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The Huastec or Téenek are an indigenous people of Mexico, living in the La Huasteca region including the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Pánuco River and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory.
Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families, as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified because of a lack of data.
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. Nahuatl is spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples.
The Huasteclanguage of Mexico is spoken by the Huastecos living in rural areas of San Luis Potosí and northern Veracruz. Though relatively isolated from them, it is related to the Mayan languages spoken further south and east in Mexico and Central America. According to the 2005 population census, there are about 200,000 speakers of Huasteco in Mexico. The language and its speakers are also called Teenek, and this name has gained currency in Mexican national and international usage in recent years.
Xinca is a small extinct family of Mesoamerican languages, formerly regarded as a single language isolate, once spoken by the indigenous Xinca people in southeastern Guatemala, much of El Salvador, and parts of Honduras.
The United Mexican States has decided not to declare an official language, however Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by over 99% of the population making it the largest Spanish speaking country in the world. The government also recognizes 68 indigenous languages spoken in their communities out of respect, including Nahuatl, Mayan, Mixtec, etc.
The Mixe–Zoque languages are a language family whose living members are spoken in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The Mexican government recognizes three distinct Mixe–Zoquean languages as official: Mixe or ayook with 188,000 speakers, Zoque or o'de püt with 88,000 speakers, and the Popoluca languages of which some are Mixean and some Zoquean with 69,000 speakers. However, the internal diversity in each of these groups is great. Ethnologue counts 17 different languages, and the current classification of Mixe–Zoquean languages by Wichmann (1995) counts 12 languages and 11 dialects. Extinct languages classified as Mixe–Zoquean include Tapachultec, formerly spoken in Tapachula, along the southeast coast of Chiapas.
Chicomuceltec is a Mayan language formerly spoken in the region defined by the municipios of Chicomuselo, Mazapa de Madero, and Amatenango de la Frontera in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as some nearby areas of Guatemala. By the 1970s–80s it had become extinct, with recent reports in Mayanist literature finding that there are no living native speakers. Communities of contemporary Chicomucelteco descendants, numbering approximately 1500 people in Mexico and 100 in Guatemala are Spanish speakers.
Una Canger is a Danish linguist specializing in languages of Mesoamerica. She has published mostly about the Nahuatl language with a particular focus on the dialectology of Modern Nahuatl, and is considered among the world's leading specialists in this area. She held tenure at the University of Copenhagen, leading the department for Native American Languages and Cultures until she reached the age of 70 in 2008 and was forced into retirement. In 2012 she was awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for her contributions to the study of Mexican culture. In 2005 she received the teaching prize of Copenhagen University, the Harald.
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.
Mochoʼ is a Mayan language spoken by the Mocho' people of Chiapas, Mexico. A version stated that it was known as Qatok’, although this name did not received acceptance by the native speakers and the language was officially named as Mocho’ by both the Mocho’ people and the Mexican government. Mochoʼ has a dialect called Tuzantec (Muchu') spoken in Tuzantan, Chiapas. Alongside Jakaltek, Q’anjob’al, Chuj and Tojol-Ab’al, the Mocho’ language is part of the Q’anjobalan group from the western branch of Mayan languages.
La Huasteca is a geographical and cultural region located partially along the Gulf of Mexico and including parts of the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Puebla, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro and Guanajuato. It is roughly defined as the area in which the Huastec people had influence when their civilization was at its height during the Mesoamerican period. Today, the Huastecs occupy only a fraction of this region with the Nahua people now the most numerous indigenous group. However, those who live in the region share a number of cultural traits such as a style of music and dance, along with religious festivals such as Xantolo.
The Huastec civilization was a pre-Columbian civilization of Mesoamerica, occupying a territory on the Gulf coast of Mexico that included the northern portion of Veracruz state, and neighbouring regions of the states of Hidalgo, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas. The Huastec people were an early offshoot of the Maya peoples that migrated northwards.
Esenbeckia is a genus of flowering plants in the rue family, Rutaceae. All species in the genus are native to the Americas, with the highest diversity in South America. They are commonly known as jopoy, the Mayan word for E. berlandieri, or gasparillo (Spanish).
Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a 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 mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
Balcón de Montezuma, also known as "Balcon del Chiue" is an archaeological site located at the Alta Cumbre ejido, some 18 kilometres (11.2 mi) south of Ciudad Victoria, in the state of Tamaulipas, México. It is situated about one kilometer north of Highway 101, towards San Luis Potosí.
The Chʼolan are a branch of the Mayan family of Mexico. These languages break into six sections being Cholan and Tzeltalan. Cholan has then two subsections being Western Cholan and Chʼoltiʼan; these composing the two larger sections of slight linguistic differences portrayed by Kuryłowicz's Fourth Law of Analogy. The language Tzeltalan also breaks up into sections; Tzendal, Tzotzil, and Wastekan. These subsections differ by similar linguistic differences.
The indigenous languages of the Americas form various linguistic areas or Sprachbunds that share various common (areal) traits.
References
- ↑ Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.). Ethnologue (2005).
- ↑ Campbell & Canger 1978.