Itzli · Obsidian Blade

Learn Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl

A structured A1–B1 curriculum for a living language spoken by 200,000 people in the Huasteca region of Mexico — built with the same rigor as courses for Spanish, French, or Mandarin.

Nahuatl was the lingua franca of Mesoamerica. It gave the world chocolate, tomato, avocado, and thousands of other words. It still lives — and it deserves to be learned.

43
Units
A1 → B1
703
Vocabulary words
IDIEZ-referenced
113
Dialogues
in context
37k+
Lexicon entries
searchable

Structured curriculum

43 units organized by communicative goal — greetings, family, home, nature, and beyond. Each lesson walks you through vocabulary, quizzes, and real dialogue.

Linguistically accurate

Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl, not Classical Nahuatl. Every word audited against IDIEZ and attested EHN texts. Wrong glosses corrected, sources preserved.

Audio for everything

Machine-synthesized pronunciations for all 703 vocabulary words and 113 dialogue lines, using the only open TTS model trained on EHN native speech.

Why this exists

A language reclaimed

The Spanish conquest didn't just topple an empire — it systematically dismantled the languages, writing systems, and oral traditions that held Nahua civilization together. Generations of indigenous Mexicans were made to feel ashamed of their mother tongue. Many stopped speaking it. Many more never had the chance to learn it.

Itzli was created by Sam Villa-Smith, PhD — a person of indigenous Mexican ancestry — as an act of cultural recovery. The goal is to give people like Sam, and the millions of others in the Mexican diaspora who feel the pull of something they were never given, a way back in.

Language revitalization is one of the most powerful forms of resistance. When a language lives, a people's way of seeing the world lives with it.

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