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

Uto-Aztecan Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...

languages, ''Teguima'' and ''Eudeve'', spoken by the Opata people of northern central

Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora ( en, Free and Sovereign State of 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 d ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

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 Fåberg, N ...

reported the Opata to have become "Mexicanized" and lost their language and customs already when traveling through Sonora in the 1890s. In a 1993 survey by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 15 people in the Mexican Federal District 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. Although th
Opata Nation
does consider their language inactive and they are in the process of it
revitalization
The Fundación OPATA-TEGUIMA launched the first-eve
Opata Living Dictionary
in 2021 in collaboration with Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

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. Languages *Tarahumaran :: Tarahumara :: Guarijío (Huarijio, Varihio) ...

, but this is no longer considered a valid genetic unit.Shaul, D. L. (1983). The position of Opata and Eudeve in Uto-Aztecan. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics. Vol. 8, No. 2

Morphology

Opata is an

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

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

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

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 {{DEFAULTSORT:Opata Language 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