Cuicatec language

Cuicatec
Spoken in	Mexico
Region	Oaxaca
Native speakers	15,000  (no date)
Language family	Oto-Manguean Mixtecan Cuicatec
Writing system	Latin alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	either: cux – Tepeuxila cut – Teutila
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The Cuicatecs are an indigenous group of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, closely related to the Mixtecs. 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.^[1]

The name Cuicatec is a Nahuatl exonym, from [ˈkʷika] 'song' [ˈteka] 'inhabitant of place of'.^[2]

The Cuicatec language is an Oto-Manguean language of Mexico. It belongs to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and the Trique language.^[3] The Ethnologue lists two major dialects of Cuicatec. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Cuicatec is tonal.

Cuicatec-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEOJN, based in San Lucas Ojitlán, Oaxaca.

Notes

1. ^ Website of the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas, http://www.cdi.gob.mx/index.php?id_seccion=660, accessed 28 July 2008.
2. ^ Campbell 1997:402)
3. ^ The proposal to group Mixtec, Trique and Cuicatec into a single family (none more closely related to one than to the other) was made by Longacre (1957) with convincing evidence.

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.