Tepehua is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the Tepehua ethnic group. Tepehua is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits which define the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area

Mesoamerican Linguistic Area

The Mesoamerican Linguistic Area is a sprachbund containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethnolinguistic traits found in the languages of...

. Along with some 62 other indigenous languages, it is recognised by a statutory law

Statutory law

Statutory law or statute law is written law set down by a legislature or by a legislator .Statutes may originate with national, state legislatures or local municipalities...

 of Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 as an official language

Official language

An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...

 in the Mexican Federal District and the other administrative divisions in which it is spoken, and on an equal footing with 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...

.

Approximate number of speakers of all varieties of Tepehua ~10,000

Language	ISO-Code	Where spoken	Number of speakers
Tepehua of Huehuetla	tee	Northeastern Hidalgo, Huehuetla, and half the town of Mecapalapa in Puebla Puebla Puebla officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 217 municipalities and its capital city is Puebla.... .	3,000 (1982 SIL)
Tepehua of Pisaflores	tpp	Around the town of Pisaflores Veracruz Veracruz Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...	4,000 (1990 census).
Tepehua of Tlachichilco	tpt	Tlachichilco, Vera Cruz Veracruz Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...	3,000 (1990 SIL).

Morphology

Tepehua is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morpheme

Morpheme

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...

s strung together.