| Purépecha | |
|---|---|
| Tarascan | |
| Pʼurhépecha | |
| Pronunciation | [pʰuˈɽepet͡ʃa] |
| Native to | Mexico |
| Region | Michoacán |
| Ethnicity | Purépecha |
Native speakers | 142,469 (2020 census)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:tsz – Easternpua – Western |
| Glottolog | tara1323 |
| ELP | Purepecha |
 Distribution of Purépecha inMexico. Green indicates historical language homeland and red is modern-day speakers. | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Purépecha (autonym:Pʼurhépecha[pʰuˈɽepet͡ʃa] orPhorhé(pecha)), often calledTarascan (Spanish:Tarasco), a term coined by Spanish settlers that can be seen as pejorative to some,[2] is alanguage isolate or smalllanguage family that is spoken by some 140,000Purépecha in the highlands ofMichoacán,Mexico.
Purépecha was the main language of the pre-ColumbianPurépecha Empire and became widespread in the region during its heyday in thelate post-Classic period. The small town of Purepero got its name from the indigenous people who lived there.
Even though it is spoken within the boundaries ofMesoamerica, Purépecha does not share many of the traits defining theMesoamerican language area, suggesting that the language is a remnant of an indigenous substrate that existed several thousands of years ago before the migration of speakers that contributed to the formation of thesprachbund, or alternatively is a relatively new arrival to the area.
Purépecha has long been classified as alanguage isolate unrelated to any other known language. That judgement is repeated inLyle Campbell's authoritative classification.[3]Joseph Greenberg assigned it to theChibchan language family,[4] but like the rest of his American classification, that proposal is rejected by specialists.[3]
There are a number of dialects,[5] whichSIL International divides into two languages, but Campbell (1997) considers Purépecha to be a single language. The government of Mexico recognizes three dialectal variants: Lacustrine (spoken in areas close tolake Patzcuaro), Sierran or Meseta (spoken in the Highlands of northwestern Michoacán) and Cañada (spoken in the Cañada de los Once Pueblos region).[6]
The language is spoken mostly in rural communities in the highlands of Michoacán. The former center of the Tarascan State was aroundLake Pátzcuaro and remains an important center of the Purépecha community.
Ethnologue counts Purépecha as two languages: a central language, spoken by approximately 40,000 people (2005) around Pátzcuaro, and a western highland language, spoken by 135,000 speakers (2005) aroundZamora,Los Reyes de Salgado,Paracho de Verduzco, andPamatácuaro, all of which are in the vicinity of the volcanoParícutin. Recent migration has formed communities of speakers in the cities ofGuadalajara,Tijuana andMexico City and in theUnited States. The total population of speakers is rising (from 58,000 in 1960 to 96,000 in 1990 and 120,000 in 2000[7]), but the percentage of speakers relative to non-speakers is falling, and the degree ofbilingualism is rising, which makes it anendangered language. Fewer than 10% of speakers are now monolingual.[7]
The Purépecha are known to have migrated from elsewhere to their current location, as their tradition includes stories of having traveled from thePacific Ocean to their current locations.Ethnohistorical accounts mention them as a people dwelling in the same region of Michoacán they live in now as early as the 13th century. According to theRelación de Michoacán, the communities around Lake Pátzcuaro were gathered into the strong Purépecha State by the leader of the Uacúsecha group of Purépecha speakers,Tariácuri. Around 1300, he undertook the first conquests of other areas and installed his nephewsHiripan andTangáxoan as lords ofIhuatzio andTzintzuntzan respectively while he himself ruled fromPátzcuaro City. By the time of the death ofTaríacuri, in around 1350, his lineage was in control of all the major centers around Lake Pátzcuaro.
His nephew Hiripan continued the expansion into the area surroundingLake Cuitzeo. In 1460 the Purépecha State reached the Pacific Coast atZacatula, advanced into theToluca Valley, and also, on the northern rim, reached into the present-day state ofGuanajuato. In the 15th century, the Purépecha state was at war with the Aztecs. ManyNahua peoples who had lived side by side with Purépecha-speakers were relocated outside of the Tarascan frontiers, andOtomi-speakers fleeing the Aztec expansion resettled on the border between the two polities. That created a fairly homogeneous area of Purépecha speakers, with no other languages spoken in the core area around Lake Pátzcuaro.[8]
During theSpanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Purépecha State was at first peacefully incorporated into the realm ofNew Spain, but with the killing of CazonciTangaxuán II byNuño de Guzmán, the relation became one of Spanish dominance by force. Exceptions were the hospital communities ofVasco de Quiroga, such asSanta Fé de la Laguna, where Purépecha could live with a degree of protection from Spanish domination. Through Spanish friars, the Purépecha learned to write in theLatin script, and Purépecha became a literary language in the early colonial period. There is a body of written sources in Purépecha from the period, including several dictionaries, confessionaries, and land titles. Among the most important colonial works are the grammar (1558)[9] and dictionary (1559)[10] of FrayMaturino Gilberti, and the grammar and dictionary (1574) by Juan Baptista de Lagunas[11]
From ca. 1700, the status of Purépecha changed, and throughout the 20th century, the Mexican government pursued a policy ofHispanicization. Speakers of indigenous languages were actively encouraged to abandon their languages in favor of Spanish. However, in accord with international changes in favor of recognizing thelinguistic rights ofindigenous peoples and promotingmulticulturalism in colonial states, theCongress of the Union of Mexico approved theGeneral Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples in 2003, giving Purépecha and Mexico's other indigenous languages official status as "national languages."
The official alphabet is the PʼURHEPECHA JIMBO KARARAKUECHA (Purépecha Alphabet):
The lettersb, d, g occur in spelling only afterm, n:mb, nd, ng, which reflects the pronunciation ofp, t, k after nasal consonants.
In all dialects of Purépecha, thestress accent is phonemic. As inSpanish orthography, a stressed syllable is indicated by theacute accent. Minimal pairs are formed:
Usually, the second syllable of the word is stressed, but occasionally, it is the first.
The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below.[14] It differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and also gives the alphabet equivalents, enclosed in angle brackets, if it is not obvious.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ⟨ï⟩ | u |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | ɑ⟨a⟩ |
The two mid vowels/e,o/ are uncommon, especially the latter.
The high central vowel is almost always after/s/ or/ts/ and is then almost anallophone of/i/.
The final vowel of a word is usuallyvoiceless (whispered) or deleted except before a pause.
Vowel clusters are very rare except for sequences that are generated by adding grammatical suffixes like the plural -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri. Vowel clusters are usually not the first two sounds of a word.
Purépecha is one of the few languages in the Mesoamerica without aphonemicglottal stop (a distinction shared by theHuave language and by someNahuan languages). It lacks anylaterals ('l'-sounds). However, in the speech of many young Spanish-Purépechabilinguals, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by[l] under the influence of Spanish.[15]
There are distinct series of non-aspirated andaspirated consonants andaffricate consonants; in the spelling aspiration is noted by an apostrophe. There are tworhotics ('r'-sounds, one of them beingretroflex).
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar orpalatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialised | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ⟨nh⟩ | |||
| Plosive | plain | p | t | k | kʷ⟨ku⟩ | |
| aspirated | pʰ⟨p'⟩ | tʰ⟨t'⟩ | kʰ⟨k'⟩ | kʷʰ⟨k'u⟩ | ||
| Affricate | plain | ts | tʃ⟨ch⟩ | |||
| aspirated | tsʰ⟨ts'⟩ | tʃʰ⟨ch'⟩ | ||||
| Fricative | s | ʃ⟨x⟩ | x⟨j⟩ | |||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ⟨rh⟩ | ||||
| Approximant | j⟨i⟩ | w⟨u⟩ | ||||
The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes/kʷ/,/kʷʰ/,/w/,/j/. It uses the letter⟨i⟩ for both/i,j/ and the letter⟨u⟩ for both/u,w/, but both semivowels are fairly rare. When⟨k⟩ or⟨k'⟩ is followed by⟨u⟩ and another vowel letter, the sequence virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.
Intervocally, aspirated consonants becomepre-aspirated. After nasals, aspirated consonants lose their aspiration and unaspirated consonants become voiced.
Purépecha is anagglutinative language, butsound change has led to a certain degree of fusion. It is sometimes considered apolysynthetic language because of its complex morphology and frequent long words.[16] Unlike most other languages that are considered polysynthetic, it has nonoun compounding orincorporation. The language is exclusively suffixing and has a large number of suffixes (as many as 160[8]) andclitics. The verb distinguishes 13 aspects and 6 modes. The language isdouble-marking in the typology ofJohanna Nichols, as it marks grammatical relations on both the dependent phrases and phrasal heads.
The language has bothgrammatical case andpostpositions. The case system distinguishesnominative,accusative,genitive,comitative,instrumental, andlocative cases, but there are also many nominal derivational affixes.Word order is flexible, and the basic word order has been described as eitherSVO[17] orSOV.[18] However, most authors note that other word orders are frequently used forpragmatic purposes such asfocus ortopic tracking.[19]
Nouns are inflected by the basic formula Noun + Number + Case.
The language distinguishes between plural and unspecified numbers, with no dedicated singular form.[20]
Plurals formed by the suffix-echa/-icha or-cha.
warhíticha
women-PL
tepharicha
fat-PL
maru
some
warhíticha tepharicha maru
women-PL fat-PL some
'some fat women'
The nominative case is unmarked. The accusative case (also called theobjective case) is used to markdirect and sometimes indirect objects and is marked by the suffix-ni:
Pedrú
Pedrú
Pedro
Pedrú pyásti tsúntsuni
Pedrú pyá-s-ti tsúntsu-ni
Pedro buy-PFV-3P pot-ACC
'Pedro bought the pot'
The genitive case is marked by-ri-eri:
imá
imá
that
wíchu
wíchu
dog
imá wárhitiri wíchu
imá wárhiti-ri wíchu
that woman-GEN dog
'that woman's dog'
The locative case is marked by-rhu,-o
kúntaati Maríao
ku-nta-a-ti María-o
meet-ITER-FUT-3IND Maria-LOC
'He'll meet him at María's place'[21] Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);
The instrumental case is marked by the particlejimpó or the suffix-mpu
tsakápu
tsakápu
rock
k'éri
k'éri
big
má
má
one
jiríkurhniniksï tsakápu k'éri májimpó
jiríkurhi-ni=ksï tsakápu k'éri májimpó
hide-INF-3PL rock big oneINS
'They hid behind some big rocks'[22]
ampémpori ánchikuarhiwa
ampé-mpu=ri anchikuarhi-wa-∅
what-INS work-FUT-3SG
'What will he/she work with?'[23]
The comitative case is marked by the particlejinkóni or the suffix-nkuni
warhíti
wárhiti
woman
má
má
one
apóntini warhíti májinkóni
apónti-ni wárhiti májinkóni
sleep-INF woman oneCOM
'to sleep with a woman'[24]
xi
xi
I
xi niwákani imánkuni
xi ni-wa-ka-=ni imá-nkuni
I go-FUT-1st/2nd-1P DEM-COM
'I'll go with him/her'[25]
Discourse-pragmatic focus on a noun or noun phrase is indicated by the clitic-sï.[17]
Pedrú?
Pedrú
Pedro
Ampésï arhá Pedrú?
ampé-sï arh-∅-∅-á Pedrú
what-FOC eat-PFV-INTERR Pedro
'What did Pedro eat?'
kurúchasï atí.
Kurúcha-sï a-∅-tí
fish-FOC eat-PFV-3P
'he atefish' (i.e., 'fish is what he ate')
Verbs inflect foraspects andmoods as well as forperson andnumber of the subject and the object. There are also a number of suffixes expressing shape, position, or body parts that affect or are affected by the verbal action.[26][27][28]
Transitivity is manipulated by suffixes forming transitive verbs with applicative orcausative meaning orintransitives with passive orinchoative meanings.
Purépecha-language programming is broadcast by the radio stationXEPUR-AM, located inCherán, Michoacán. It is a project of theNational Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples.
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