Cuicatec is an
Oto-Manguean language spoken in
Oaxaca
)
, population_note =
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, Mexico. It belongs to the
Mixtecan
The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Cultu ...
branch together with the
Mixtec languages and the
Trique language
The Triqui (), or Trique, languages are a family of Oto-Manguean spoken by 30,000 Trique people of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and the state of Baja California in 2007 (due to recent population movements). They are also spoken by 5,000 immigrant ...
. The
Ethnologue lists two major dialects of Cuicatec:
Tepeuxila Cuicatec and
Teutila Cuicatec. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Cuicatec is tonal.
The
Cuicatecs are closely related to the
Mixtec
The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Cultur ...
s. They inhabit two towns:
Teutila and
Tepeuxila in western Oaxaca. According to the 2000 census, they number around 23,000, of whom an estimated 65% are speakers of the language. The name ''Cuicatec'' is a
Nahuatl
Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...
exonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, o ...
, from 'song' 'inhabitant of place of'.
[Campbell 1997:402)]
Cuicatec-language programming is carried by the
CDI's radio station
XEOJN, based in
San Lucas Ojitlán,
Oaxaca
)
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, postal_code_type = Postal ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
The Santa Maria Papalo dialect contains six vowel sounds both oral and nasal:
Consonants
Allophones of the following sounds /β ð ɣ n j t tʃ/ include
d ɡ~x ŋ j̈ θ ʃ respectively.
Notes
Bibliography
*Anderson, E. Richard & Hilario Concepción R. 1983. Diccionario cuicateco: español-cuicateco, cuicateco-español. Mexico City: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
*Bradley, David P. 1991. A preliminary syntactic sketch of Concepción Pápalo Cuicatec. In C. Henry Bradley and Barbara E. Hollenbach (eds.), Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan languages 3, pp. 409–506. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.
*Campbell, Lyle. 1997. ''American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Needham, Doris & Marjorie Davis. 1946. Cuicateco phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 12: 139-46.
*Prewett, Joanne and Omer E. 1974. The Segmental Phonology of Cuicateco of Santa María Pápalo Oaxaca, Mexico, pp. 53-92
{{Languages of Mexico
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Mixtecan languages