Tepehuán | |
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O'otham | |
Spoken in | Mexico |
Region | Chihuahua, Durango |
Native speakers | ~25,000 (All varieties) (date missing) |
Language family |
Uto-Aztecan
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Dialects | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | variously: ntp – Northern Tepehuán stp – Southeastern Tepehuán tla – Southwestern Tepehuán tep – Tepecano |
Tepehuán (Tepehuano, Tepecano) is the name of two closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, both spoken in northern Mexico. The language is called O'otham by its speakers.
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Northern Tepehuán is spoken by 8,000 Tepehuán people (1990 census) in the south of the state of Chihuahua.
Southern Tepehuán is divided into the southeastern and southwestern group. Southeastern Tepehuán is spoken by 9,937 people (2000 WCD) in the Mezquital Municipio of the state of Durango. Southern Tepehuán coexists with the Mexicanero nahuatl language, there is some intermarriage between the two ethnic groups and a number of speakers are trilingual in Mexicanero, Tepehuán and Spanish
The extinct Tepecano language appears to have been a variety of Southern Tepehuán.
Southwestern Tepehuán is spoken by around 8,187 (2000 WCD) people in Southwestern Durango.
Tepehuán-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from Jesús María, Nayarit, and XETAR, based in Guachochi, Chihuahua.
Tepehuán is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
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