Tepehuán language
Tepehuán | |
---|---|
O'otham | |
Native to | Mexico |
Region | Chihuahua, Durango |
Ethnicity | Tepehuán |
Native speakers | 36,000 (2010 census)[1] |
Uto-Aztecan
| |
Dialects | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 |
Variously: ntp – Northern Tepehuán stp – Southeastern Tepehuán tla – Southwestern Tepehuán tep – Tepecano |
Glottolog |
tepe1281 [2] |
Tepehuán (Tepehuano) is the name of three closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, both spoken in northern Mexico. The language is called O'otham by its speakers.
Northern Tepehuán
Northern Tepehuán is spoken by about 8,000 Tepehuán people (2005 census)[3] in the south of the state of Chihuahua and north of Durango.
Southern Tepehuán
Southern Tepehuán is divided into the southeastern and southwestern group.
- Southeastern Tepehuán is spoken by 9,937 people (2000 WCD) in Mezquital Municipio in the state of Durango. Southern Tepehuán coexists with the Mexicanero Nahuatl language, there is some intermarriage between the two ethnic groups, and a number of speakers are trilingual in Mexicanero, Tepehuán and Spanish.
The extinct Tepecano language appears to have been a variety of Southern Tepehuán.
- Southwestern Tepehuán is spoken by around 8,187 (2000 WCD) people in Southwestern Durango.
Media
Tepehuán-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from Jesús María, Nayarit, and XETAR, based in Guachochi, Chihuahua.
Morphology
Tepehuán is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
Phonology
The following is representative of the Northern dialect of Tepehuan
Northern Tepehuan has 6 vowels and 3 common diphthongs.
Vowels | Front | Central | Back |
High | i [i̠] | ɨ [ʉ] | u [u] |
Mid | e [e] | o [ɵ] | |
Low | a [ä] |
Diphthongs | Front | Central | Back |
High | ɨi [ʊ̈i] | ||
Mid | ei [ɛi] | ||
Low | ai [äi] |
Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labialized | Uvular | Glottal | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stop | p [p] b [b] | t [t] d [d] | ty [tʲ] dy [dʲ] | k [k] g [g] | ^ [ʔ] | |||
Nasal | m [m] | n [n] | ñ [ɲ] | ng [ŋ] | ||||
Flap | r [ɾ] | |||||||
Fricative | v [v] | s [s] | š [ʃ] | h [χ] | ||||
Affricate | c [tɕ] | |||||||
Approximant | w [w] | |||||||
Lateral | l [l] |
Simple Tepehuan Text
Northern Tepehuan:
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Southeastern Tepehuan:
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References
- ↑ INALI (2012) México: Lenguas indígenas nacionales
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Tepehuan". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ↑ http://www.ethnologue.com/language/ntp