Oto-Manguean languages in the context of "Relational noun"

Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, many from a single inscription. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs, the Zapotec script, and the Isthmian script, all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved, partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.

After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, Spanish colonial authorities and Catholic Church missionaries aimed to purge indigenous culture, religion and traditional institutions, which included the destruction of texts of Mesoamerican and pre-Columbian origin. However, some Mesoamerican texts were spared, particularly from the Yucatán of southern Mexico, recording the languages of the area. These surviving texts give anthropologists and historians valuable insight into the origins of Mesoamerican languages, culture, religion, and government. Languages recorded in Mesoamerican writing include Classical Maya, Classical Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec, and various other languages, particularly of the Oto-Manguean and Uto-Aztecan families.

The Zapotec /ˈzæpətɛk/ ZAP-ə-tek languages are a group of around 50 closely related indigenous Mesoamerican languages that constitute a main branch of the Oto-Manguean language family and are spoken by the Zapotec people from the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico. A 2020 census reports nearly half a million speakers, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca. Zapotec-speaking communities are also found in the neighboring states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Guerrero. Labor migration has also brought a number of native Zapotec speakers to the United States, particularly in California and New Jersey. Most Zapotec-speaking communities are highly bilingual in Spanish.

The Otomi (/ˌoʊtəˈmiː/; Spanish: Otomí [otoˈmi]) are an Indigenous people of Mexico inhabiting the central Mexican Plateau (Altiplano) region.

The Otomi are an Indigenous people of the Americas who inhabit a discontinuous territory in central Mexico. They are linguistically related to the rest of the Otomanguean-speaking peoples, whose ancestors have occupied the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt for several thousand years. Currently, the Otomi inhabit a fragmented territory ranging from northern Guanajuato, to eastern Michoacán and southeastern Tlaxcala. However, most of them are concentrated in the states of Hidalgo, Mexico and Querétaro. According to the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico, the Otomi ethnic group totaled 667,038 people in the Mexican Republic in 2015, making them the fifth largest Indigenous people in the country. Of these, only a little more than half spoke Otomi. In this regard, the Otomi language presents a high degree of internal diversification, so that speakers of one variety often have difficulty understanding those who speak another language. Hence, the names by which the Otomi call themselves are numerous: ñätho (Toluca Valley), hñähñu (Mezquital Valley), ñäñho (Santiago Mexquititlán in southern Querétaro) and ñ'yühü (Northern highlands of Puebla, Pahuatlán) are some of the names the Otomi use to refer to themselves in their own languages, although it is common that, when speaking in Spanish, they use the native Otomi, originating from the Nahuatl.

The Mixtec (/ˈmiːstɛk, ˈmiːʃtɛk/) languages belong to the Mixtecan group of the Oto-Manguean language family. Mixtec is spoken in Mexico and is closely related to Trique and Cuicatec. The varieties of Mixtec are spoken by over half a million people. Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this complex dialect continuum poses challenges at the level of linguistic theory. Depending on the criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages, there may be as few as a dozen or as many as fifty-three Mixtec languages.

Popoluca is a Nahuatl term for various indigenous peoples of southeastern Veracruz and Oaxaca. Many of them (about 30,000) speak languages of the Mixe–Zoque family. Others speak languages of the unrelated Oto-Manguean family, in which case the name in English and Spanish is generally spelled Popoloca.

The Popolocan languages are a subfamily of the Oto-Manguean language family of Mexico, spoken mainly in the state of Puebla.

The Popolocan languages should not be confused with the languages called Popoluca spoken in the state of Veracruz, which belong to the unrelated Mixe–Zoquean language family. The term comes from the Nahuatl language and means to speak unintelligibly, which is why Nahuatl speakers called several different unrelated languages "Popolōca". The Nahuatl term was later adopted by the Spanish. The convention now is that the Oto-Manguean languages are referred to as "Popoloca" and the Mixe–Zoquean languages are referred to as "Popoluca", although the latter term is falling into disuse.

Otomi (/ˌoʊtəˈmiː/ OH-tə-MEE; Spanish: Otomí [otoˈmi]) is an Oto-Pamean language spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the central altiplano region of Mexico. Otomi consists of several closely related languages, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The word Hñähñu [hɲɑ̃hɲṹ] has been proposed as an endonym, but since it represents the usage of a single dialect, it has not gained wide currency. Linguists have classified the modern dialects into three dialect areas: the Northwestern dialects are spoken in Querétaro, Hidalgo and Guanajuato; the Southwestern dialects are spoken in the State of Mexico; and the Eastern dialects are spoken in the highlands of Veracruz, Puebla, and eastern Hidalgo and villages in Tlaxcala and Mexico states.

Like all other Oto-Manguean languages, Otomi is a tonal language, and most varieties distinguish three tones. Nouns are marked only for possessor; the plural number is marked with a definite article and a verbal suffix, and some dialects keep dual number marking. There is no case marking. Verb morphology is either fusional or agglutinating depending on the analysis. In verb inflection, infixation, consonant mutation, and apocope are prominent processes. The number of irregular verbs is large. A class of morphemes cross-references the grammatical subject in a sentence. These morphemes can be analysed as either proclitics or prefixes and mark tense, aspect and mood. Verbs are inflected for either direct object or dative object (but not for both simultaneously) by suffixes. Grammar also distinguishes between inclusive 'we' and exclusive 'we'.