Cuicatec is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in

Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the Federative Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 570 municipaliti ...

, Mexico. It belongs to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and the

Trique language The Triqui (), or Trique, languages are a family of Oto-Manguean spoken by 30,000 Trique people of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and the state of Baja California in 2007 (due to recent population movements). They are also spoken by 5,000 immigr ...

. The

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

lists two major dialects of Cuicatec: Tepeuxila Cuicatec and Teutila Cuicatec. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Cuicatec is tonal. The Cuicatecs are closely related to the

Mixtec The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Cult ...

s. They inhabit two towns: Teutila and Tepeuxila in western Oaxaca. According to the 2000 census, they number around 23,000, of whom an estimated 65% are speakers of the language. The name ''Cuicatec'' is a

Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group ...

, from 'song' 'inhabitant of place of'.Campbell 1997:402) Cuicatec-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEOJN, based in San Lucas Ojitlán,

Phonology

Vowels

The Santa Maria Papalo dialect contains six vowel sounds both oral and nasal:

Consonants

Allophones of the following sounds /β ð ɣ n j t tʃ/ include d ɡ~x ŋ j̈ θ ʃ respectively.

Notes

Bibliography

*Anderson, E. Richard & Hilario Concepción R. 1983. Diccionario cuicateco: español-cuicateco, cuicateco-español. Mexico City: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. *Bradley, David P. 1991. A preliminary syntactic sketch of Concepción Pápalo Cuicatec. In C. Henry Bradley and Barbara E. Hollenbach (eds.), Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan languages 3, pp. 409–506. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. *Campbell, Lyle. 1997. ''American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Needham, Doris & Marjorie Davis. 1946. Cuicateco phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 12: 139-46. *Prewett, Joanne and Omer E. 1974. The Segmental Phonology of Cuicateco of Santa María Pápalo Oaxaca, Mexico, pp. 53-92 {{Languages of Mexico Indigenous languages of Mexico Mixtecan languages