Otomi language in the context of "Mexican Plateau"

Orizaba (Spanish: [oɾiˈsaβa] , Otomi: Mbo'ñu) is a city and municipality in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is located 20 km west of its sister city Córdoba, and is adjacent to Río Blanco and Ixtaczoquitlán, on Federal Highways 180 and 190. The city had a 2020 census population of 120,500 and is almost coextensive with its small municipality, with only a few small areas outside the city. The municipality, with an area of 27.97 km (10.799 sq mi), had a population of 123,182. While the metropolitan area of Orizaba has a population of 462,261 as 2020.

In 2015, Orizaba earned the designation of Pueblo Mágico from Mexico's federal government and celebrated the 10-year anniversary of this designation in October of 2025. The Pueblo Mágico program grants this designation to towns that offer visitors "cultural richness, historical relevance, cuisine, art crafts, and great hospitality."

Tetzcoco (Classical Nahuatl: Tetzco(h)co pronounced [tetsˈkoʔko], Otomi: Antamäwädehe) was a major Acolhua altepetl (city-state) in the central Mexican plateau region of Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic period of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican chronology. It was situated on the eastern bank of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, to the northeast of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. The site of pre-Columbian Tetzcoco is now subsumed by the modern Mexican municipio of Texcoco and its major settlement, the city formally known as Texcoco de Mora. It also lies within the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City.

Pre-Columbian Tetzcoco is most noted for its membership in the Aztec Triple Alliance. At the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, it was one of the largest and most prestigious cities in central Mexico, second only to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. A survey of Mesoamerican cities estimated that pre-conquest Tetzcoco had a population of 24,000+ and occupied an area of 450 hectares.

Santiago de Querétaro (Spanish pronunciation: [sanˈtjaɣo ðe keˈɾetaɾo]; Otomi: Dähnini Maxei), most commonly known as Querétaro, is the capital and largest city of the state of Querétaro, located in central Mexico. It is part of the macroregion of Bajío. It is 213 kilometers (132 mi) northwest of Mexico City, 63 kilometers (39 mi) southeast of San Miguel de Allende and 200 kilometers (120 mi) south of San Luis Potosí. It is also the seat of the municipality of Querétaro, divided into seven boroughs. In 1996, the historic center of Querétaro was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The city is a strong business and economic center and a vigorous service center that is experiencing an ongoing social and economic revitalization. All this has resulted in high levels of migration from other parts of Mexico.

Guanajuato (Spanish pronunciation: [gwanaˈxwato], Otomi: Ndänuë) is a municipality in central Mexico and the capital of the State of Guanajuato. It is part of the macroregion of the Bajío. It is located in a narrow valley, which makes its streets narrow and winding. Most are alleys that cars cannot pass through, and some are long sets of stairs up the mountainsides. Many of the city's thoroughfares are partially or fully underground. The historic center has numerous small plazas and colonial-era mansions, churches, and civil constructions built using pink or green sandstone. The city historic center and the adjacent mines were proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.

The growth of Guanajuato resulted from the abundantly available minerals in the mountains surrounding it. Its mines were among the most important during the European colonization of America (along with Zacatecas also in Mexico, Potosí in Bolivia and Ouro Preto in Brazil). One of the mines, La Valenciana, accounted for two-thirds of the world's silver production at the height of its production.

The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean (/ˌoʊtoʊˈmæŋɡiːən/ OH-to-MANG-ghee-ən) languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family.

The highest number of speakers of Oto-Manguean languages today are found in the state of Oaxaca where the two largest branches, the Zapotecan and Mixtecan languages, are spoken by almost 1.5 million people combined. In central Mexico, particularly in the states of Mexico, Hidalgo and Querétaro, the languages of the Oto-Pamean branch are spoken: the Otomi and the closely related Mazahua have over 500,000 speakers combined. In the linguistic world of Mesoamerica, the Otomanguean family stands out as the most diverse and extensively distributed.

San Luis Potosí, commonly referred to as San Luis, or by its initials SLP (Otomi: Nmiñ'u), is the capital and the most populous city of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí. It is the municipal seat of the surrounding municipality of San Luis Potosí. The city lies at an elevation of 1,864 metres (6,115 feet). It has an estimated population of 824,229 in the city proper and a population of approximately 1,221,526 in its metropolitan area, formed with the neighbour city of Soledad de Graciano Sánchez and other surrounding municipalities, which makes the metropolitan area of Greater San Luis Potosí the eleventh largest in Mexico.

The city is in the west-central part of the state of San Luis Potosí, at 22.16°N, 100.98°W. The municipality has an area of 1,443.14 square kilometres (557.20 square miles). It is part of the macroregion of Bajío.

Cholula (Spanish: [tʃoˈlula] ; Nahuatl languages: Cholōllān, Otomi: Mä'ragi) was an important city of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, dating back to at least the 2nd century BC, with settlement as a village going back at least some thousand years earlier. The site of Cholula is just west of the modern city of Puebla and served as a trading outpost. Its immense pyramid is the largest such structure in the Americas, and the largest pyramid structure by volume in the world, measuring 4.45 million cubic meters.

Cholula was one of the key religious centers of ancient Mexico.

Morelia (Spanish pronunciation: [moˈɾelja]; from 1545 to 1828 known as Valladolid; Otomi: Mänxuni) is the capital and most populous city of the Mexican state of Michoacán. Situated in the Guayangareo Valley in the north-central part of the state, it is the municipal seat of the municipality of Morelia. The main pre-Hispanic cultures here were the Purépecha and the Matlatzinca, but no major cities were founded in the valley during this time. The Spanish took control of the area in the 1520s. The Spanish under Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza founded a settlement here in 1541 with the name of Valladolid, which became rival to the nearby city of Pátzcuaro for dominance in Michoacán. In 1580, this rivalry ended in Valladolid's favor, and it became the capital of the viceregal province. After the Mexican War of Independence, the city was renamed Morelia in honor of José María Morelos, who hailed from the city. In 1991, the city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its well-preserved historical buildings and layout of the historic center. It is tradition to name people born on September 30 after the city.

The city population in 2020 was 743,275 inhabitants. The municipality had 849,053 inhabitants, and the Metropolitan Area, composed of Morelia, Tarímbaro, and Charo municipalities, had 988,704 inhabitants, according to the XIV Census.