Amuzgo is an Oto-Manguean language spoken in the Costa Chica

Costa Chica

Costa Chica may refer to:Other*Costa Chica...

 region of the Mexican states of Guerrero

Guerrero

Guerrero officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Guerrero is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 81 municipalities and its capital city is Chilpancingo....

 and Oaxaca

Oaxaca

Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...

 by about 44,000 speakers. Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Amuzgo is a tonal language. From syntactical point of view Amuzgo can be considered as an active language. The name Amuzgo is claimed to be a Nahuatl exonym but its meaning is shrouded in controversy; multiple proposals have been made, including [amoʃ-ko] 'moss-in'.

A significant percentage of the Amuzgo speakers are monolingual; the remainder also speak Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

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Four variants of Amuzgo are officially recognized by the governmental agency, the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI). They are:

• (i) Northern Amuzgo (amuzgo del norte, commonly known as Guerrero or (from its major town) Xochistlahuaca Amuzgo);
• (ii) Southern Amuzgo (amuzgo del sur, heretofore classified as a subdialect of Northern Amuzgo);
• (iii) Upper Eastern Amuzgo (amuzgo alto del este, commonly known as Oaxaca Amuzgo or San Pedro Amuzgos Amuzgo);
• (iv) Lower Eastern Amuzgo (amuzgo bajo del este, commonly known as Ipalapa Amuzgo).

These varieties are very similar, but there is a significant difference between western varieties (Northern and Southern) and eastern varieties (Upper Eastern and Lower Eastern), as revealed by recorded text testing done in the 1970s.

Three dictionaries have been published for Upper Eastern Amuzgo in recent years. For Northern Amuzgo, no dictionary has yet been published, yet it too is very actively written. Lower Eastern Amuzgo and Southern Amuzgo (spoken in Huixtepec (Ometepec), for example) are still not well documented, but work is underway.

While the Mixtecan subdivision may indeed be the closest to Amuzgo within Oto-Manguean, earlier claims that Amuzgo is part of it have been contested.

Consonants

The dialect presented in the following chart is Upper Eastern, as spoken in San Pedro Amuzgos as analyzed by Smith & Tapia (2002).

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Dental		Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...		Alveopalatal/ Palatal	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m	n				ɲ
Plosive		t	d	tʲ	dʲ		k	ɡ	ʔ
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...		t͡s				t͡ʃ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		s				ʃ			h
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...						j	w

The following chart is based on Coronado Nazario et al. (2009) for the variety of Southern Amuzgo spoken in Huixtepec. The phonetic facts are very similar to that of other varieties, but the analysis is different.

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Apico-dental	Apico-lamino-/ alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		n	nʲ
Plosive	(p)	t	tʲ			k kʷ ⁿk	ʔ
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...		t͡s		t͡ʃ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		s		ʃ			h
Lateral approximant Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....		l
Central approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...					j	w
Tap		(ɾ)

In this analysis, the nasals and central approximants have distinctive allophones that depend on whether or not they precede a nasalized vowel. The approximant /w/, which is [b] before oral vowels or consonants in Huixtepec, is [m] before nasalized vowels. The approximant /j/ is likewise nasalized before nasalized vowels, and [j] elsewhere. The nasals are pronounced with an oral non-nasal release when they precede an oral vowel, and as such sound like [nd] in that context. Various other important details about the phonetics of Amuzgo are not presented in a simplified chart such as the one shown above.

Vowels

Amuzgo distinguishes seven vowels with respect to quality. In all the documented dialects, all but the two close vowels may be nasalized. Some descriptions claim that Amuzgo also has ballistic syllable

Ballistic syllable

"Ballistic" syllables are a phonemic distinction in the Otomanguean languages Chinantec and Amuzgo. They have been described as characterized either with either increased sub-glottal pressure or with laryngeal abduction...

s, a possible type of supra-glottal phonation

Phonation

Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...

. Ballistic syllables are also a feature of the phonology of another Oto-Manguean branch, Chinantec

Chinantec

The Chinantecs are an indigenous people that live in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán, Ixtlán de Juárez, Tuxtepec and Choapan.The Chinantec languages belong to the Chinantecan branch of the Oto-Manguean family...

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	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...		Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...		Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i				u
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...	e	ẽ			o	õ
Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...	ɛ	ɛ̃			ɔ	ɔ̃
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...			ɑ	ɑ̃

Tones

Amuzgo has three basic tones: high, mid, and low. But it also has several combinations of tones on single syllables. The contour high-low is a common one. The following words are apparently distinguished only by tone in Huixtepec: /ha/ 'sour' (low), /ha/ (mid) 'I', /ha/ (high-low) 'we (exclusive)', and /ha/ (high) 'we (inclusive)'. See also the set: /ta/ 'hill' (low), /ta/ 'thick' (mid), /ta/ ' father (vocative)' (high-low), /ta/ 'slice' (high).

Morphology

Nouns are pluralized by a prefix. The common plural prefix is n-. Compare /thã/ 'skin', /n-thã/ 'skins' (Northern and Southern Amuzgo). Typically the consonant /ts/ drops when the noun is pluralized: /tsʔɔ/ 'hand', /l-ʔɔ/ 'hands' (Northern Amuzgo), /n-ʔɔ/ 'hands' (Southern Amuzgo).

Animate nouns (most animals and insects, plus some other nouns) carry the classifier prefix /ka/. This classifier precedes the inflected noun, as in /ka-tsueʔ/ 'dog', /ka-l-ueʔ/ 'dogs' (Northern Amuzgo), /ka-n-ueʔ/ 'dogs' (Southern Amuzgo).

Syntax

Amuzgo has been proposed to be an active–stative language. Like many other Otomanguean languages, it distinguishes between first person inclusive plural and first person exclusive plural pronouns.

Media

Amuzgo-language programming is carried by the CDI

National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples

The National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples is a decentralized agency of the Mexican Federal Public Administration. It was founded in 2003 as a replacement for the National Indigenist Institute . It has its headquarters in Mexico City and, since 15 December 2006, has been...

's radio station XEJAM, based in Santiago Jamiltepec

Santiago Jamiltepec

Santiago Jamiltepec is a town, and the seat of surrounding municipality of the same name, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca....

, Oaxaca

Oaxaca

Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...

, and by the community radio station Radio Ñomndaahttp://lapalabradelagua.org in Xochistlahuaca-Suljaa'

Xochistlahuaca

Xochistlahuaca is a city and seat of the municipality of Xochistlahuaca, in the state of Guerrero, south-western Mexico....

.

External links

• Sample of Amuzgo writing