Puneet Varma (Editor)

Tepehuán language

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Native to
  
Mexico

Ethnicity
  
Tepehuán

Dialects
  
Tepecano

Region
  
Chihuahua, Durango

Native speakers
  
36,000 (2010 census)

Language family
  
Uto-Aztecan Tepiman Tepehuán

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.

Contents

Northern Tepehuán

Northern Tepehuán is spoken by about 8,000 Tepehuán people (2005 census) 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.

    Simple Tepehuan Text

    Northern Tepehuan:

    Southeastern Tepehuan:

    References

    Tepehuán language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA