Huarijio language

Huarijio (Huarijío in Spanish; also spelled Guarijío, Varihío, and Warihío) is a Uto-Aztecan language of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in northwestern Mexico. It is spoken by around 2,100 Huarijio people, most of whom are monolinguals.

Distribution[]

The language has two variants, known as Mountain Guarijio (guarijío de la sierra) and River Guarijio (guarijío del río). The mountain variant is chiefly spoken in the eastern portion of the municipality of Uruachi (with a small number of speakers in Moris to the north and Chínipas to the south) and around , in the state of Chihuahua. The river variant is found to the southwest: most speakers inhabit the Río Mayo basin to the north of San Bernardo in the Sonoran municipality of Álamos.

Speakers of Mountain Guarijio self-identify as warihó and call River Guarijio speakers macurawe or makulái. River Guarijio speakers call themselves warihío and call Mountain speakers "tarahumaras". Contact between the two groups is scant and, although the linguistic differences between the two are slight, speakers report that mutual comprehension is difficult.

Morphology[]

Guarijio is an agglutinative language, where words are morphologically complex to accomplish various grammatical purposes, i.e. several morphemes are strung together. The Guarijio language typologically has the tendency to show a final verb order. However, the word order in Guarijio is rather free (Miller, 1996).

Phonology[]

The consonant inventory includes:^[2]

The vowel inventory includes: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/.

Media[]

Programming in Guarijio is carried by the CDI's radio station XEETCH, broadcasting from Etchojoa, Sonora.

References[]

• Felix Armendariz, Rolando Gpe (2005). A grammar of River Warihio (Doctor of Philosophy thesis). Rice University. hdl:1911/18900.

External links[]

Huarijio language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Lengua Guarijio (In Spanish)