Trique languages

The Triqui (/ˈtriːki/), or Trique, languages are a family of Oto-Manguean spoken by 30,000 Trique people of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and the state of Baja California in 2007 (due to recent population movements). They are also spoken by 5,000 immigrants to the United States. Triqui languages belong to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and Cuicatec.^[2]

Triqui
Geographic distribution	Mexico
Ethnicity	Trique
Native speakers	30,000 in Mexico (2020 census)[1]
Linguistic classification	Oto-Manguean Mixtecan Triqui
Subdivisions	Copala Triqui Chicahuaxtla Triqui San Martín Itunyoso Triqui
Language codes
Glottolog	triq1251
ELP	Triqui
Distribution of Triqui languages

Internal classification

Ethnologue lists three major varieties:

• Triqui de Copala spoken by 15,000 people (1990 census) in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca (and recently due to migrations in the San Quintín valley, Baja California).
• Triqui de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla spoken by 6,000 people in San Andrés Chicahuaxtla [es], Oaxaca.
• Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso spoken by 2,000 people (1983 survey) in San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca.

Mexico's federal agency for its indigenous languages, Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI), identifies four varieties of Trique in its Catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales published in early 2008.^[3] The variants listed by INALI are:

Varieties of Triqui (trique), per INALI^[4]

Variant (name in Spanish)	Autonym	Localities
Triqui de San Juan Copala	xnánj nu̱ꞌ a	Oaxaca: Santiago Juxtlahuaca
Triqui de La Media	snáꞌánj nìꞌ	Oaxaca: San Martín Itunyoso
Triqui de La Alta	nánj nïꞌïn	Oaxaca: Putla Villa de Guerrero
Triqui de La Baja	tnanj niꞌinj	Oaxaca: Constancia del Rosario, Putla Villa de Guerrero

Use

As of 2012, the Natividad Medical Center of Salinas, California, was training medical interpreters bilingual in one of the Oaxacan languages (including Trique, Mixteco, or Zapotec), as well as in Spanish.^[5] In March 2014, Natividad Medical Foundation launched Indigenous Interpreting+, "a community and medical interpreting business specializing in indigenous languages from Mexico and Central and South America," including Trique, Mixteco, Zapotec, and Chatino.^[6]

A Trique-speaking community has also settled in Albany, New York,^[7][8] as well as in northwestern Washington.

Phonology

The following phonology is based on Hollenbach (1984) and DiCanio (2008):

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i ĩ	u ũ
Mid	e ẽ	o õ
Open	a ã

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
							plain	labial
Plosive	voiceless	p	t				k	kʷ	ʔ
	voiced	b	d				ɡ	ɡʷ
	prenasal	(ᵐb)	ⁿd				ᵑɡ	ᵑɡʷ
Affricate			t͡s	t͡ʃ	ʈ͡ʂ	c͡ɲ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʃ	ʂ				h
	voiced	β	z	ʒ	ʐ
Nasal		m	n
Rhotic			r
Lateral			l
Glide						j		w

Itunyoso Triqui may tend to have ten geminated consonants; /mː, βː, tː, nː, lː, tːʃ, jː, ʈːʂ, kː, kːʷ/.^[9][10]

Tones

All varieties of Triqui are tonal and have complex phonologies. The tone system of Copala Triqui is the best described and has eight tones.^[10]

Tones in Triqui languages are typically written with superscript numbers,^[10] so that chraa⁵ 'river' indicates the syllable chraa with the highest (5) tone, while cha³na¹ 'woman' has the middle (3) tone on the first syllable and the lowest (1) tone on the second syllable.

Of the Triqui languages, the Copala dialect has undergone the most vowel loss, with many non-final syllables losing their vowels. The result, as in many other Oto-Manguean languages, is a complex set of consonant clusters. So, for instance, the word si⁵kuj⁵ 'cow' in Itunyoso Triqui corresponds to skuj⁵ in Copala Triqui.

The tonal phonology of other Triqui languages is more complex than Copala Triqui. The tone system of Itunyoso Triqui has nine tones.^[9] The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui has at least 10 tones ^[11] but may have as many as 16.^[12]

Orthography

Triqui has been written in a number of different orthographies, depending on the intended audience. Linguists typically write the language with all tones fully marked and all phonemes represented. However, in works intended for native speakers of Triqui, a practical orthography is often used with a somewhat simpler representation.^[13]

Morphology

Triqui bound morphology is fairly limited. Verbs take a /k-/ prefix (spelled c- or qu-) to show completive aspect:

Aꞌmiie³² izoꞌ¹. 'You are speaking'.

C-aꞌmii³² zoꞌ¹. 'You spoke'.

The same /k-/ prefix plus a tonal change shows the potential aspect:

C-aꞌmii² zoꞌ¹. 'You will speak.'

The tonal changes associated with the potential aspect are complex but always involve lowering the tone of the root (Hollenbach 1984).

There are also complex phonological processes that are triggered by the presence of root-final clitic pronouns. These pronouns (especially the first- and the second-person singular) may change the shape of the stem or alter its tone.

As a language subfamily, Triqui is interesting for having a large tonal inventory, complex morphophonology, and interesting syntactic phenomena, much of which has yet to be described.

Media

Triqui-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEQIN-AM, based in San Quintín, Baja California, and XETLA, based in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca.