Triqui

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 (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.

-        - 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, Oaxaca.

-          - Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso spoken by 2,000 people (1983 survey) in San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca.

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 chraa ⁵  'river' indicates the syllable chraa with the highest (5) tone, while cha ³na¹ '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. 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.

 

At Trápaga Asociados – Interpretation & Translation Agency, we work with all Mayan languages including Triqui.

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