Oto-Manguean languages

The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean (/ˌoʊtoʊˈmæŋɡiːən/ OH-to-MANG-ghee-ən) languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family.

The highest number of speakers of Oto-Manguean languages today is in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where the two largest branches, the Zapotecan and the Mixtecan languages, are spoken by almost 1.5 million people combined. In central Mexico, particularly in the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, and Querétaro, the languages of the Oto-Pamean branch are spoken: the Otomi and the closely-related Mazahua have over 500,000 speakers combined. In the linguistic world of Mesoamerica, the Otomanguean family stands out as the most diverse and extensively distributed.

Some Oto-Manguean languages are moribund or highly endangered; for example, both Ixcatec and Matlatzinca have fewer than 250 speakers, most of whom are elderly. Other languages, particularly of the Manguean branch, which was spoken outside Mexico, have become extinct; they included the Chiapanec language, which was declared extinct after 1990. Others, such as Subtiaba, which was most closely related to Me'phaa (Tlapanec), have been extinct longer and are known only from early-20th-century descriptions.

The Oto-Manguean language family is the most diverse and most geographically-widespread language family that is represented in Mesoamerica. The internal diversity is comparable with that of Indo-European, and the Proto-Oto-Manguean language is estimated to have been spoken sometime before 2000 BCE. That means that at least for the past 4,000 years, Oto-Manguean languages have co-existed with the other languages of Mesoamerica and have developed so many traits in common with them that they are now seen as part of a Sprachbund, called the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.

However, Oto-Manguean also stands out from the other language families of Mesoamerica in several features. It is the only language family in North America, Mesoamerica, and Central America whose members are all tonal languages. It also stands out by having a much more analytic structure than other Mesoamerican languages. Another typical trait of Oto-Manguean is that its members almost all show VSO (verb–subject–object) basic order of clausal constituents.