Tepehuán (Tepehuano) is the name of three closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, all spoken in northern Mexico. The language is called O'otham by its speakers.
Northern Tepehuán is spoken by about 10,000 people (2020 census)[1] in several settlements in Guadalupe y Calvo and Guachochi, Chihuahua, as well as in the north of Durango.[2]
Southern Tepehuán is spoken by about 45,000 people,[1] about equally divided into:
Southern Tepehuán coexists with the Mexicanero language; there is some intermarriage between the two ethnic groups, and a number of speakers are trilingual in Mexicanero, Tepehuán and Spanish.
Tepehuán-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from Jesús María, Nayarit, and XETAR, based in Guachochi, Chihuahua.
Tepehuán is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
The following is representative of the Northern dialect of Tepehuan.[3]
Nasal consonants /n, ɲ/ become [ŋ] when preceding a velar consonant.
The following is representative of the Southeastern dialect of Tepehuan.[4]
/v/ is sometimes realized as [f] in word-final position. /l/ appears only in loanwords from Spanish.
Northern Tepehuan:
Southeastern Tepehuan:
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