Tepehuán language

Tepehuán (Tepehuano) is the name of three closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, all spoken in northern Mexico. The language is called O'otham by its speakers.

Internal classification

 * Tepehuán
 * Northern Tepehuán
 * Southern Tepehuán
 * Southeastern Tepehuán
 * Southwestern Tepehuán

Northern Tepehuán
Northern Tepehuán is spoken by about 10,000 people (2020 census) in several settlements in Guadalupe y Calvo and Guachochi, Chihuahua, as well as in the north of Durango.

Southern Tepehuán
Southern Tepehuán is spoken by about 45,000 people, about equally divided into:


 * Southeastern Tepehuán in Mezquital Municipio in the state of Durango.
 * Southwestern Tepehuán in southwestern Durango.

Southern Tepehuán coexists with the Mexicanero language; there is some intermarriage between the two ethnic groups, and a number of speakers are trilingual in Mexicanero, Tepehuán and Spanish.

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

Morphology
Tepehuán is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

Northern Tepehuan
The following is representative of the Northern dialect of Tepehuan.

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

Southern Tepehuan
The following is representative of the Southeastern dialect of Tepehuan.

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

Sample Tepehuan Text
Northern Tepehuan:

Southeastern Tepehuan: