Opata language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Òpata (also: Heve, Eudeve, Dohema, Teguima) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Mexico (traditionally Sonora state - now D.F.) | |
| Language extinction: | pronounced extinct ca. 1930 but 15 speakers were found by INI in 1993 | |
| Language family: | Uto-Aztecan Tepiman Òpata (also: Heve, Eudeve, Dohema, Teguima) |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | opt | |
| ISO 639-3: | — | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Òpata (Also Eudeve, Heve, Dohema) is the name of the Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Opata people of northern central Sonora in Mexico. It was believed to be dead already in 1930, and Carl Sofus Lumholtz reported the Opata to have become "Mexicanized" and lost their language and customs already when travelling through Sonora in the 1890'es, but in a recent (1993) survey by the Mexican Instituto Nacional Indigenista (Now INALI) fifteen people in the Mexican Federal District self identified as speakers of Òpata[1] - this may not mean however that the language is actually living, since linguistic nomenclature in Mexico is notoriously fuzzy. And no studies documenting he language spoken by those fifteen persons have been pulished. If the fifteen persons were in fact speakers of the Uto-Aztecan Òpata language then the language is severely endangered and if not it is probably already extinct. Sometimes Eudeve and Opata are considered distinct languages and sometimes merely dialects of one single language.
[edit] References
- Lombardo, Natal. 1702. "Arte de la Lengua Teguima vulgarmente llamada Opata". México: Miguel de Ribera.
- Lombardo, Natal. n.d., ca. 1702. Arte de la Lengua Teguima vulgarmente llamada Opata. Ayer ms. 1641. Newberry Library, Chicago.
- Loaysa, Balthasar, unkown year, Arte de la lengua hegue. Ms. in Bibliothèque Nationale, París; copia de W.E. Gates en la Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
- Lionnet, Andrés. 1979. El lexico del eudeve. Mimeography. Friends of Uto-Aztecan Working Conference, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico, June 23. : .
- Miller, Wick R., 1983, "A Note on Extinct Languages of Northwest Mexico of Supposed Uto-Aztecan Affiliation", International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 49, No. 3, Papers Presented at a Symposium on Uto-Aztecan Historical Linguistics (Jul., 1983), pp. 328-334
- Shaul, David Leedom, 1989 "Teguima (Opata) phonology", Southwestern Journal of Linguistics 9:150-162. ...
- Shaul, David Leedom, 1990, "Teguima (Opata) Inflectional Morphology", International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 561-573
