Trique languages
The Triqui, 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. 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.
Internal classification
Ethnologue lists three major varieties:- Triqui de Copala spoken by 15,000 people in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca.
- Triqui de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla spoken by 6,000 people in, Oaxaca.
- Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso spoken by 2,000 people in San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca.
| Variant | Autonym | Localities |
| Triqui de San Juan Copala | xnánj nu̱ a | Oaxaca: Santiago Juxtlahuaca |
| Triqui de La Media | snáánj nì | Oaxaca: San Martín Itunyoso |
| Triqui de La Alta | nánj nïïn | Oaxaca: Putla Villa de Guerrero |
| Triqui de La Baja | tnanj niinj | 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, as well as in Spanish. 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.A Trique-speaking community has also settled in Albany, New York, as well as in northwestern Washington.
Phonology
The following phonology is based on Hollenbach and DiCanio :Vowels
Consonants
Itunyoso Triqui may tend to have ten geminated consonants; /mː, βː, tː, nː, lː, tːʃ, jː, ʈːʂ, kː, kːʷ/.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.Tones in Triqui languages are typically written with superscript numbers, so that chraa⁵ 'river' indicates the syllable chraa with the highest tone, while cha³na¹ 'woman' has the middle tone on the first syllable and the lowest 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. The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui has at least 10 tones but may have as many as 16.
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.Morphology
Triqui bound morphology is fairly limited. Verbs take a /k-/ prefix to show completive aspect:Amiie³² izo¹. 'You are speaking'.
C-amii³² zo¹. 'You spoke'.
The same /k-/ prefix plus a tonal change shows the potential aspect:
C-amii² zo¹. 'You will speak.'
The tonal changes associated with the potential aspect are complex but always involve lowering the tone of the root.
There are also complex phonological processes that are triggered by the presence of root-final clitic pronouns. These pronouns 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.