Tepehuán language

Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico

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.

Internal classification

• Tepehuán
  • Northern Tepehuán
  • Southern Tepehuán
    • Southeastern Tepehuán
    • Southwestern Tepehuán

Northern Tepehuán

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

Southern Tepehuán is spoken by about 45,000 people,^[1] about equally divided into:

• Southeastern Tepehuán in Mezquital Municipio in the state of Durango.
• Southwestern Tepehuán in southwestern Durango.

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.

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

Northern Tepehuan

The following is representative of the Northern dialect of Tepehuan.^[3]

Vowels

Consonants

Nasal consonants /n, ɲ/ become [ŋ] when preceding a velar consonant.

Southern Tepehuan

The following is representative of the Southeastern dialect of Tepehuan.^[4]

Vowels

Consonants

/v/ is sometimes realized as [f] in word-final position. /l/ appears only in loanwords from Spanish.

Sample Tepehuan Text

Northern Tepehuan:

Southeastern Tepehuan:

Further reading

• Gil Burgoin, Carlos Ivanhoe (2021). "Northern Tepehuan". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association: 1–17. doi:10.1017/S002510032100013X, with supplementary sound recordings.

References

1. Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020 INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.
2. "Catálogo de las Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales".
3. Bascom, Burton (1982). Northern Tepehuan. Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar 3: Uto-Aztecan grammatical sketches: Summer Institute of Linguistics. pp. 267–393.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
4. Willett, Thomas L. (1988). A Reference Grammar of Southeastern Tepehuan.