Investigation

Mexican lenguages

Diego Humberto Gonzalez Contreras

Liceo de Apodaca

Technology

7B #7

11 /June /2014

Apodaca Nuevo Leon

Index

index …………………………….pg 2

Nauhatl ………………………..pg 3-4

Otomi …………………………..pg 5-6

Mixtec ………………………….pg 7-8

Tarahumara …………………pg 9-10

Nauhatl

Nahuatl has been spoken in Central Mexico since at least the 7th century AD.[6] It was the language of the Aztecs who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. During the centuries preceding the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Aztec Empire had expanded to incorporate a large part of central Mexico, and its influence caused the variety of Nahuatl spoken by the residents of Tenochtitlan to become a prestige language in Mesoamerica. At the conquest, with the introduction of the Latin alphabet, Nahuatl also became a literary language, and many chronicles, grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents and codices were written in it during the 16th and 17th centuries.[7] This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl and is among the most studied and best-documented languages of the Americas.[8]

Today Nahuatl varieties[cn 2] are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along the coastline. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are mutually unintelligible. Huasteca Nahuatl, with over 1 million speakers, is the most-spoken variety. They have all been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish. No modern Nahuatl languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery.[9] Under Mexico's Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas ("General Law on the Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples") promulgated in 2003,[10] Nahuatl and the other 63 indigenous languages of Mexico are recognized as lenguas nacionales ("national languages") in the regions where they are spoken, enjoying the same status as Spanish within their region.[cn 3]

Nahuatl languages exhibit a complex morphology characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination. Through centuries of coexistence with the other indigenous Mesoamerican languages, Nahuatl has absorbed many influences, coming to form part of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Many words from Nahuatl have been borrowed into Spanish, and since diffused into hundreds of other languages. Most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexico which the Spanish heard mentioned for the first time by their Nahuatl names. English words of Nahuatl origin include "avocado", "chayote", "chili", "chocolate", "atlatl", "coyote", "axolotl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl

Otomi

Otomi (/ˌoʊtəˈmiː/; Spanish: Otomí Spanish: [otoˈmi]) is a group of closely related indigenous languages of Mexico, spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the central altiplano region of Mexico.[1] It belongs to the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean language family. It is a dialect continuum of closely related languages, because many of the varieties are not mutually intelligible. The word Hñähñu [hɲɑ̃hɲṹ] has been proposed as an endonym, but since it represents the usage of a single dialect it has not gained wide currency. Linguists have classified the modern dialects into three dialect areas: the Northwestern dialects spoken in Querétaro, Hidalgo and Guanajuato; the Southwestern dialects spoken in the State of Mexico; and the Eastern dialects spoken in the highlands of Veracruz, Puebla, and eastern Hidalgo and in villages in Tlaxcala and Mexico states.

Like all other Oto-Manguean languages, Otomi is a tonal language and most varieties distinguish three tones. Nouns are marked only for possessor; plural number is marked with a definite article and by a verbal suffix, and some dialects maintain dual number marking. There is no case marking. Verb morphology can be described as either fusional or agglutinating depending on the analysis.[cn 1] In verb inflection, infixation, consonant mutation, and apocope are prominent processes, and the number of irregular verbs is large. The grammatical subject in a sentence is cross-referenced by a class of morphemes that can be analysed as either proclitics or prefixes and which also mark for tense, aspect and mood. Verbs are inflected for either direct object or dative object (but not for both simultaneously) by suffixes. Grammar also distinguishes between inclusive 'we' and exclusive 'we'.

After the Spanish conquest Otomi became a written language when friars taught the Otomi to write the language using the Latin script; the written language of the colonial period is often called Classical Otomi. Several codices and grammars were composed in Classical Otomi. A negative stereotype of the Otomi promoted by the Nahuas and perpetuated by the Spanish resulted in a loss of status for the Otomi, who began to abandon their language in favor of Spanish. The attitude of the larger world toward the Otomi language began to change in 2003 when Otomi was granted recognition as a national language under Mexican law together with 61 other indigenous languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otomi_language

Mixtec

The Mixtec /ˈmiːʃtɛk/[3] languages belong to Otomanguean language family of Mexico, and are closely related to the Trique and Cuicatec languages. They are spoken by over half a million people.[1] Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this complex dialect continuum poses challenges at the level of linguistic theory. Depending on the criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages, there may be as many as fifty Mixtec languages

The traditional range of the Mixtec languages is the region known as La Mixteca, which is shared by the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero. Because of migration from this region, mostly as a result of extreme poverty, the Mixtec languages have expanded to Mexico's main urban areas, particularly the State of México and the Federal District, to certain agricultural areas such as the San Quintín valley in Baja California and parts of Morelos and Sonora, and even into the United States. In 2012, the Natividad Medical Center of Salinas, California had trained medical interpreters bilingual in Mixtec as well as in Spanish;[7] 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 Mixtec, Trique, Zapotec, and Chatino.

The name "Mixteco" is a Nahuatl exonym, from [miʃ] 'cloud' [teka] 'inhabitant of place of'. Speakers of Mixtec use an expression (which varies by dialect) to refer to their own language, and this expression generally means "sound" or "word of the rain": dzaha dzavui in Classical Mixtec; or "word of the people of the rain", dzaha Ñudzahui (Dzaha Ñudzavui) in Classical Mixtec.

Denominations in various modern Mixtec languages include tu'un savi [tũʔũ saβi], tu'un isasi [tũʔũ isasi] or isavi [isaβi], tu'un va'a [tũʔũ βaʔa], tnu'u ñuu savi [tnũʔũ nũʔũ saβi], tno'on dawi [tnõʔõ sawi], sasau [sasau], sahan sau [sãʔã sau], sahin sau [saʔin sau], sahan ntavi [sãʔã ndavi], tu'un dau [tũʔũ dau], dahan davi [ðãʔã ðaβi], dañudavi [daɲudaβi], dehen dau [ðẽʔẽ ðau], and dedavi [dedavi].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtec_language

Tarahumara

The Tarahumara language (native name Rarámuri/Ralámuli ra'ícha, "people language"[3]) is a Mexican indigenous language of the Uto-Aztecan language family spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara (Rarámuri/Ralámuli) people in the state of Chihuahua, according to an estimate by the government of Mexico.

The language is used in primary schools and local administration as well as in traditional religious practices and local business transactions. Spanish speakers who live near or among the Tarahumara often use it in commerce as well.[citation needed] At the same time, Spanish is becoming ever more prevalent in indigenous communities. Currently, only one percent of the speakers are literate in their language, while 20 percent of them are literate in Spanish.

Rarámuri is spoken by 70,000 or more indigenous Mexicans living in the state of Chihuahua. There is no consensus among specialists on the number of dialects: competing proposals include two (Western and Eastern);[5] four (Western, Northern, Southern, Eastern);[6] and five, according to field surveys conducted in the 1990s by linguists working for the Mexican government[7] and Ethnologue.[8] Mexican researchers emphasize that the knowledge of Rarámuri dialects is still patchy, and they say there is a possibility that there are many more than five dialects. The five divisions tentatively recognized by the Mexican government are not the same ones proposed by Ethnologue.

The landscape of the area is dominated almost entirely by the Sierra Madre Occidental, a mountain range in western Mexico. As of 2011, Ethnologue splits Eastern into four dialects. The five dialects recognized by Ethnologue, with Ethnologue's own current designations and population estimates, are Western (40,000 speakers); Central (55,000, including 10,000 monolinguals); Northern (300); Southeastern (no estimate given); and Southwestern (100). The figure of 40,000 is cited as an being official census figure from 1996

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara_language