Hñäñho: Santiago Mexquititlán Otomi

The language

Otomi, spoken in central Mexico, belongs to the Otomian branch of the Oto-Pamean subdivision of the Oto-Manguean language family. Due to widespread dialectal variation and mutual unintelligibility, Otomi is further divided into several regional varieties. Santiago Mexquititlán Otomi, called Hñäñho by its speakers (that is, the Ñäñho peoples), belongs to the Querétaro Otomi variety (Glottocode: quer1236; ISO 639-3: otq), also classified as Low Northwestern Otomi. 

Text from Mulík et al. (2021)

The community

Hñäñho is almost exclusively spoken by native speakers born in Santiago Mexquititlán, where the first Ñäñhos settled at the beginning of the Mexican colonial era. In terms of the degree of language endangerment, Hñäñho is considered vulnerable by UNESCO. While it may not be spoken by all Ñäñho generations, most children use the language in certain domains, such as at home. 

According to Mexico’s National Census conducted in 2010, as many as 92.8% of Otomi speakers are Otomi-Spanish bilinguals. This is a result of the fact that Spanish is Mexico’s dominant language, and even in Santiago Mexquititlán, where most inhabitants are native speakers of Hñäñho, the indigenous language is a minority language and Spanish is the majority language. 

Text from Mulík et al. (2021)

Hñäñho heritage speakers

Even though the term heritage speakers (HS) has not been traditionally used in Mexico to refer to Indigenous language speakers, Ñäñhos who reside in urban centers in Mexico seem to closely coincide with the definitions of HS. For instance, Hñäñho is the minority language used in urban Ñäñho homes, whereas Spanish is the majority language mostly learned either early or later in life.  A progressive gain of language competence in Spanish may eventually result in a shift in language dominance. The relevance of the Ñäñho culture and a strong family connection to the Hñäñho language is experienced even by those Ñäñhos who have little to no competence in the minority language. However, the typical heritage features of urban Ñäñhos seem to be inseparably linked to a set of sociocultural characteristics that are not commonly included in HS definitions elsewhere. For Mexican Indigenous HS, these may include living in a situation of constant social, cultural, and linguistic conflict that stems from the ongoing processes of miscegenation (mestizaje in Spanish), discrimination, and castilianization. 

Text from Mulík et al. (2022)