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P’urhépecha

P'urhépecha is spoken by over 100,000 people in the highlands of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, making it one of the country's largest indigenous languages spoken outside the diverse southern states.
Tariacuri - Purhepecha
A P'urhepecha in (New) York - P'urhepecha
The Future of Purhepecha - Purhepecha (P'urhépecha)
The Story of a P'urhépecha - Purhepecha
A Purhepecha in NY: one year later
P'urhepecha Pear Film

P’urhépecha is spoken by over 100,000 people in the highlands of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, making it one of the country’s largest indigenous languages spoken outside the diverse southern states. A number of dialects have been identified, and Ethnologue distinguishes two separate languages (P’urhépecha and Western Highland P’urhépecha), but there is considerable intelligibility between almost all varieties of the languages. Michoacán remains a distinct homeland for the language, but P’urhépecha speakers have been migrating far and wide recently in search of economic opportunity, recently arriving in significant numbers in California, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

Affiliation

P’urhépecha is usually identified as a language isolate, without any established genealogical relationship to any other language in the world. There have been attempts to link P’urhépecha with the Chibchan language family of lower Central America and Colombia as well as Quechua, Zuñi (a language isolate of the American Southwest), and other languages—so far these remain conjectures.

Endangerment

The vast majority of P’urhépecha speakers are now fluent in Spanish, and there are now some members of the P’urhépecha community who have switched to Spanish and lack proficiency in the language. There was no P’urhépecha writing system or textual tradition before the Spanish Conquest, but today there is a script based on the Latin alphabet in limited use. XEPUR-AM (La Voz de los Purépechas; English: The Voice of the Purépechas) is a radio station in Michoacán that broadcasts regularly in Spanish and P’urhépecha.