P'urhépecha language

Tarascan
Purepecha P'urhépecha
Pronunciation	[pʰuˈɽepet͡ʃa]
Spoken in	Michoacán, Mexico
Native speakers	175,000  (2005 census)
Language family	language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: tsz – Eastern pua – Western
Distribution of Tarascan in the Mexican state of Michoacán

P'urhépecha AKA Purepecha (Phorhé, Phorhépecha), or Tarascan (Tarasco), is a language isolate or small language family spoken by more than 100,000 P'urhépecha people in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán. Even though it is spoken within the boundaries of Mesoamerica P'urhépecha does not share many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area, probably due to a long adherence to an isolationist policy.

P'urhépecha was the main language of the pre-Columbian Tarascan state and became widespread in north western Mexico during the height of the Tarascan state.

Classification

P'urhépecha has long been classified as a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language. This judgement is repeated in Campbell's authoritative classification (Campbell 1997). Greenberg assigned it to the Chibchan language family, but this proposal was rejected by specialists. Statistical studies by Swadesh have suggested relationships to Zuñi, Quechua, Mayan and Aymara, but these conclusions remain unproven.

Demography

The P'urhépecha language is mostly spoken in rural communities in the highlands of Michoacán. The former center of the Tarascan state was around lake Pátzcuaro and this remains an important center of the P'urhépecha community. Ethnologue counts P'urhépecha as two languages: a central language spoken by approximately 40,000 people (2005) around Pátzcuaro, and a western highland language spoken by 135,00 speakers (2005) around Zamora, Los Reyes de Salgado, Paracho, and Pamatácuaro, all of which are in the vicinity of the Paricutín volcano. Due to recent migration there are also communities of speakers in the cities of Guadalajara, Tijuana and Mexico City and in the United States. The total population of speakers is rising (from 58,299 in 1960 to 96,016 in 1990 and 121,409 in 2000) but the percentage of speakers relative to non speakers is falling, and the degree of bilingualism is rising - making the language endangered. Today the percentage of monolingual speakers is below 10%.

History

The P'úrhépecha are not known to have migrated from elsewhere to their current location, although the P'urhéopecha have stories of having traveled from the pacific ocean to their current locations. Ethnohistorical accounts mentions of them as a people in the region of Michoacán inhabited by them today as early as the 13th century CE. According to the Relación de Michoacán the communities around Lake Pátzcuaro were gathered into one strong state by the leader of the Uacúsecha group of P'urhépecha speakers Tariácuri. Around 1300 he undertook the first conquests of other and installed his sons Hiripan and Tangáxoan as lords of Ihuatzio and Tzintzuntzan respectively, himself ruling from Pátzcuaro city. By the death of Taríacuri (around 1350), his lineage was in control of all the major centers around Lake Pátzcuaro. His son Hiripan continued the expansion into the area surrounding Lake Cuitzeo. In 1460 the Tarascan state reached the Pacific coast at Zacatula, advanced into the valley of Toluca, and also, on the northern rim, reached into the present day state of Guanajuato. In the 15th century the Tarascan state was at war with the Aztecs. Many Nahua speakers who had until then lived side by side with P'urhépecha speakers, were relocated outside of the Tarascan frontiers, whereas speakers of Otomí fleeing the Aztec expansion resettled on the border between the two polities. This created a fairly homogeneous area of P'urhéopecha speakers with no other languages spoken in the core area around lake Pátzcuaro.

With the Spanish conquest the Tarascan state was first peacefully incorporated into the realm of New Spain, but with the killing of Cazonci Tangaxuán II by Nuño de Guzmán the relation became one of Spanish dominance by force. An exception to this was the Hospital communities of Vasco de Quiroga such as Santa Fé de la Laguna, where P'urhépecha could live with a degree of protection from Spanish domination. Through Spanish Friars the P'urhépecha learned to write in the Latin script and P'urhépecha became a literary language in the early colonial period. There is a body of written sources in P'urhépecha from this period including several dictionaries, confessionaries, and land titles. Among the most important colonial works are the grammar (1558) and dictionary (1559) of Fray Maturino Gilberti, and the grammar and dictionary (1574) by Juan Baptista de Lagunas From ca. 1700 the status of P'urhépecha changed and through the twentieth century the Mexican state pursued a policy of castellanización, under which speakers of indigenous languages were actively encouraged to abandon their languages in favor of Spanish. With the international changes in favor of recognizing linguistic rights of indigenous peoples and promote multiculturalism in colonial states. In 2003 Congress approved the General Law of Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples, giving P'urhépecha and Mexico's other Indigenous language official status as a National language.

Orthography

The official alphabet is the P’URHEPECHA JIMBO KARARAKUECHA (P'urhépecha Alphabet):

a b ch ch' d e g i ï j k k' m n nh o p p' r rh s t t' ts ts' u x.

The three letters < b, d, g > occur in spelling only after the nasal letters < m, n >: < mb, nd, ng >. Their use is not consistent with orthography on the phonemic principle, because the sounds [p, t, k] are automatically voiced, shifting in pronunciation to [b, d, g] respectively, after a nasal consonant.

Phonology

In all dialects of P'urhépecha, stress accent is phonemic. As in Spanish orthography, the stressed syllable is indicated by the acute accent. Examples of minimal pairs are:

karáni 'write' — kárani 'fly'

p'amáni 'wrap it' — p'ámani 'touch a liquid'

Usually the second syllable of the word is stressed, occasionally the first.

The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below. The Tarécuato dialect differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and also gives the alphabet equivalents (enclosed in parentheses) in nonobvious cases.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ ( ï )	u
Mid	e		o
Open		ɑ

The two mid vowels /e, o/ are uncommon; /o/ is especially rare.

The high central vowel occurs almost exclusively after /s/ or /ts/, and is almost a predictible allophone of /i/ in that position.

The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted, unless the word is at the end of a phrase or sentence.

Sequences of vowels do occur, but are very rare except for sequences generated by adding grammatical suffixes such as the pluralizers -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri; and a sequence of vowels (sounds, not letters) virtually never occurs as the first two sounds of a word.

Consonants

P'urhépecha is one of the minority of languages in the Mesoamerican region which do not have a phonemic glottal stop (a distinction shared by the Huave language and by some dialects of Nahuatl). On a worldwide scale, it is very unusual in lacking any laterals ('l'-sounds). (However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by [l], due to Spanish influence.) There are distinct series of nonaspirated and aspirated plosives and affricates; aspiration is spelled with an apostrophe. There are two rhotics ('r'-sounds; one of them retroflex).

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar	Labio- velar
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 (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 the phonemes /i, j/ and the letter 'u' for both of the phonemes /u, w/ (These two semivowels are fairly rare). When k and k' are followed by u and another vowel this virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.

Intervocally, the aspirated consonants become pre-aspirated; when following nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. The unaspirated consonants become voiced when following nasals.

Grammar

The P'urhépecha language is agglutinating and exclusively suffixing and has a large number of suffixes (as many as 160) and clitics. It has no noun compounding or incorporation. The verb distinguishes thirteen aspects and six modes. It has a nominal case system distinguishing nominative, accusative, genitive, comitative, instrumental and locative cases, but also a large number of nominal derivational affixes. Basic word order is SVO, but other word orders are commonly used for pragmatic purposes.

The Noun

Plural of a noun is formed by a suffix -echa/-icha or -cha.

kúmi-wátsï "fox" - kúmi-wátsïcha "foxes"

iréta "town" - irétaacha "towns"

warhíticha tepharicha maru "some fat women (lit. women-PL fat-PL some)"

The nominative case is unmarked. The accusative case (also called objective case) is used to mark direct and sometimes indirect objects, is marked by a suffix -ni:

Pedrú pyásti tsúntsuni "Pedro bought the pot"

Pedrú pyá-s-ti tsúntsu-ni

Pedro buy-PRF-3P pot-ACC

The genitive is marked by -ri -eri:

imá wárhitiri wíchu "that woman's dog"

imá wárhiti-ri wíchu

that woman-GEN dog

The locative is marked by -rhu, -o

kúntaati Maríao "He'll meet him at María's place"

ku-nta-a-ti María-o

meet-ITER-FUT-3IND Maria-LOC

The instrumental case is marked by the particle jimpó or the suffix -mpu

jiríkurhniniksï tsakápu k'éri má jimpó "They hid behind some big rocks"

jiríkurhi-ni=ksï tsakápu k'éri má jimpó

hide-INF-3PL rock big one INS

ampémpori ánchikuarhiwa

ampé-mpu=ri anchikuarhi-wa-Ø

what-INS work-future tense-3SG

The comitative case is marked by the particle jinkóni or the suffix -nkuni

apóntini warhíti má jinkóni "to sleep with a woman"

apónti-ni wárhiti má jinkóni

Sleep-INF woman one COM

xi niwákani imánkuni "I'll go with him/her"

xi ni-wa-ka-=ni imá-nkuni

I go-FUT-1st/2nd-1P DEM-COM

Discourse-pragmatic focus on a noun or noun phrase is indicated by the clitic -sï.

Ampésï arhá Pedrú? "What did Pedro eat?"

ampé-sï arh-∅-∅-á Pedrú

what-FOC eat-PRF-INT Pedro

kurúchasï atí. "he ate fish" (i.e., fish is what he ate)

Kurúcha-sï a-∅-tí

fish-FOC eat-PRF-3P

The Verb

The P'urhépecha verb inflects for aspects and modes. There are also a number of suffixes expressing position or body parts affecting or affected by the verbal action. Transitivity is manipulated by suffixes forming transitive verbs with applicative or causative meaning or intransitives with passive or inchoative meanings.

Media

P'urhépecha-language programming is broadcast by radio station XEPUR-AM, based in Cherán, Michoacán. This radio station is an enterprise of the CDI.

References

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, no. 4. William Bright (series general ed.) (OUP paperback ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1. OCLC 32923907. 

• Capistrán, Alejandra. 2002. "Variaciones de orden de constituyentes en p'orhépecha". In Paulette Levy, ed., Del cora al maya yucateco: estudios lingüísticos sobre algunas lenguas indígenas mexicanas. Mexico City: UNAM.

• Chamoreau, Claudine. 2003. Purépecha de Jarácuaro, Michoacán. Mexico City: El Colegio de México. Archivo de lenguas indígenas de México; 25.

• Chamoreau, C. 2003. Parlons Purépecha. Paris: L'Harmattan, ISBN 2747543579.

• Chamoreau, C. 2009. Hablemos Purépecha. Morelia, Mexico: Universidad Intercultural Indígena de Michoacán. ISBN 978-607-424-042-9. [Revised and enlarged Spanish language translation of the above]

• De Wolf, Paul. 1989. Estudios Lingüísticos sobre la lengua P'orhé. Mexico City: Colegio de Michoacán.

• De Wolf, Paul. 1991. Curso básico del tarasco hablado. Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán. ISBN 968-7230-61-4.

• Foster, Mary LeCron. 1969. The Tarascan Language. Berkeley: University of California Press. University of California publications in linguistics; 56.

• Foster, Mary LeCron. 1971. "Tarascan". In Jesse Sawyer, ed., Studies in American Indian Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.

• Friedrich, Paul. 1984. "Tarascan: From Meaning to Sound". In Munro Edmonson, ed., Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 2. Austin: University of Texas Press.

• Greenberg, Joseph. 1987. Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

• Hernández Dimas, Ma. Guadalupe, et al. 1999. Curso de lengua p'urhépecha. Mexico City: UNAM.

• Monzón, Cristina. 1997. Introducción a la lengua y cultura tarascas. Valencia, Spain: Universidad de Valencia. ISBN 8437033071.

• Pahuamba, Juan Velázquez, et al. 1997. Vocabulario práctico bilingüe p'urhépecha-español. (Introductory section online). Dirección General de Culturas Populares. Dirección General de Culturas Populares, PACMyC.

• Pollard, Helen Perlstein (1993). Taríacuri’s Legacy: The Prehispanic Tarascan State. The Civilization of the American Indian series, vol. 209. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-2497-0. OCLC 26801144. 

• Villavicencio Zarza, Frida (2006). P'orhépecha kaso sïrátahenkwa: Desarrollo del sistema de casos del purépecha. Mexico, DF: Colegio de México, Centro de Investigaciones Superiores en Antropología Social. ISBN 968-496-592-3. 

External links

• Purepecha Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Field recordings of P'urhépecha carried out by linguist William Shipley, archived at the Berkeley Language Center
• The P'urhépecha WEB page From Michoacán, México. (In Spanish)