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The Pipil or Kuzcateku are an indigenous people who live in western El Salvador, which they call Cuzcatlan. The Pipil language, or Nawat, belongs to the Nahuas dialect chain, which stretches from Durango in Mexico to El Salvador, historically also in central Honduras and the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. It is thought that the Pipil, along with the neighbouring Nicarao people, migrated from Central Mexico to their present location around 900 AD, after the Chichimeca-Toltec civil war. As they settled in the area, they founded the city-state of Cuzcatlan, absorbed many other pre-existing polities, and intermarried with the native peoples, mostly Lenca people, Poqomam people, and Xinca people.
Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador and Nicaragua. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone a sound change, known as Whorf's law, that changed an original *t to before *a. Subsequently, some Nahuan languages have changed this to or back to, but it can still be seen that the language went through a stage. The best known Nahuan language is Nahuatl.
The Otomi are an indigenous people of Mexico inhabiting the central Mexican Plateau (Altiplano) region.
Otomi is a dialect continuum of Oto-Pamean languages spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the central altiplano region of Mexico. Otomi consists of several closely related languages, many of which 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.
Nawat is a Uto-Toltec or Uto-Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost extant member of the Uto-Aztecan family. It was spoken in several parts of present-day Central America before the Spanish conquest, but now is mostly confined to western El Salvador. It has been on the verge of extinction in El Salvador and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America, but as of 2012 new second language speakers are starting to appear.
Cuzcatlan was a pre-Columbian Nahua state confederation of the postclassical period that extended from the Paz river to the Lempa river, this was the nation that Spanish chroniclers came to call the Pipils/Cuzcatlecos. No codices/Amati survive that shed light on this confederation accept the Annals of the Cakchiquels, although Spanish chroniclers such as Domingo Juarros, Palaces, Lozano, and others claim that some codices did exist but have since disappeared. Their Nawat language, art and temples revealed that they had significant Mayan and Toltec influence from the ties they had with the Itza in Yucatan. It is believed that the first settlers to arrive came from the Toltec people in central Mexico, mostly Puebla during the Chichimeca-Toltec civil wars in the 10th century AD.
Pochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct. In the 1970s another investigator found two speakers around Pochutla who still remembered a few of the words recorded by Boas.
Orizaba Nahuatl is a native American language spoken in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz mostly in the area to the south of the city of Orizaba. It is also known as Orizaba Aztec and Náhuatl de la Sierra de Zongolica. It has 79 percent intelligibility with Morelos Nahuatl. There is a dialect called Ixhuatlancillo Nahuatl which is spoken in a town to the north of Orizaba. There are several primary schools and one secondary school which use this language along with Spanish.
Sierra OtomiAKAHighland Otomi is a dialect cluster of the Otomi language spoken in Mexico by ca. 70,000 people in the highlands of Eastern Hidalgo, Western Veracruz and Northern Puebla. The speakers themselves call the language Yųhų or Ñųhų. Lastra 2001 classifies it as an Eastern Otomi language together with Ixtenco Otomi, Tilapa Otomi, and Acazulco Otomi. The three varieties of Sierra Otomi—Eastern Highland, Texcatepec, and Tenango—are above 70% lexically similar; the Eastern Highland dialects are above 80%, and will be considered here.
Temoaya Otomi, also known as Toluca Otomi or Otomi of San Andrés Cuexcontitlan, is a variety of the Otomi language spoken in Mexico by ca. 37,000 people in and around the municipality of Temoaya, and in three communities within the municipality of Toluca: San Andrés Cuexcontitlán, San Pablo Autopan and San Cristobal Huichochitlan. The two varieties are quite different. The speakers themselves call the language Ñatho. Lastra (2001) classifies it as a southwestern dialect along with the dialects of Mexico state. Lastra also notes that the endangered Otomí dialect of San Felipe in eastern Michoacán is most similar to the Otomí spoken in San Andrés Cuexcontitlan.
Yolanda Lastra de Suárez is a Mexican linguist specializing in the descriptive linguistics of the indigenous languages of Mexico. She obtained her PhD degree in 1963 from Cornell University, her dissertation written under the guidance of Charles F. Hockett treating the syntax of Cochabamba Quechua in Bolivia. She was married to argentinian linguist Jorge A. Suárez (1927-1985).
Nahuatl, known historically as Aztec, is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live in central Mexico.
The state of Oaxaca, Mexico has a total population of about 3.5 million, with women outnumbering men by 150,000 and about 60% of the population under the age of 30. It is ranked tenth in population in the country. Fifty three percent of the population lives in rural areas. Most of the state’s population growth took place between 1980 and 1990. Life expectancy is 71.7 for men and 77.4 for women, just under the national average. Births far outpace deaths. In 2007, there were 122,579 birth and 19,439 deaths. Approximately 85% profess the Catholic faith.
Western Peripheral Nahuatl is a group of Nahuatl languages of Western Mexico. They are:
Tehuacan–ZongolicaAKASoutheastern Puebla Nahuatl is a variety of Nahuatl spoken by ethnic Nahua people in southeastern Puebla state (Tehuacan) and southern Veracruz (Zongolica) in Mexico.
Central Nahuatl is a group of Nahuatl languages of central Mexico, in the regions of central Puebla, Tlaxcala, central Veracruz, Morelos, Mexico State, and Guerrero.
Ixtenco Otomi, also known as Tlaxcala Otomi, is a native American language spoken in the town of San Juan Bautista Ixtenco in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico. It has been classified as Eastern Otomi by Lastra (2006). Lastra considers Ixtenco Otomí to be a very conservative dialect.
Uto-Aztecan languages are divided into two groups, Northern and Southern Uto-Aztecan languages. They are spoken in the southwestern United States, north and central Mexico, and in Central America.
The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán biosphere reserve is a protected natural area located in southeastern Mexico. Its name derives from its two main locations: Cuicatlán and Tehuacán, in the latter are their administrative offices, covers 490,186 hectares distributed among 21 municipalities in the state of Puebla and Oaxaca.
References
- ↑ Lastra de Suárez, Yolanda (1986). Las áreas dialectales del náhuatl moderno. Serie antropológica, no. 62. Ciudad Universitaria, México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas. ISBN 968-837-744-9. OCLC 19632019.(in Spanish)
- ↑ Hasler, Andrés (1996). El náhuatl de Tehuacan-Zongolica. Mexico: CIESAS.