Most people aren’t aware of the sheer number of languages that occupy our world—more than 7,000—and the linguistic diversity of the Americas are particularly overlooked. Yes, countries like the US and Canada attract a great number of immigrants who bring their native languages to their new lands, but the Americas already boast a plethora of indigenous languages that tend to be glossed over. Mexico alone has more than 285 indigenous languages still spoken today, one of which is Southern Tepehuán.
One of the reasons most people haven’t heard of Southern Tepehuán is that it only has around 45,000 native speakers—but in fact, this makes it one of the bigger indigenous languages in the Americas. While most Southern Tepehuán speakers are also proficient in Spanish, the dominant language in Mexico, and some also in Mexicanero, another indigenous language with around 1000 native speakers, the majority of the ethnic population does speak their ancestral language. But translation services for Southern Tepehuán are rare—and that’s what we at TranslationServices.com are trying to change with our new Southern Tepehuán translation services.
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Examining Southern Tepehuán in detail
Although most indigenous languages in Mexico today cluster around the southern areas of the nation, Southern Tepehúan is found in the north, specifically in the state of Durango. It’s split into two varieties, Southeastern Tepehuán and Southwestern Tepehuán, the former of which is spoken in the municipality of Mezquital and the latter in various communities in Mezquital and Pueblo Nuevo. Southern Tepehuán differentiates itself from Northern Tepehuán, spoken by around 10,000 people. Speakers call the collective language of Tepehuán O’otham, not to be confused with the separate O’odham language—however, they are related.
Southern Tepehuán comes from the Uto–Aztecan language family, making it related not only to O’odham but also languages like Hopi and Nahuatl. The basic word order in Southern Tepehuán is verb-object-subject, which, although relatively common in Mesoamerica, is found in only 3% of languages worldwide, and this differs from Northern Tepehuán, which has a default word order of subject-verb-object. However, Southern Tepehuán’s word order is quite flexible, as speakers can modify it to emphasize different constituents of a sentence. The language shows similarities to Spanish in that adjectives come after the noun, but demonstratives—words like “this” or “that”—come before. However, unlike Spanish, instead of prepositions, the language makes use of postpositions. Southern Tepehuán can seem daunting to native English speakers, and indeed it’s a challenge to translate—but that’s where our native-speaking Southern Tepehuán translators come in.
Providing top-notch Southern Tepehuán translation services to a diverse clientele
Our number one mission is to provide you access to high-quality, reliable Southern Tepehuán translation services, no matter what kind of project you’re working on. Since Southern Tepehuán is an endangered language with a limited number of speakers, we can’t promise everything, but we’ve built our team to be as robust as possible, with passionate, native-speaking translators representing both Southeastern Tepehuán and Southwestern Tepehuán. Driven and motivated, our translators are proud to work with texts both to and from Southern Tepehuán.
Our translation clients come from all walks of life and have different needs and considerations. We strive to cater to all the different specialties our clients may request, such as academic translation, business translation, and literary translation. Our team members can help researchers connect with native Southern Tepehuán speakers, business leaders looking to expand their influence in the Mexican state of Durango, Southern Tepehuán storytellers seeking a larger audience, and language activists aiming to strengthen Southern Tepehuán’s vitality by translating interesting content into the language. If you have any other special requests, simply let us know!
Our team is ready to deliver high-quality Southern Tepehuán translation services. Just place an order to get started!