Otomí language
| Hñähñü (hñähño) | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Mexico | |
| speaker | 300,000 people | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | National language in Mexico
|
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
oto |
|
| ISO 639-3 |
- |
|
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The Otomí language or Otomi (Hñähñü) , a tonal language , belongs together with the Chichimeca-Jonaz language, Mazahua language, Pame language, Ocuilteco language and Matlatzinca language to the Oto-Pame languages , which in turn belong to the Oto-Mangue languages (together with Amuzgo, Chinantek, Mixtec, Popoloca, Tlapanek and Zapotec). The Otomí has around 300,000 speakers (five to six percent of them monolingual), most of them in the states of Hidalgo (Valle de Mezquital), México , Puebla , Querétaro , Tlaxcala , Michoacán and Veracruz . Although the Otomí language is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages in Mexico , it (like many languages in Mexico) is critically endangered. Because their speakers had been economically and socially subject to the pressure of Spanish since the colonial era. In terms of language policy, Otomí was not promoted in education and therefore used less and less in public spaces. In families, the Otomí language is still passed on to children.
variants
literature
- Klaus Zimmermann : Otomí: a brief structural and sociolinguistic characterization. In: Jeanette Sakel, Thomas Stolz (ed.): Amerindiana. New perspectives on the indigenous languages of America. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-005703-3 , pp. 99–132.
