Purépecha (also ''P'urhépecha'' , tsz, Phorhé or ''Phorhépecha''), often called Tarascan, which is a pejorative term coined by Spanish colonizers ( es, Tarasco), is a
language isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...
or small
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
that is spoken by some 140,000
Purépecha
The Purépecha (endonym pua, P'urhepecha ) are a group of indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of Michoacán, Mexico, mainly in the area of the cities of Cherán and Pátzcuaro.
They are also known by the pejorative " Tarascan ...
in the highlands of
Michoacán
Michoacán, formally Michoacán de Ocampo (; Purépecha: ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Michoacán de Ocampo ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of ...
,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
.
Purépecha was the main language of the pre-Columbian
Tarascan State and became widespread in the region during its heyday in the
late post-Classic period. The small town of Purepero got its name from the indigenous people who lived there.
Even though it is spoken within the boundaries of
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Wit ...
, Purépecha does not share many of the traits defining the
Mesoamerican language area The Mesoamerican language area is a ''sprachbund'' containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethn ...
, suggesting that the language is a remnant of an indigenous pre-Aztec substrate that existed several thousands of years ago before the migration of speakers that contributed to the formation of the
sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lan ...
, or alternatively is a relatively new arrival to the area.
Classification
Purépecha has long been classified as a language isolate unrelated to any other known language. That judgement is repeated in
Lyle Campbell's authoritative classification.
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on ...
assigned it to the
Chibchan language family, but like the rest of his American classification, that proposal is rejected by specialists.
There are a number of dialects, which
SIL International
SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to e ...
divides into two languages, but Campbell (1997) considers Purépecha to be a single language.
Demography
The language is spoken mostly in rural communities in the highlands of Michoacán. The former center of the Tarascan State was around
Lake Pátzcuaro
Lake Pátzcuaro (Spanish: ''Lago de Pátzcuaro'') is a lake in the municipality of Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico.
Lake Pátzcuaro lies in an endorheic basin, which does not drain to the sea. A watershed area of 929 square kilometres drains into ...
and remains an important center of the Purépecha community.
''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...
'' counts Purépecha as two languages: a central language, spoken by approximately 40,000 people (2005) around Pátzcuaro, and a western highland language, spoken by 135,000 speakers (2005) around
Zamora,
Los Reyes de Salgado,
Paracho de Verduzco
Paracho de Verduzco (often called Paracho) is a small city located in Michoacán, Mexico. Located about west of the state capital Morelia, it serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of Paracho. It has a population of 37,4 ...
, and
Pamatácuaro, all of which are in the vicinity of the volcano
Parícutin
Parícutin (or Volcán de Parícutin, also accented Paricutín) is a cinder cone volcano located in the Mexican state of Michoacán, near the city of Uruapan and about west of Mexico City. The volcano surged suddenly from the cornfield of loca ...
. Recent migration has formed communities of speakers in the cities of
Guadalajara
Guadalajara ( , ) is a metropolis in western Mexico and the capital of the state of Jalisco. According to the 2020 census, the city has a population of 1,385,629 people, making it the 7th largest city by population in Mexico, while the Guadalaj ...
,
Tijuana
Tijuana ( ,["Tijuana"](_blank)
(US) and [< ...]
and
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
and in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
. The total population of speakers is rising (from 58,000 in 1960 to 96,000 in 1990 and 120,000 in 2000), but the percentage of speakers relative to non-speakers is falling, and the degree of
bilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...
is rising, which makes it an
endangered language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead lang ...
. Fewer than 10% of speakers are now monolingual.
History
The Purépecha are known to have migrated from elsewhere to their current location, as their tradition includes stories of having traveled from the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...
to their current locations.
Ethnohistorical accounts mention them as a people dwelling in the same region of Michoacán they live in now as early as the 13th century. According to the
''Relación de Michoacán'', the communities around Lake Pátzcuaro were gathered into the strong Purépecha State by the leader of the Uacúsecha group of Purépecha speakers,
Tariácuri
Tariácuri (fl. ca. 1350) was a culture hero of the Purépecha people and one of the foremost rulers of the Purépecha Empire. Traditionally hailed as the state's founder, Tariácuri is credited with growing the Purépecha Empire from an individu ...
. Around 1300, he undertook the first conquests of other and installed his sons
Hiripan and
Tangáxoan as lords of
Ihuatzio
Ihuatzio, which translates to "Land of Coyotes" in the Purépecha language, is a town located near Lake Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It was once the capital of the Purépecha kingdom. It was the capital until the change to Tzin ...
and
Tzintzuntzan respectively while he himself ruled from
Pátzcuaro City. By the time of the death of
Taríacuri, in around 1350, his lineage was in control of all the major centers around Lake Pátzcuaro.
His son Hiripan continued the expansion into the area surrounding
Lake Cuitzeo. In 1460 the Purépecha State reached the Pacific Coast at
Zacatula, advanced into the
Toluca Valley
The Toluca Valley is a valley in central Mexico, just west of the Valley of Mexico (Mexico City), the old name was Matlatzinco. The valley runs north–south for about , surrounded by mountains, the most imposing of which is the Nevado de Toluca Vo ...
, and also, on the northern rim, reached into the present-day state of
Guanajuato
Guanajuato (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Guanajuato ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato), is one of the 32 states that make up the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 46 municipalities and its capital city i ...
. In the 15th century, the Purépecha state was at war with the Aztecs. Many
Nahua peoples
The Nahuas () are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, ...
who had lived side by side with Purépecha-speakers were relocated outside of the Tarascan frontiers, and
Otomi-speakers fleeing the Aztec expansion resettled on the border between the two polities. That created a fairly homogeneous area of Purépecha speakers, with no other languages spoken in the core area around Lake Pátzcuaro.
During the
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico or the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–21), was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the eve ...
, the Purépecha State was at first peacefully incorporated into the realm of
New Spain
New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the A ...
, but with the killing of Cazonci
Tangaxuán II by
Nuño de Guzmán
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán (c. 14901558) was a Spanish conquistador and colonial administrator in New Spain. He was the governor of the province of Pánuco from 1525 to 1533 and of Nueva Galicia from 1529 to 1534, and president of the first Ro ...
, the relation became one of Spanish dominance by force. Exceptions were the hospital communities of
Vasco de Quiroga
Vasco de Quiroga (1470/78 – 14 March 1565) was the first bishop of Michoacán, Mexico, and one of the judges (''oidores'') in the second Real Audiencia of Mexico – the high court that governed New Spain – from January 10, 1531, to April 16, ...
, such as
Santa Fé de la Laguna, where Purépecha could live with a degree of protection from Spanish domination. Through Spanish friars, the Purépecha learned to write in the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...
, and Purépecha became a literary language in the early colonial period. There is a body of written sources in Purépecha from the period, including several dictionaries, confessionaries, and land titles. Among the most important colonial works are the grammar (1558) and dictionary (1559) of Fray
Maturino Gilberti, and the grammar and dictionary (1574) by Juan Baptista de Lagunas
From ca. 1700, the status of Purépecha changed, and throughout the 20th century, the Mexican government pursued a policy of
Hispanicization
Hispanicization ( es, hispanización) refers to the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by Hispanic culture or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-Hispanic becomes Hispanic. Hispanicization is il ...
. Speakers of indigenous languages were actively encouraged to abandon their languages in favor of Spanish. However, in accord with international changes in favor of recognizing the
linguistic rights
Linguistic rights are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communication in a private or public atmosphere. Other parameters for analyzing linguistic rights include the ...
of
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
and promoting
multiculturalism
The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for " ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchang ...
in colonial states, the
Congress of the Union
The Congress of the Union ( es, Congreso de la Unión, ), formally known as the General Congress of the United Mexican States (''Congreso General de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos''), is the legislature of the federal government of Mexico con ...
of Mexico approved the
General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples in 2003, giving Purépecha and Mexico's other indigenous languages official status as "national languages."
Orthography
The official alphabet is the PURHEPECHA JIMBO KARARAKUECHA (Purépecha Alphabet):
*''a b ch ch d e g i ï j k k m n nh o p p r rh s t t ts ts u x''.
The letters ''b, d, g'' occur in spelling only after ''m, n'': ''mb, nd, ng'', which reflects the pronunciation of ''p, t, k'' after nasal consonants.
Phonology
In all dialects of Purépecha, the
stress accent is phonemic. As in
Spanish orthography
Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping ...
, a stressed syllable is indicated by the
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...
. Minimal pairs are formed:
*''karáni'' 'write' — ''kárani'' 'fly'
*''p'amáni'' 'wrap it' — ''p'ámani'' 'touch a liquid'
Usually, the second syllable of the word is stressed, but occasionally, it is the first.
The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below. It differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA) and also gives the alphabet equivalents, enclosed in angle brackets, if it is not obvious.
Vowels
The two mid vowels are uncommon, especially the latter.
The high central vowel is almost always after or and is then almost an
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
of .
The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted except before a pause.
Vowel clusters are very rare except for sequences that are generated by adding grammatical suffixes like the plural -''echa'' or -''icha'', the copula -''i'', or the genitive -''iri''. Vowel clusters are usually not the first two sounds of a word.
Consonants
Purépecha is one of the few languages in the Mesoamerica without a
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
(a distinction shared by the
Huave language and by some
Nahuan languages
The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone a sound change, known as Whorf's law, that changed an original *t to before *a. Subsequently, some Nahuan languages have changed this to ...
). It lacks any
laterals ('l'-sounds). However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by under the influence of Spanish.
There are distinct series of nonaspirated and
aspirated consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with ...
s and
affricate consonant
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...
s; aspiration is noted by an apostrophe. There are two
rhotics
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including , in the Latin script and , in the Cyrillic script. Th ...
('r'-sounds, one of them being
retroflex).
The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes , , , . It uses the letter for both and the letter for both , but both semivowels are fairly rare. When or is followed by and another vowel letter, the sequence virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.
Intervocally, aspirated consonants become
pre-aspirated. After nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. Unaspirated consonants become voiced after nasals.
Grammar
Typology
Purépecha is an
agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to rem ...
, but
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
has led to a certain degree of fusion. It is sometimes considered a
polysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able ...
because of its complex morphology and frequent long words. Unlike most other languages that are considered polysynthetic, it has no
noun compounding or
incorporation. The language is exclusively suffixing and has a large number of suffixes (as many as 160) and
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
s. The verb distinguishes 13 aspects and 6 modes. The language is
double-marking in the typology of
Johanna Nichols, as it marks grammatical relations on both the dependent phrases and phrasal heads.
The language has both
grammatical case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...
and
postpositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
. The case system distinguishes
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
,
accusative
The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...
,
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...
,
comitative,
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
, and
locative
In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
cases, but there are also many nominal derivational affixes.
Word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
is flexible, and the basic word order has been described as either
SVO or
SOV. However, most authors note that other word orders are frequently used for
pragmatic
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement.
Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to:
*Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy
* Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics
*'' Pragmatics'', an academic journal i ...
purposes such as
focus or
topic tracking.
Nouns
Nouns are inflected by the basic formula Noun + Number + Case.
The language distinguishes between plural and unspecified numbers, with no dedicated singular form.
Plurals formed by the suffix ''-echa/-icha'' or ''-cha''.
*''kúmi-wátsï'' 'fox' – ''kúmi-wátsïcha'' 'foxes'
*''iréta'' 'town' – ''irétaacha'' 'towns'
*''warhíticha tepharicha maru'' 'some fat women' (lit. women-
PL fat-
PL some).
The nominative case is unmarked. The accusative case (also called the
objective case
In grammar, an oblique (abbreviated ; from la, casus obliquus) or objective case (abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case, and sometimes, the vocative.
A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role ex ...
) is used to mark
direct and sometimes indirect objects and is marked by the suffix ''-ni'':
The genitive case is marked by ''-ri'' ''-eri'':
The locative case is marked by ''-rhu'', ''-o''
The instrumental case is marked by the particle ''jimpó'' or the suffix ''-mpu''
The comitative case is marked by the particle ''jinkóni'' or the suffix ''-nkuni''
Discourse-pragmatic focus on a noun or noun phrase is indicated by the clitic ''-sï''.
Verbs
Verbs inflect for
aspects and
moods as well as for
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual number ...
of the subject and the object. There are also a number of suffixes expressing shape, position, or body parts that affect or are affected by the verbal action.
Transitivity is manipulated by suffixes forming transitive verbs with applicative or
causative
In linguistics, a causative ( abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
meaning or
intransitives with passive or
inchoative meanings.
Media
Purépecha-language programming is broadcast by the radio station
XEPUR-AM
XEPUR-AM (''La Voz de los Purépechas''; en, The Voice of the Purepechas) is an indigenous community radio station that broadcasts in Spanish and Purepecha from Cherán in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It is run by the Cultural Indigenis ...
, located in
Cherán
Cherán () is a municipality located in the Mexican state of Michoacán, which is situated in the central western portion of Mexico, extending west to the Pacific Shore. Cherán itself lies in the northwestern portion of Michoacán, about west ...
, Michoacán. It is a project of the
National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples
The National Institute of Indigenous Peoples ( es, Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas, INPI) is a decentralized agency of the Mexican Federal Public Administration. It was established on December 4, 2018, though the earliest Mexican g ...
.
Toponyms
*
Acuitzio – "Place of the snakes"
*
Cuerámaro Cuerámaro is a Mexican city (and municipality) located in Southwest region of the state of Guanajuato. The municipality has an area of 254.85 square kilometres (0.83% of the surface of the state) and is bordered to the north by Romita, to the east ...
– "Coat of the swamps"
* Cóporo – "Over the big road"
*
Cupareo – "Crossroads"
*
Tzintzuntzan – "Place of hummingbirds"
* Zurumuato – "Place in straw hill"
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Purépecha Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendixField recordings of Purépechacarried out by linguist
William Shipley
William Shipley (baptised: 2 June 1715 – 28 December 1803) was an English drawing master, social reformer and inventor who, in 1754, founded an arts society in London that became The Royal Society of Arts, or Royal Society for the Encourage ...
, archived at the
Berkeley Language CenterThe P'urhépecha WEB pageFrom Michoacán, México. (In Spanish)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Purhepecha Language
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Mesoamerican languages
Purépecha
Agglutinative languages
Language isolates of North America
Endangered language isolates
Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas