

833-559: Is discussed further at Phonemic orthography § Morphophonemic features . The syllabaries in the Japanese writing system ( hiragana and katakana ) are examples of almost perfectly shallow orthographies—the kana correspond with almost perfect consistency to the spoken syllables, although with a few exceptions where symbols reflect historical or morphophonemic features: notably the use of ぢ ji and づ zu (rather than じ ji and ず zu , their pronunciation in standard Tokyo dialect) when

882-517: Is first attested in the 15th century, ultimately from Ancient Greek : ὀρθός ( orthós 'correct') and γράφειν ( gráphein 'to write'). Orthography in phonetic writing systems is often concerned with matters of spelling , i.e. the correspondence between written graphemes and the phonemes found in speech. Other elements that may be considered part of orthography include hyphenation , capitalization , word boundaries , emphasis , and punctuation . Thus, orthography describes or defines

931-576: Is placed between slashes ( /b/ , /bæk/ ), and from phonetic transcription , which is placed between square brackets ( [b] , [bæk] ). The writing systems on which orthographies are based can be divided into a number of types, depending on what type of unit each symbol serves to represent. The principal types are logographic (with symbols representing words or morphemes), syllabic (with symbols representing syllables), and alphabetic (with symbols roughly representing phonemes). Many writing systems combine features of more than one of these types, and

980-512: Is possibly lost. No actual maquahuitl specimens remain and the present knowledge of them comes from contemporaneous accounts and illustrations that date to the 16th century and earlier. For the exhibition "Tenochtitlan y Tlatelolco. A 500 años de su caída" at the Museo del Templo Mayor in Mexico city , an alleged authentic macuahuitl was displayed along with an atlatl . The maquahuitl predates

1029-624: The Conquest of the Aztec Empire ; it was part of the Royal Armoury of Madrid until it was destroyed by a fire in 1884. Images of the original designs survive in diverse catalogues. The oldest replica is the macuahuitl created by the medievalist Achille Jubinal in the 19th century. The maquahuitl ( Classical Nahuatl : māccuahuitl , other orthographic variants include mākkwawitl and mācquahuitl ; plural māccuahuimeh ),

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1078-461: The Sierra de las Navajas (Razor Mountains), named after their obsidian deposits. Use of the macuahuitl as a weapon is attested from the 1st millennia   CE. A Mayan carving at Chichen Itza shows a warrior holding a macuahuitl, depicted as a club having separate blades sticking out from each side. In a mural, a warrior holds a club with many blades on one side and one sharp point on the other, also

1127-700: The caron on the letters | š | and | č | , which represent those same sounds in Czech ), or the addition of completely new symbols (as some languages have introduced the letter | w | to the Latin alphabet) or of symbols from another alphabet, such as the rune | þ | in Icelandic. After the classical period, Greek developed a lowercase letter system with diacritics to enable foreigners to learn pronunciation and grammatical features. As pronunciation of letters changed over time,

1176-465: The Aztecs. Tools made from obsidian fragments were used by some of the earliest Mesoamericans. Obsidian used in ceramic vessels has been found at Aztec sites. Obsidian cutting knives, sickles, scrapers, drills, razors, and arrow points have also been found. Several obsidian mines were close to the Aztec civilizations in the Valley of Mexico as well as in the mountains north of the valley. Among these were

1225-462: The alarm, they all ran out with their weapons to cut us off, following us with great fury, shooting arrows, spears and stones, and wounding us with their swords. Here many Spaniards fell, some dead and some wounded, and others without any injury who fainted away from fright. Given the importance of human sacrifice in Nahua cultures, their warfare styles, particularly those of the Aztec and Maya, placed

1274-500: The blades could be neither pulled out nor broken. The macuahuitl was made with either a one-handed or two-handed grip, as well as in rectangular, ovoid, or pointed forms. Two-handed macuahuitl have been described as being "as tall as a man". According to National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) archaeologist Marco Cervera Obregón , there were two versions of this weapon: The macuahuitl, about 70 to 80 centimetres (28 to 31 in) long with six to eight blades on each side; and

1323-467: The character is a voicing of an underlying ち or つ (see rendaku ), and the use of は, を, and へ to represent the sounds わ, お, and え, as relics of historical kana usage . Korean hangul and Tibetan scripts were also originally extremely shallow orthographies, but as a representation of the modern language those frequently also reflect morphophonemic features. An orthography based on a correspondence to phonemes may sometimes lack characters to represent all

1372-430: The correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are highly complex or inconsistent is called a deep orthography (or less formally, the language is said to have irregular spelling ). An orthography with relatively simple and consistent correspondences is called shallow (and the language has regular spelling ). One of the main reasons why spelling and pronunciation diverge is that sound changes taking place in

1421-443: The emic approach taking account of perceptions of correctness among language users, and the etic approach being purely descriptive, considering only the empirical qualities of any system as used. Orthographic units, such as letters of an alphabet , are conceptualized as graphemes . These are a type of abstraction , analogous to the phonemes of spoken languages; different physical forms of written symbols are considered to represent

1470-446: The family, children learned the appropriate behaviors and different etiquettes for each sex. From the age of three or four years, infants were to perform simple tasks with great restraint and obedience; as the years passed the work became more complex and with heavier tasks; that is how sons learned the crafts of their fathers, while girls learned the duties of their mothers, like cleaning the house, preparing food, spinning clothing for

1519-533: The family, etc. Initially, children who rebelled were threatened with spanking, which became effective when they showed further disobedience; later, if young boys displayed negative attitudes, parents applied painful punctures with maguey thorns, or they would semi-asphyxyate them with the smoke from burning chillies (preparing them incidentally, for future practices of self-sacrifice). On the other hand, young ladies who showed negative attitudes, such as flirting and taste for gossip, were forced to sweep at night out of

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1568-499: The house, which was seen as worse than a beating. Macuahuitl A macuahuitl ( [maːˈkʷawit͡ɬ] ) is a weapon, a wooden sword with several embedded obsidian blades. The name is derived from the Nahuatl language and means "hand-wood". Its sides are embedded with prismatic blades traditionally made from obsidian , which is capable of producing an edge sharper than high quality steel razor blades. The macuahuitl

1617-540: The mācuāhuitzōctli, a smaller club about 50 centimetres (20 in) long with only four obsidian blades. According to Ross Hassig , the last authentic macuahuitl was destroyed in 1884 in a fire in the Real Armería in Madrid, where it was housed beside the last tepoztopilli . According to Marco Cervera Obregón, there is supposed to be at least one macuahuitl in a Museo Nacional de Antropología warehouse, but it

1666-688: The national language, including its orthography—such as the Académie Française in France and the Royal Spanish Academy in Spain. No such authority exists for most languages, including English. Some non-state organizations, such as newspapers of record and academic journals , choose greater orthographic homogeneity by enforcing a particular style guide or spelling standard such as Oxford spelling . The English word orthography

1715-539: The phonemic distinctions in the language. This is called a defective orthography . An example in English is the lack of any indication of stress . Another is the digraph | th | , which represents two different phonemes (as in then and thin ) and replaced the old letters | ð | and | þ | . A more systematic example is that of abjads like the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, in which

1764-515: The ranks of the enemy the Indians seized hold of his lance and he was not able to drag it away, and others gave him cuts with their broadswords, and wounded him badly, and then they slashed at the mare, and cut her head off at the neck so that it hung by the skin, and she fell dead. Another account by a companion of Cortés known as The Anonymous Conqueror tells a similar story of its effectiveness: They have swords of this kind – of wood made like

1813-421: The research of historian Marco Cervera Obregón, the sharp pieces of obsidian, each about 3 cm long, were attached to the flat paddle with a natural adhesive, bitumen . The rows of obsidian blades were sometimes discontinuous, leaving gaps along the side, while at other times the rows were set close together and formed a single edge. It was noted by the Spanish that the macuahuitl was so cleverly constructed that

1862-487: The sake of national identity, as seen in Noah Webster 's efforts to introduce easily noticeable differences between American and British spelling (e.g. honor and honour ). Orthographic norms develop through social and political influence at various levels, such as encounters with print in education, the workplace, and the state. Some nations have established language academies in an attempt to regulate aspects of

1911-479: The same grapheme if the differences between them are not significant for meaning. Thus, a grapheme can be regarded as an abstraction of a collection of glyphs that are all functionally equivalent. For example, in written English (or other languages using the Latin alphabet ), there are two different physical representations (glyphs) of the lowercase Latin letter a : ⟨a⟩ and ⟨ɑ⟩ . Since

1960-552: The short vowels are normally left unwritten and must be inferred by the reader. When an alphabet is borrowed from its original language for use with a new language—as has been done with the Latin alphabet for many languages, or Japanese katakana for non-Japanese words—it often proves defective in representing the new language's phonemes. Sometimes this problem is addressed by the use of such devices as digraphs (such as | sh | and | ch | in English, where pairs of letters represent single sounds), diacritics (like

2009-438: The spoken language are not always reflected in the orthography, and hence spellings correspond to historical rather than present-day pronunciation. One consequence of this is that many spellings come to reflect a word's morphophonemic structure rather than its purely phonemic structure (for example, the English regular past tense morpheme is consistently spelled -ed in spite of its different pronunciations in various words). This

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2058-538: The spoken language: phonemes in the former case, and syllables in the latter. In virtually all cases, this correspondence is not exact. Different languages' orthographies offer different degrees of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. English , French , Danish , and Thai orthographies, for example, are highly irregular, whereas the orthographies of languages such as Russian , German , Spanish , Finnish , Turkish , and Serbo-Croatian represent pronunciation much more faithfully. An orthography in which

2107-428: The substitution of either of them for the other cannot change the meaning of a word, they are considered to be allographs of the same grapheme, which can be written | a | . The italic and boldface forms are also allographic. Graphemes or sequences of them are sometimes placed between angle brackets, as in | b | or | back | . This distinguishes them from phonemic transcription, which

2156-464: The symbols used in writing, and the conventions that regulate their use. Most natural languages developed as oral languages and writing systems have usually been crafted or adapted as ways of representing the spoken language. The rules for doing this tend to become standardized for a given language, leading to the development of an orthography that is generally considered "correct". In linguistics , orthography often refers to any method of writing

2205-437: The temples ( teocalli ), and collectively working the fields for their livelihood. The Aztec world was characterized by the care the rulers put into the education system. Tenochtitlan schools were of two types, generally depending on the boys' social background: the sons of nobles attended the calmecac , an institution that was located within the ceremonial precinct, while the commoners known generically as macehualtin , and

2254-475: The weapon as a "kind of a saw sword". According to conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo , the macuahuitl was 0.91 to 1.22 m long, and 75 mm wide, with a groove along either edge, into which sharp-edged pieces of flint or obsidian were inserted and firmly fixed with an adhesive. Based on his research, historian John Pohl indicates that the length was just over a meter, although other models were larger, and intended for use with both hands. According to

2303-489: The wound depth from a single blow, and the heavy wooden construction allows weakened opponents to be easily clubbed unconscious with the flat side of the weapon. The art of disabling opponents using an un-bladed macuahuitl as a sparring club was taught from a young age in the Aztec Tēlpochcalli schools. The macuahuitl had many drawbacks in combat versus European steel swords. Despite being sharper, prismatic obsidian

2352-459: Was a standard close combat weapon. Use of the macuahuitl as a weapon is attested from the first millennium CE, although specimens can be found in art dating to at least pre-classic times. By the time of the Spanish conquest the macuahuitl was widely distributed in Mesoamerica . The weapon was used by different civilisations including the Aztec (Mexicas), Olmec , Maya , Mixtec , Toltec , and Tarascans . One example of this weapon survived

2401-413: Was swung and then dragged backwards upon impact, creating a sawing motion. This led Max Geiger, the computer programmer of the series, to refer to the weapon as "the obsidian chainsaw". This may have been due to the unrefined obsidian cutting edges of the weapon used in the show, compared with more finely made prismatic obsidian blades , as in the Madrid specimen. Orthography An orthography

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