The Triqui (), or Trique, languages are a family of
Oto-Manguean
The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean () languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean languages, Ma ...
spoken by 30,000
Trique people
The Triqui (, ) or Trique () are an Indigenous peoples of Mexico, Indigenous people of the western part of the list of states of Mexico, Mexican state of Oaxaca, centered in the municipalities of Mexico, municipalities of Juxtlahuaca, Putla, ...
of the Mexican states of
Oaxaca
Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...
and the state of
Baja California
Baja California, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...
in 2007 (due to recent population movements). They are also spoken by 5,000 immigrants to the United States. Triqui languages belong to the
Mixtecan branch together with the
Mixtec languages and
Cuicatec.
Varieties
''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' 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 comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
'' lists three major varieties:
*
Triqui de Copala spoken by 15,000 people (1990 census) in
San Juan Copala, Oaxaca (and recently due to migrations in the
San Quintín valley,
Baja California
Baja California, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...
).
*
Triqui de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla spoken by 6,000 people in
San Andrés Chicahuaxtla, Oaxaca.
*
Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso spoken by 2,000 people (1983 survey) in
San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca.
Mexico's federal agency for its indigenous languages,
Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas
The Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (English: National Indigenous Languages Institute) better known by its acronym INALI, is a Mexican federal public agency, created 13 March 2003 by the enactment of the Ley General de Derechos Lingü� ...
(INALI), identifies four varieties of Trique in its ''Catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales'' published in early 2008. The variants listed by INALI are:
Phonology
The following phonology is based on Hollenbach (1984) and DiCanio (2008):
Vowels
Consonants
Itunyoso Triqui may tend to have ten geminated consonants; /mː, βː, tː, nː, lː, tːʃ, jː, ʈːʂ, kː, kːʷ/.
Tones
All varieties of Triqui are
tonal and have complex phonologies. The tone system of Copala Triqui is the best described and has eight tones.
[Hollenbach, Barbara. The Phonology and Morphology of Tone and Laryngeals in Copala Trique. Ph.D Thesis, University of Arizona. 1984]
Tones in Triqui languages are typically written with superscript numbers,
so that ''chraa⁵'' 'river' indicates the syllable ''chraa'' with the highest (5) tone, while ''cha³na¹'' 'woman' has the middle (3) tone on the first syllable and the lowest (1) tone on the second syllable.
Of the Triqui languages, the Copala dialect has undergone the most vowel loss, with many non-final syllables losing their vowels. The result, as in many other Oto-Manguean languages, is a complex set of consonant clusters. So, for instance, the word ''si⁵kuj⁵'' 'cow' in Itunyoso Triqui corresponds to ''skuj⁵'' in Copala Triqui.
The tonal phonology of other Triqui languages is more complex than Copala Triqui. The tone system of Itunyoso Triqui has nine tones.
[DiCanio, Christian]
The Phonetics and Phonology of San Martín Itunyoso Trique
Ph.D Thesis, University of California, Berkeley. 2008. The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui has at least 10 tones but may have as many as 16.
Orthography
Triqui has been written in a number of different orthographies, depending on the intended audience. Linguists typically write the language with all tones fully marked and all phonemes represented. However, in works intended for native speakers of Triqui, a practical orthography is often used with a somewhat simpler representation.
The following Copala Triqui example is written in both the practical (first line) and the linguistic (second line) orthographies:
Morphology
Triqui
bound morphology is fairly limited. Verbs take a /k-/ prefix (spelled ''c-'' or ''qu-'') to show completive aspect:
Amiie³² izo¹.
'You are speaking'.
C-amii³² zo¹.
'You spoke'.
The same /k-/ prefix plus a tonal change shows the potential aspect:
C-amii² zo¹.
'You will speak.'
The tonal changes associated with the potential aspect are complex but always involve lowering the tone of the root (Hollenbach 1984).
There are also complex phonological processes that are triggered by the presence of root-final clitic pronouns. These pronouns (especially the first- and the second-person singular) may change the shape of the stem or alter its tone.
As a language subfamily, Triqui is interesting for having a large tonal inventory, complex morphophonology, and interesting syntactic phenomena, much of which has yet to be described.
Syntax
Copala Triqui has a
verb-subject-object word order:
Copala Triqui has an accusative marker maa³ or man³, which is obligatory for animate pronominal objects but optional otherwise:
This use of the accusative before some objects and not others is what is called
differential object marking.
The following example (repeated from above) shows a Copala Triqui question:
As this example shows, Copala Trique has
wh-movement
In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position ...
and
pied-piping with inversion Pied-piping with inversion is a special word order phenomenon found in some languages, such as those in the Mesoamerican linguistic area.
Introduction
The phenomenon was first named and identified as an areal characteristic of the Mesoamerican l ...
.
Copala Triqui syntax is described in Hollenbach (1992).
Triqui is interesting for having toggle processes as well. For negation, a completive aspect prefix signifies the negative potential. A potential aspect prefix in the same context signifies the negative completive.
Sample text
The following is a sample of Copala Triqui taken from a legend about the Sun and the Moon. The first column is Copala Triqui, the second is a Spanish translation, and the third is an English translation.
Media
Triqui-language programming is carried by the
CDI's radio stations
XEQIN-AM, based in
San Quintín, Baja California, and
XETLA, based in
Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca.
Use
As of 2012, the
Natividad Medical Center of
Salinas, California
Salinas (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Salt pan (geology), Salt Flats") is a city in the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Monterey County, California, Monterey County. With a population of 163,542 in the 2020 Census, Salinas is ...
, was training medical interpreters bilingual in one of the
Oaxacan languages (including Trique,
Mixteco, or
Zapotec), as well as in Spanish. In March 2014, Natividad Medical Foundation launched Indigenous Interpreting+, "a community and medical interpreting business specializing in indigenous languages from Mexico and Central and South America," including Trique,
Mixteco,
Zapotec, and
Chatino.
A Trique-speaking community has also settled in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...
,
as well as in northwestern
Washington.
Notes
Bibliography
* Broadwell, George A., Kosuke Matsukawa, Edgar Martín del Campo, Ruth Scipione and Susan Perdomo. 2009. The Origin of the Sun and Moon: A Copala Triqui Legend. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
* DiCanio, Christian. 2008
The Phonetics and Phonology of San Martín Itunyoso Trique Ph.D. dissertation: University of California, Berkeley.
*Elliott, A. Raymond. 2025. Ruhuâ Ruˈman Hioˈóo Gatsii ‘In the Hole of White Dirt’ Legend in Chicahuaxtla Triqui. International Journal of American Linguistics 2025 91:S7-S36.DOI: 10.1086/733818. Copyright © 2025 The University of Chicago.
*Elliott, A. Raymond. 2020
A method comparison analysis examining the relationship between linguistic tone, melodic tune, and sung performances of children’s songs in Chicahuaxtla Triqui: Findings and implications for documentary linguistics and indigenous language communities Language Documentation & Conservation. Vol. 14, pp. 139-187.
*Elliott, A. Raymond, Pablo Hernández Cruz, Fausto Sandoval Cruz. 2020
Dàj guruguiˈ yumiguiì ‘de como apareció la gente del mundo’: leyenda en triqui de Chicahuaxtla Tlalocan. Vol. 25, 147-212.
*Elliott, A. Raymond, Jerold A. Edmondson, and Fausto Sandoval Cruz. 2016. “Chicahuaxtla Triqui.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association, February, 1–15. .
*Elliott, A. Raymond, Fulgencio Sandoval Cruz, and Felipe Santiago Rojas. 2012. “Notes from the Field: Chicahuaxtla Triqui Digital Wordlist and Preliminary Observations” 6: 208–36.
* Good, Claude. 1979. Diccionario Triqui, volume 20 of Serie de Vocabularios Indigenas. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Mexico.
* Hollenbach, Barbara. 1977. El origen del sol y de la luna – cuatro versiones en el trique de Copala, Tlalocan 7:123-70.
* Hollenbach, Barbara. 1984. The phonology and morphology of tone and laryngeals in Copala Trique. Ph.D. thesis, University of Arizona.
* Hollenbach, Barbara, 1988. Three Trique myths of San Juan Copala. Mexico City: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
* Hollenbach, Barbara. 1992. A syntactic sketch of Copala Trique. in C. Henry Bradley & Barbara E. Hollenbach, eds. Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan languages, vol. 4, pp. 173–431. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
* Hollenbach, Barbara. 2005. Vocabulario breve del triqui de San Juan Copala. (Available a
*
* Longacre, Robert E. 1957. Proto-Mixtecan. International Journal of American Linguistics 23(4).
* Matsukawa, Kosuke. 2007
Preliminary Tone Analysis of Possessed Nouns in Chicahuaxtla Trique UTA Working Papers in Linguistics 2006-2007, pp. 31–49. Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington.
* Matsukawa, Kosuke. 2008
Reconstruction of Proto-Trique Phonemes U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 14(1):269-281. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
* Matsukawa, Kosuke. 2010
Tone Alternation Patterns for Potential Aspect in Chicahuaxtla Triqui
Austin: AILLA, University of Texas at Austin.
* Matsukawa, Kosuke. 2012
Phonetics and Phonology of Chicahuaxtla Triqui Tones
Ph.D. dissertation, University at Albany, State University of New York.
External links
Online dictionary of Copala Triqui
Triqui language picture dictionary
{{incubator, trs
Mesoamerican languages
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Verb–subject–object languages
Oto-Manguean languages
Mixtecan languages