Huasteca Nahuatl

Huasteca Nahuatl
Native to Mexico
Region La Huasteca (San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz)
Native speakers
(1.0 million cited 1991–2000)[1]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Variously:
nhe  Eastern (Hidalgo)
nch  Central
nhw  Western (Tamazunchale)
Glottolog huas1257[2]

Huasteca Nahuatl is a Nahuan language spoken by over a million people in the region of La Huasteca in Mexico, centered in the states of Hidalgo (Eastern) and San Luis Potosí (Western), but also spoken in the northern part of Veracruz and the extreme north of Puebla.[3] Ethnologue divides Huasteca Nahuatl into three languages, Eastern, Central, and Western, as they judge that separate literature is required, but notes that there is 85% mutual intelligibility between Eastern and Western. Half of Eastern speakers know no Spanish.[4]

XEANT-AM radio broadcasts in Huasteca Nahuatl.

Demographics

Huasteca Nahuatl is spoken in the following municipalities in the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, and San Luis Potosí (Rodríguez & Valderrama 2005:168).

Hidalgo (121,818 speakers)
Veracruz (98,162 speakers)
San Luis Potosí (108,471 speakers)

Phonology

The following description is that of Eastern Huasteca.

Vowels

Front Back
High i iˑ
Mid-high e eˑ
Mid-low o oˑ
Low a aˑ

Consonants

Classical Nahuatl Consonants
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
central lateral plain labialized
Nasal mn
Plosive pt kʔ
Affricate ts
Continuant s ʃ h
Semivowel j w
Liquid l, r

Orthography

Huasteca Nahuatl currently has several proposal for its orthography, mainly that of the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnográfica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ),[5] Mexican government publications and the Summer Institute of Linguistics.[6]

IDIEZ
Mexican government publications
SIL

Sample text: 'a book about my location.'

Notes

  1. Eastern (Hidalgo) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Central at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Western (Tamazunchale) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Huasteca Nahuatl". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. Kimball: p. 196.
  4. Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
  5. IDIEZ:.
  6. Bible.is: Old Testament in Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl.

References

  • Kimball, Geoffrey (1990). "Noun Pluralization in Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl". International Journal of American Linguistics 56 (2): 196–216. doi:10.1086/466150. 
  • Rodríguez López, María Teresa, and Pablo Valderrama Rouy. 2005. "The Gulf Coast Nahua." In Sandstrom, Alan R., and Enrique Hugo García Valencia. 2005. Native peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
  • Beller, Richard; Patricia Beller (1979). "Huasteca Nahuatl". In Ronald Langacker (ed.). Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar 2: Modern Aztec Grammatical Sketches. Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics, 56. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. pp. 199–306. ISBN 0-88312-072-0. OCLC 6086368. 
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