Tepehuán language

Not to be confused with Tepehua language.

Tepehuán
O'otham
Spoken in	Mexico
Region	Chihuahua, Durango
Native speakers	~25,000 (All varieties)  (date missing)
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Tepiman Tepehuán
Dialects	Tepecano
Language codes
ISO 639-3	variously: ntp – Northern Tepehuán stp – Southeastern Tepehuán tla – Southwestern Tepehuán tep – Tepecano

Tepehuán (Tepehuano, Tepecano) is the name of two closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, both spoken in northern Mexico. The language is called O'otham by its speakers.

Northern Tepehuán

Northern Tepehuán is spoken by 8,000 Tepehuán people (1990 census) in the south of the state of Chihuahua.

Southern Tepehuán

Southern Tepehuán is divided into the southeastern and southwestern group. Southeastern Tepehuán is spoken by 9,937 people (2000 WCD) in the Mezquital Municipio of the state of Durango. Southern Tepehuán coexists with the Mexicanero nahuatl language, there is some intermarriage between the two ethnic groups and a number of speakers are trilingual in Mexicanero, Tepehuán and Spanish

The extinct Tepecano language appears to have been a variety of Southern Tepehuán.

Southwestern Tepehuán is spoken by around 8,187 (2000 WCD) people in Southwestern Durango.

Media

Tepehuán-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from Jesús María, Nayarit, and XETAR, based in Guachochi, Chihuahua.

Morphology

Tepehuán is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

External links