Ópata (also Tegüima, Teguima, Tehuima, Tehui, Jova, Joval, Tonichi, Sonori and Ure; ) is either of two closely related

Uto-Aztecan The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of native American languages, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ...

languages, ''Teguima'' and '' Eudeve'', spoken by the

Opata people The Opata (, /ˈopata/) are an Indigenous people in Mexico. Opata territory, the "Opatería" in Spanish, encompasses the mountainous northeast and central part of the state of Sonora, extending to near the border with the United States. Historica ...

of northern central

Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 ...

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

and Southeast of Arizona in the United States. It was believed to be dead already in 1930, and

Carl Sofus Lumholtz Carl Sofus Lumholtz (23 April 1851 – 5 May 1922) was a Norwegian explorer and ethnographer, best known for his meticulous field research and ethnographic publications on indigenous cultures of Australia and Mexico. Biography Born in Fåb ...

reported the Opata to have become "Mexicanized" and lost their language and customs already when traveling through Sonora in the 1890s. Buckingham Smith translated ''Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language'' from an unpublished Spanish manuscript and it was published in 1861. In a 1993 survey by the

Instituto Nacional Indigenista The National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (, INPI, Tzotzil language, Tzotzil: ''Instituto Ta Sjunul Jlumaltik Sventa Batsi Jnaklometik,'' Qʼeqchiʼ language, Q'eqchi': ''Molam Tk’anjelaq Chi Rixeb’ Laj Ralch’och’'', Ixil language, Ixil ...

, 15 people in the

Mexican Federal District Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...

self-identified as speakers of Ópata. This may not mean, however, that the language was actually living, since linguistic nomenclature in Mexico is notoriously fuzzy. Sometimes Eudeve is called Opata, a term which should be restricted to Teguima. ''Eudeve'' (which is split into the ''Heve'' (''Egue'') and ''Dohema'' dialects) and ''Teguima'' (also called ''Ópata'', ''Ore'') are distinct languages, but sometimes have been considered merely dialects of one single language. The INALI (Mexican National Institute for Indigenous Languages) does not count Opata among the currently extant indigenous languages of Mexico.

Classification

Opata had long been considered to be part of the

Taracahitic languages The Taracahitic languages (occasionally called Taracahita or Taracahitan) form a putative branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family of Mexico. The best known is Tarahumara language, Tarahumara. Languages *Tarahumaran languages, Tarahumaran ::Ta ...

, but this is no longer considered a valid genetic unit.

Revival

Although the Opata Nation, an

unrecognized tribe These organizations, located within the United States, self-identify as Native American tribes, heritage groups, or descendant communities, but they are not federally recognized or state-recognized as Native American tribes. The U.S. Governmental ...

, considers the language inactive, they are in the process of its language revitalization. The Fundación OPATA-TEGUIMA launched the first-ever Opata Living Dictionary in 2021 in collaboration with Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

Phonology

Consonants

* /h/ can also be heard as velar in free variation. * /r/ is commonly articulated as dental ̪ and can also be heard as aspirated ̪ʰin free variation. * /ɾ/ can also be heard as a trill in emphatic speech. * /ɡʷ/ may also be heard as before /u/ in free variation.

Vowels

Morphology

Opata is an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

s strung together.

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, unknown 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 *Smith, Buckingham Agglutinative languages Southern Uto-Aztecan languages Indigenous languages of Mexico Extinct languages of North America Endangered Uto-Aztecan languages Languages extinct in the 2010s 2010 disestablishments in Mexico Opata {{UtoAztecan-lang-stub