Andrés de Olmos completed Arte para aprender la lengua mexicana in 1547, an early grammar of Nahuatl. Produced in colonial New Spain, it reflected missionary aims but also serious attention to an Indigenous language. It recorded structures of speech that had long carried poetry, ritual and historical memory orally.

The grammar is important because Nahuatl song and metaphor survived partly through colonial transcription. It marks a tense meeting of evangelisation, linguistic preservation and the transformation of Indigenous oral traditions into alphabetic texts.