Mazahua
Jñatjo (Toluca Mazahua) Jñatrjo (Central Mazahua)
Pronunciation	[ɲ̥atrjo]
Native to	Mexico
Region	State of Mexico,Toluca
Ethnicity	Mazahua
Native speakers	150,000 (2020 census)[1]
Language family	Oto-Manguean Oto-Pamean Otomian Mazahua
Official status
Regulated by	Secretaría de Educación Pública
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mmc – Toluca Mazahua maz – Central Mazahua
Glottolog	maza1293
Extent of the Mazahua language in Mexico
The Mazahua language, number 4 (darker blue), northwest
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TheMazahua language (Central Mazahua:Jñatrjo,[ɲ̥atrjo]) is anOto-Pamean language spoken in the centralstates of Mexico by the ethnic group that is widely known as theMazahua but calls itself the Hñatho. It is aMesoamerican language and has many of the traits of theMesoamerican Linguistic Area. In 2003, along with some 62 other indigenous languages, it was recognised by astatutory law ofMexico (General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples)^[2] as anofficial language in theFederal District and the other administrative divisions in which it is spoken, and on an equal footing withSpanish. The largest concentration of Mazahua is found in the municipality ofSan Felipe del Progreso,State of México, nearToluca.

The closest relatives of the Mazahua language areOtomi,Matlatzinca, andOcuilteco/Tlahuica languages, which together with Mazahua form the Otomian subgroup of the Oto-Pamean branch of theOto-Mangueanlanguage family.

Mazahua is atonal language and distinguishes high, low, and fallingtones on all syllables except the final syllable of a word whose stress is predictable.

Mazahua's most distinctive feature is its abnormally-largephoneme inventory, around sixty phonemes, or twice the number inEnglish. There are eight vowel phonemes, seven contrastivenasal vowels, and as many as forty-five consonants.

Amongst them areejectives,implosives and contrastivevoicelesssonorants. Along withSindhi andTukang Besi, Mazahua is a rare case of a language with true implosives that is far from regions where implosives are commonly encountered. It is also one of the few languages with ejective fricatives.^[3]

Mazahua-language programming is carried by theCDI's radio stationXETUMI-AM, broadcasting fromTuxpan, Michoacán.

The orthography is based on theSpanish alphabet, with additional rules to account for the large phonetic inventory of Mazahua:

• A diagonal strikethrough indicates areduced vowel (these letters were added toUnicode in 2016)^[4]
• Underline indicates anasal vowel^[5]
• An apostrophe indicates anejective consonant orglottalic consonant
• The letterj after a consonant indicates anaspirated consonant
• The letteru after a consonant indicateslabialization^[6]

The following the first Article of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) into Mazahua:

• Knapp Ring, Michael Herbert,Fonología del mazahua, Tesis de licenciatura, ENAH, México, 1996
• Michael Knapp, 2002 “Elementos de dialectología Mazahua" InDel Cora Al Maya Yucateco: Estudios Linguisticos Sobre Algunas Lenguas Indigenas Mexicanas Paulette Levy (Ed.), Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico

Mazahua language test ofWikipedia atWikimedia Incubator

• Indigenous languages of Mexico
• Mesoamerican languages
• Oto-Manguean languages
• Oto-Pamean languages
• Mazahua

• CS1 Spanish-language sources (es)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from March 2024
• Articles containing Michoacán Mazahua-language text
• Articles containing Central Mazahua-language text
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles citing INALI
• Pages with Central Mazahua IPA