Mexico may be mostly a Spanish-speaking nation, but to paint it as such is an oversimplification. In reality, Mexico has the sixth-highest number of native languages within its borders, with more than 285 indigenous languages spoken across its lands. Most people in Mexico who speak an indigenous language also speak Spanish, which often endangers their native language, but you’ll also find many monolingual speakers of indigenous languages in the country. Guerrero Amuzgo is a great example of a vigorous indigenous language in Mexico.
More than 23,000 people in Mexico claim Guerrero Amuzgo as their native tongue, a whopping 10,000 of whom are monolingual in the indigenous language. This indicates limited Spanish influence in the communities where Guerrero Amuzgo is spoken, and indeed, native speakers of Spanish and Nahuatl living in the area often learn Guerrero Amuzgo as a second language. The language is used locally in business, education, religion, and media, but dedicated translation services can be hard to find. At TranslationServices.com, we’re happy to be able to provide tailored Guerrero Amuzgo translation services to the community.
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Discovering Amuzgo as spoken in Guerrero
Like many other languages or language varieties in Mexico, Guerrero Amuzgo derives its name from the location it’s spoken: the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Specifically, Guerrero Amuzgo is spoken in the southeastern corner of the state, with other varieties of Amuzgo spoken in the neighboring state of Oaxaca. These two states are home to a plethora of languages from the Oto–Manguean family, to which Guerrero Amuzgo also belongs.
Guerrero Amuzgo isn’t exactly a grammatically simple language. It’s classified as an active–stative language, which means its treatment of the subject in a sentence depends on how “active” a verb is perceived to be—for actions over which the subject has control, it’s treated as the subject, but for more passive verbs, the subject is treated like a patient instead. But it’s not just the syntax that’s tricky in Guerrero Amuzgo—the morphology is complex, too. Nouns are pluralized by adding a prefix, and if the original noun starts with the consonant /ts/, it’s dropped in the plural form. Animate nouns in Guerrero Amuzgo have a classifier prefix, which precedes the plural prefix. In its pronoun system, Guerrero Amuzgo makes a distinction between exclusive and inclusive first-person plural pronouns, meaning speakers can clearly distinguish whether the listener is included when they say “we.” This is common in Oto–Manguean languages but can complicate translation to and from English—which is why it’s so key to work with native-speaking translators like ours.
Count on us for tailored Guerrero Amuzgo translation services.
Whether you’re a native speaker of Guerrero Amuzgo who wants to spread a message to the rest of the world or someone from outside of the community looking to connect with this proud indigenous population, our Guerrero Amuzgo translation team has you covered. Our translators come from different regions, meaning they cover different types of Guerrero Amuzgo, and they work with translation projects both to and from the language, accommodating the translation needs of many different clients.
Whether you work in academia, business, literature, or any other domain, you can rely on our Guerrero Amuzgo translators for precise translations in your field. We’ll do our best to match the best-suited translator on our team to your specific needs, including by assigning a translator with specialized knowledge in your discipline or industry, if possible. Of course, we’re limited by the relatively small number of speakers, but we’ll always try our best to accommodate your requests.
You can experience our Guerrero Amuzgo translation services today if you contact us and place a translation order today!