Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Tonantzintla is a Nahuatl word; Nahuatl was the language of the Aztecs:
To = our, ours
Nantzin = nobility
tla = close to or place of
Not surprisingly, the Scott catalogue repeats the error in its description, as does my 1948 edition of Sanabria's Air Post Catalogue; three of the six stamps are airmail stamps. Could someone with a Stanley Gibbons catalogue please provide their description?
Bob
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Hi Bob,
My 2000 SG Simplified has the same mistake.
Jacques
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Thanks very much for your help. I'm not overly surprised. There always seems to be at least a couple of degrees of separation between publishers of anything -- stamps, the news, books -- and the people who actually know the subject. And then it gets endlessly repeated.
It's too bad someone didn't notice the error right away and correct it with a new issue. That way, my stamps would be worth even more! 
But, then, they would probably have cost more! 
Bob
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Bob,
I have to question whether this is as simple as a spelling error. Aztecs did not originally use Latin characters to write their words. Could the method of transcribing Nahuatl into the Latin alphabet have changed over time, or could there be multiple systems like there are for Japanese?
Josh
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Josh,
The spelling of "Tonantzintla" is not in question. I was just curious to know if other catalogues besides Scott had repeated the error.
The Tonantzintla Observatory was named after the nearby town of Santa Maria Tonantzintla. The member of my stamp club who brought the spelling error to my attention is Mexican and lived in Puebla; the observatory (according to Wikipedia) is located 11 kilometres west of Puebla and 33 kilometres east of Popocatépetl, eruptions of which sometimes interfere with observing.
Bob
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I have learned from a Mexican-Canadian member of my stamp club that the word "TONANZINTLA" on each of the six stamps of Mexico's 1942 Astrophysics Issue is misspelled. It should be "TONANTZINTLA," with a "T" at the end of the second syllable. Here are the stamps:
Tonantzintla is a Nahuatl word; Nahuatl was the language of the Aztecs:
To = our, ours
Nantzin = nobility
tla = close to or place of
Not surprisingly, the Scott catalogue repeats the error in its description, as does my 1948 edition of Sanabria's Air Post Catalogue; three of the six stamps are airmail stamps. Could someone with a Stanley Gibbons catalogue please provide their description?
Bob
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03:08:31pm
re: Mexico 1942 Astrophysics Congress issue in Stanley Gibbons
Hi Bob,
My 2000 SG Simplified has the same mistake.
Jacques
Login to Like
this post
re: Mexico 1942 Astrophysics Congress issue in Stanley Gibbons
Thanks very much for your help. I'm not overly surprised. There always seems to be at least a couple of degrees of separation between publishers of anything -- stamps, the news, books -- and the people who actually know the subject. And then it gets endlessly repeated.
It's too bad someone didn't notice the error right away and correct it with a new issue. That way, my stamps would be worth even more! But, then, they would probably have cost more!
Bob
Login to Like
this post
re: Mexico 1942 Astrophysics Congress issue in Stanley Gibbons
Bob,
I have to question whether this is as simple as a spelling error. Aztecs did not originally use Latin characters to write their words. Could the method of transcribing Nahuatl into the Latin alphabet have changed over time, or could there be multiple systems like there are for Japanese?
Josh
Login to Like
this post
re: Mexico 1942 Astrophysics Congress issue in Stanley Gibbons
Josh,
The spelling of "Tonantzintla" is not in question. I was just curious to know if other catalogues besides Scott had repeated the error.
The Tonantzintla Observatory was named after the nearby town of Santa Maria Tonantzintla. The member of my stamp club who brought the spelling error to my attention is Mexican and lived in Puebla; the observatory (according to Wikipedia) is located 11 kilometres west of Puebla and 33 kilometres east of Popocatépetl, eruptions of which sometimes interfere with observing.
Bob
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this post