Notes
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Guerrero Amuzgo at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
| Guerrero Amuzgo | |
|---|---|
| Ñomndaa | |
| Native to | Mexico |
| Region | Guerrero |
Native speakers | 46,000 (2011) [1] |
Oto-Manguean
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | amu |
| Glottolog | guer1243 |
| ELP | Guerrero Amuzgo |
The Guerrero Amuzgo language is an Amuzgo language spoken in southwest Guerrero state in Mexico. [1]
There are 23,000 speakers, 10,000 that are monolingual. It is also known as Nomndaa or Ñomndaa. [1] It belongs to the Oto-Manguean language family and the Amuzgoan subfamily. [1] The use of the language is widespread and it is learned as a second language by Spanish and Nahuatl speakers living with the Guerrero speakers. [1]
There is a positive cultural affinity toward the tongue and it is used in business, religion, and taught bilingually with Spanish until 6th grade. [1] 10% of adults and 15% of children are literate in Amuzgo Guerrero. [1] There are media such as videos, a dictionary and radio broadcasts in the language that propagate its use. [1]
Guerrero, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Guerrero, is one of the 32 states that comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico, located in Southwestern Mexico. It is divided in 81 municipalities. The state has a population of about 3.5 million people. It is bordered by the states of Michoacán to the north and west, the State of Mexico and Morelos to the north, Puebla to the northeast and Oaxaca to the east. In addition to the capital city, Chilpancingo and the largest city Acapulco, other cities in Guerrero include Petatlán, Ciudad Altamirano, Taxco, Iguala, Ixtapa, and Zihuatanejo. Today, it is home to a number of indigenous communities, including the Nahuas, Mixtecs, Tlapanecs, Amuzgos, and formerly Cuitlatecs. It is also home to communities of Afro-Mexicans in the Costa Chica region.
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 Chʼol are an indigenous people of Mexico, mainly in the northern Chiapas highlands in the state of Chiapas. As one of the Maya peoples, their indigenous language is from the Mayan language family, known also as Chʼol. According to the 2000 Census, there were 140,806 speakers of Chʼol in Chiapas, including 40,000 who were monolingual.
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 branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family. However, this status has been recently challenged.
Cuajinicuilapa is a town in Cuajinicuilapa Municipality in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican state of Guerrero. A low-lying area, it borders the Pacific Ocean and the state of Oaxaca. The municipality has the state's largest population of Afro-Mexicans with most of the population of this ethnicity. The town and municipality are highly socioeconomically marginalized and it is the poorest municipality of the state, with the economy dependent on livestock and fishing.
Amuzgo is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in the Costa Chica region of the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca by about 44,000 speakers. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Amuzgo is a tonal language. From syntactical point of view Amuzgo can be considered as an active language. The name Amuzgo is claimed to be a Nahuatl exonym but its meaning is shrouded in controversy; multiple proposals have been made, including 'moss-in'.
Many languages are spoken in Mexico, though Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by the vast majority of the population, making Mexico the world's most populous Hispanophone country. The indigenous languages are from eleven language families, including four isolates and one that immigrated from the United States. The Mexican government recognizes 68 national languages, 63 of which are indigenous, including around 350 dialects of those languages. The large majority of the population is monolingual in Spanish. Some immigrant and indigenous populations are bilingual, while some indigenous people are monolingual in their languages. Mexican Sign Language is spoken by much of the deaf population, and there are one or two indigenous sign languages as well.
Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez Ávila was a Mexican anthropologist whose work focused on the state of Guerrero. In 1988, he developed an approach in his work on the Costa Chica of Guerrero where "the corrido poet is a social critic who praises violent action when it is justified and condemns it when it is not".
La Mixteca is a cultural, economic and political region in Western Oaxaca and neighboring portions of Puebla, Guerrero in south-central Mexico, which refers to the home of the Mixtec people. In their languages, the region is called either Ñuu Djau, Ñuu Davi or Ñuu Savi. Two-thirds of all Mixtecs live in the region, and the entire national population of Mixtecs in Mexico was 500,000 in 1999.
San Juan Cacahuatepec is a city in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, near the border with Guerrero. It is located in the Jamiltepec District in the west of the Costa Region. Its population in 1990, according to The Columbia Gazetteer of North America, was 3,116; in 2006, it was about 5,000. Along with San Pedro Amusgos, it is a heavy center of population for the indigenous Amuzgo. The name Cacahuatepec is Nahuatl, translating "Place of Cacao-bean mountain".
Xochistlahuaca Municipality is one of the 81 municipalities of Guerrero, in south-western Mexico. The municipal seat lies at Xochistlahuaca. The municipality covers an area of 321.1 km².
Xochistlahuaca is a town in Xochistlahuaca Municipality located in the southeast corner of the Mexican state of Guerrero. It is part of this state's Costa Chica region and while near the Pacific Ocean, most of the territory is mountainous. The population is dominated by the indigenous Amuzgo ethnicity, whose women are noted for their traditional hand woven garments, especially the huipil, which is made both for home use and for sale outside the area.
The Indigenous people of Oaxaca are descendants of the inhabitants of what is now the state of Oaxaca, Mexico who were present before the Spanish invasion. Several cultures flourished in the ancient region of Oaxaca from as far back as 2000 BC, of whom the Zapotecs and Mixtecs were perhaps the most advanced, with complex social organization and sophisticated arts.
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 births and 19,439 deaths. Approximately 85% profess the Catholic faith.
Ixcateopan is an archaeological site located in the town and municipality of Ixcateopan de Cuauhtémoc, 36 kilometers from Taxco, in the isolated and rugged mountains of the northern part of Guerrero state, Mexico.
The internal classification of Mixtec is controversial. Many varieties are mutually unintelligible and by that criterion separate languages. In the 16th century, Spanish authorities recognized half a dozen lenguas comprising the Mixtec lengua. It is not clear to what extent these were distinct languages at the time. Regardless, the colonial disintegration of the Mixtec nation and resulting isolation of local communities led to the rapid diversification of local dialects into distinct languages. Below are some attempts at Mixtec classification by various scholars.
Amuzgo textiles are those created by the Amuzgo indigenous people who live in the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. The history of this craft extends to the pre-Columbian period, which much preserved, as many Amuzgos, especially in Xochistlahuaca, still wear traditional clothing. However, the introduction of cheap commercial cloth has put the craft in danger as hand woven cloth with elaborate designs cannot compete as material for regular clothing. Since the 20th century, the Amuzgo weavers have mostly made cloth for family use, but they have also been developing specialty markets, such as to collectors and tourists for their product.
The Amuzgos are an indigenous people of Mexico. They primarily live in a region along the Guerrero/Oaxaca border, chiefly in and around four municipalities: Xochistlahuaca, Tlacoachistlahuaca and Ometepec in Guerrero, and San Pedro Amuzgos in Oaxaca. Their languages are similar to those of the Mixtec, and their territories overlap. They once dominated a larger area, from La Montaña down to the Costa Chica of Guerrero and Oaxaca, but Mixtec expansion, rule and later Spanish colonization has pushed them into the more inaccessible mountain regions and away from the coast. The Amuzgos maintain much of their language and dress and are known for their textiles, handwoven on backstrap looms with very intricate two-dimensional designs. The Amuzgo area is very poor with an economy mostly dependent on subsistence agriculture and handcraft production.
Florentina López de Jesús was a traditional Amuzgo weaver from Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero, Mexico. Her work was recognized by various awards.
The Nahuatl language in the U.S. is spoken primarily by Mexican immigrants from indigenous communities and Chicanos who study and speak the Mexicano language as L2. Despite the fact that there is no official census of the language in the North American country, it is estimated that there are around 140,800 Nahuatl speakers. During the last decades, the United States has carried out many educational initiatives aimed at teaching Nahuatl as a language of cultural heritage.