Indigenous IdiomsStudent: Jesús Aristeo Delgado Espiricueta

Team: Huaraches on my feet

Members: Renee L.

Jesús D.

Jimena C.

Oscar E.

Date: 6/5/14

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NÁHUATLNahuatl (/ ̍ n ɑː w ɑː t əl / ;[5] Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈnaːwatɬ] (  listen)[cn 1]), known informally as Aztec,[3] is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimated1.5 million Nahua people, most of whom live in Central Mexico. All Nahuan languages are indigenous to Mesoamerica.

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 ofTenochtitlan 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" and "tomato".

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Náhuatl ImagesPage 3

OtomíOtomi (/ ̩ oʊ t ə ̍ m i ː / ; 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 ofMexico.[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 wordHñähñu [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.

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Otomí Images

MixtecoThe Mixtec / ̍ m i ː ʃ t ɛ k / [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.[4]

Language name[edit]

The name "Mixteco" is a Nahuatl exonym, from [miʃ] 'cloud' [teka] 'inhabitant of place of'.[5] 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 sa β i] , 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].[6][which languages are these?]

Nasalization[edit]

The nasalisation of vowels and consonants in Mixtec is an interesting phenomenon that has had various analyses. All of the analyses agree that nasalization is contrastive and that it is somewhat restricted. In most varieties, it is clear that nasalization is limited to the right edge of a morpheme (such as a noun or verb root), and spreads leftward until it is blocked by an obstruent (plosive, affricate or fricative in the list of Mixtec consonants). A somewhat more abstract analysis of the Mixtec facts claims that the spreading of nasalization is responsible for the surface "contrast" between two kinds of bilabials (/m/ and /β/, with and without the influence of nasalization, respectively), between two kinds of palatals (/ʒ/ and nasalized /j/—often less accurately (but more easily) transcribed as /ɲ/—with and without nasalization, respectively), and even two kinds of coronals (/n/ and /nᵈ/, with and without nasalization, respectively).[15] Nasalized vowels which are contiguous to the nasalized variants are less strongly nasalized than in other contexts. This situation is known to have been characteristic of Mixtec for at least the last 500 years since the earliest colonial documentation of the language shows the same distribution of consonants.

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Mixteco ImagesPage 7

TarahumaraPage 8

he 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.

Affixes are almost always realized as suffixes, and clitics too come word finally. Nouns and verbs are semiagglutinating. Words and phrases are head initial. Adpositions can be prepositions or postpositions, and some are suffixed to nouns.

In noun morphology, there are two cases: nominative and accusative. Both direct and indirect objects are marked with the suffix [-ʔt͡ ʃi]. In addition to case marking, there are also the characteristic Uto-Aztecan "absolutive" suffixes, which appear when there is no other suffix. Variants of the absolutive include [-ʔt͡ ʃi] [-ri]. Possessed nouns are marked in several different ways: verbal constructions, noun suffixing, or a combination of the two. In terms of noun suffixing, possessives are marked with [-ra]. Some nouns are not inflected for plurality, but noun phrases containing them will mark plurality by other means: quantity words will be added to the noun phrase or words related to the head will be inflected for plurality.

Demonstratives mark proximity/distance but number. Given that Rarámuri is head final, demonstratives come before the noun. They can be used as both articles and pronouns, and can also be doubled. Storytellers will sometimes omit demonstratives in front of names of animals, showing that the animal is being ranked higher on the animacy scale and/or the animal name is being used as a proper noun.

There are several verbal suffixes for both the future and past tenses, with allomorphs of all three of the future tense suffix markers . The imperfect, conditional, passive voice, plural and singular imperative, and past participle are all marked for with suffixes as well. Interestingly, there are several suffixes that indicate different types of gerunds: past, singular, and plural.

Subject can be marked for in one of two ways. A pronoun coming before the verb can mark for 1, 2, 3 person singular and plural. Additionally, a suffix coming after the TAM marker can mark for the subject as well. In this way, subject marking is more flexible than marking for tense, aspect, and mood; however, subject pronouns cannot be used in conjunction with subject suffixes.

There are multiple suffixes that can change nouns to verbs. These suffixes cover a range of meanings, from "become" or "make" to "put on", "take off", and "have". In a similar suffix-adding process, adjectives can also become verbs. In fact, verbs can also take on suffixes to become other verbs, though noun to verb constructions are the most productive of these types of transformations.

Rarámuri utilizes valence changing processes that will most often transitivize verbs. This feature is widespread in Uto-Aztecan languages. To transitivize a verb, it is necessary to change the final vowel of the verb roat. Page

Tarahumara

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Web SourcesPage 10

http://mexica.ohui.net/lecciones/1/

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A1huatl

http://www-01.sil.org/mexico/mixteca/atatlahuca/L197c-LeerMixteco_Leer-mib.pdf

https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=lengu+mixteca&rlz=1C1SAVI_enMX525MX525&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=FRSXU_PZNsqHyAT7loHYDg&ved=0CEMQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=979

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenguas_mixtecas