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Language Lineage

Southern Uto-Aztecan

The Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico and the Sonoran borderlands (Tepiman, Taracahitan, Corachol and Aztecan), a grouping more securely established than its northern counterpart.

c. 2nd millennium BCE – presentNorthwestern and central Mexico, southern Arizona, and Central America
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. Across Two Countries Today
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points

01

Origins

The Southern Uto-Aztecan languages run down the western side of Mexico, from the O'odham of southern Arizona through the Yaqui, Mayo and Rarámuri of Sonora and Chihuahua and the Cora and Huichol of Nayarit, to the Nahuatl of central Mexico and the Pipil of El Salvador. Most of their speakers were maize farmers. If Jane Hill's farming hypothesis is right, this is close to the family's original homeland, and the northern languages are the ones that moved.

02

Across Two Countries Today

Southern Uto-Aztecan is by far the larger half of the family. In Mexico's 2020 census about 1.65 million people aged three and over said they spoke Nahuatl, which makes it the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the country. The other southern languages are much smaller: about 92,000 speakers of Rarámuri (Tarahumara), 44,000 of Southern Tepehuan, 39,000 of Mayo and 19,000 of Yaqui, with Northern Tepehuan, Guarijío and Pima Bajo in the thousands or fewer. Cora and Huichol, the Corachol languages of Nayarit and Jalisco, have about 33,000 and 60,000.

The 2003 General Law on the Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognised all of these as national languages of Mexico, alongside Spanish, and set up the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), which catalogues them and their many local varieties. In practice schooling and public life remain largely in Spanish, and most speakers are bilingual.

Two southern languages cross into the United States. O'odham is the largest Uto-Aztecan language north of the border, with most of its speakers in Arizona and only a few hundred in Sonora. Yaqui is spoken in the Pascua Yaqui communities of Arizona as well as in the Yaqui towns of Sonora. Pipil in El Salvador is the family's southernmost outpost.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. MexicoTepiman c. 55,000 · Taracahitan c. 150,000 · Corachol c. 93,000 · Aztecan c. 1.65 million
  2. United StatesTepiman c. 14,000 · Taracahitan A few hundred
  3. El SalvadorAztecan A few hundred at most

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 2nd millennium BCEContested

    Tepiman, Taracahitan and Aztecan diverge

    The southern languages separate into Tepiman in the Sonoran desert and Sierra Madre, Taracahitan in Sonora and Chihuahua, Corachol in Nayarit, and Aztecan further south. The internal order is disputed.

    Sources (1)
    • Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.