Otomi language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otomi, Otomí, Hñähnu, Hñähño. Hñähnu, Hñähño.
Spoken in:	Mexico: Mexico (state), Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Queretaro, Tlaxcala
Total speakers:	ca 300.000
Language family:	Oto-Manguean  Oto-Pamean   Otomian    Otomi, Otomí, Hñähnu, Hñähño.
Official status
Official language of:	none
Regulated by:	Secretaría de Educación Pública
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	—
ISO 639-3:	—
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Otomi language is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the ethnic group widely known as the Otomi but who refer to themselves as Hñähñu (or similar, depending on the language variant).^[1] Otomi is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits which define the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Along with some 62 other indigenous languages, it is recognised by a statutory law of Mexico^[2] as an official language in the Mexican Federal District and the other administrative divisions in which it is spoken, and on an equal footing with Spanish.

Contents 1 Geographic distribution 2 Classification 2.1 Dialects 3 Phonology 3.1 Consonants 3.2 Vowels 3.3 Tones and prosody 4 Grammar 5 Notes 6 References

[edit] Geographic distribution

Variants of the Otomi language are spoken particularly in the Valle de Mezquital region of Hidalgo State and in the southern portion of Querétaro, with present-day numbers totalling some 200,000 speakers (some 5 to 6 percent of whom are monolingual). The largest populations of Otomi speakers are found in the states of Hidalgo (Valle de Mezquital), México, Puebla, Querétaro, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz.

Otomi is an endangered language, as there are relatively few younger speakers. This is true especially for the states of Mexico, Hidalgo and Tlaxcala.

[edit] Classification

The closest relatives of the Otomi languages are the Mazahua, Maztlatzinca and Ocuilteco/Tlahuica languages, which together with Otomi form the Otomian subgroup of the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean linguistic family.

In the 19th century, some scholars held that Otomi was related to Chinese, on the grounds of their supposedly shared monosyllabic word structure.^[3] This view is now discredited. However, Gavin Menzies writes in his 2002 book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World that the Otomi people speak Chinese, and takes this as evidence for the Chinese having visited America before Columbus.^[4]

[edit] Dialects

[edit] Phonology

The phonologies of Otomian languages are generally quite complicated and their linguistic description is inconsistently documented. The orthography for Otomi dialects has been a focus of controversy for many years. D. Bartholomew , is a leading advocate for the illustration of tone in any discussion of Otomi. H.R. Bernard on the other hand, has noted the desirability of vowels in a practical spelling/orthography of Otomi.

Otomi is a tonal language, although the exact number of tones vary according to each dialect and the phonological analysis used. It has fairly asymmetric inventories of vowels and consonants, with for example only some consonants contrasting in sonority and place of articulation. The phonemic inventory given below is based on the particular phonology of the Otomi de la Sierra dialect as documented by Voigtlander and Echegoyen ().

[edit] Consonants

	Bilabial		Dental		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosives	p	b			t	d			k	g	ʔ
Nasals	m				n
Fricatives	ɸ		θ				ʃ		x		h
Affricates					ts	dz
Semivowels	w				ɾ		j

[edit] Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
Close (high)	i	ĩ	ʉ		u	ũ
Open Mid	e		ø			õ
Mid	ɛ	ɛ̃			ɔ
Open (low)			ɑ	ɑ̃

[edit] Tones and prosody

There are two tones: high and low, which can also be combined to make a falling and a rising tone. Stress is not phonemic but falls predictably on every other syllable.

[edit] Grammar

Otomi is a VOS (Verb Object Subject) language: ho ka ra 'ngu, 'he makes the houses'. Its morphology is characterized by an extensive use of often portmanteauoid clitics. It has an inclusive exclusive distinction for first and second person plural forms. Because Otomi has a rigid prosodic structure, many affixes have two different forms (one monosyllabic and one polysyllabic), the use of which is distinguished in order to achieve the rhythmic effect. In Otomi the words are formed by adding two different terms together or the addition of an affix. Manual Orozco records ka-ye as the Otomi word for 'holy man'. This term is formed by ka 'holy' and ye 'man'. Another word is da-ma, 'mature woman'. This word is formed by ma, 'woman', and da, 'mature, ripe'.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Bartholomew, Doris (1968). "Concerning the Elimination of Nasalized Vowels in Mezquital Otomi". International Journal of American Linguistics 34 (3): pp.215–217. 
• Bernard, H.Russell (1980). "Orthography for whom?". International Journal of American Linguistics 46 (2): pp.133–136. 
• Campbell, Lyle (2000). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford University Press. 
• Menzies, Gavin [2002] (2003). 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-81522-9. 
• Neve y Molina, L.D. Luis de [1767] (2005). in Erik Boot (Ed.): Reglas de Orthographia, Diccionario, y Arte del Idioma Othomi (PDF), Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Retrieved on 2006-11-25.  (Spanish)
• Voigtlander, Katherine; and Artemisa Echegoyen (1985). Luces Contemporaneas del Otomi: Grámatica del Otomi de la Sierra. Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.  (Spanish)
• Wright Carr, David Charles (2005). "Precisiones sobre el término "otomí"" (PDF). Arqueología mexicana XIII (73): p.19. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.  (Spanish)