Tepehuán (Tepehuano) is the name of three closely related languages of the Piman branch of the

Uto-Aztecan Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...

language family, all spoken in northern

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

. The language is called O'otham by its speakers.

Northern Tepehuán

Northern Tepehuán is spoken by about 10,000 people (2020 census) in several settlements in

Guadalupe y Calvo Guadalupe y Calvo is one of the 67 municipalities of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico. The municipal seat lies at Guadalupe y Calvo. The municipality covers an area of 9,165.1 km². As of 2010, the municipality had a total population of 53,4 ...

and

Guachochi Guachochi is a city in the south-western portion of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The city of Guachochi serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. As of 2010, the city of Guachochi had a population of 14,5 ...

Chihuahua Chihuahua may refer to: Places *Chihuahua (state), a Mexican state **Chihuahua (dog), a breed of dog named after the state **Chihuahua cheese, a type of cheese originating in the state **Chihuahua City, the capital city of the state **Chihuahua Mun ...

, as well as in the north of

Durango Durango (), officially named Estado Libre y Soberano de Durango ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Durango; Tepehuán: ''Korian''; Nahuatl: ''Tepēhuahcān''), is one of the 31 states which make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico, situated i ...

Southern Tepehuán

Southern Tepehuán is spoken by about 45,000 people, about equally divided into: *Southeastern Tepehuán in Mezquital Municipio in the state of

. *Southwestern Tepehuán in southwestern Durango. Southern Tepehuán coexists with the

Mexicanero language Mexicanero is the Nahuan language spoken by the Mexicanero people of southern Durango and northern Nayarit. It has around 1000 speakers in the remote towns of San Pedro Jícora and San Juan Buenaventura in the Mezquital municipality, Durango, w ...

; there is some intermarriage between the two ethnic groups, and a number of speakers are trilingual in Mexicanero, Tepehuán and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

Media

Tepehuán-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from Jesús María, Nayarit, and XETAR, based in

Morphology

Tepehuán is an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone ar ...

s strung together.

Phonology

Northern Tepehuan

The following is representative of the Northern dialect of Tepehuan.

Vowels

Consonants

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

Southern Tepehuan

The following is representative of the Southeastern dialect of Tepehuan.

Vowels

Consonants

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

Sample Tepehuan Text

Northern Tepehuan: Southeastern Tepehuan:

References

Piman languages Agglutinative languages Critically endangered languages Indigenous languages of Mexico Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest Mesoamerican languages Tepehuán-language radio stations Vulnerable languages {{indigenousAmerican-lang-stub