ABSTRACT
Nahuatl belongs to the large Uto-Aztecan family of North and Central American languages. Nahuatl-speaking groups appear to have reached the Valley of Mexico in the middle of the first millennium ad; the Aztec group is attested there from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, and the Nahuatl language became the administrative language of an advanced, locally powerful and complex civilization in Central America, culminating in the Tenochtitlan Aztec Empire, which lasted from the fourteenth century until its destruction by a relatively small number of European mercenaries and priests led by Hernán Cortés in 1519–21.
