Language
The Yaqui language belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. Yaqui speak a dialect of Cahita, a group of about 10 mutually-intelligible languages formerly spoken in much of the states of Sonora and Sinaloa. Most of the Cahitan languages are extinct. Only the Yaqui and Mayo still speak their language. About 15,000 Yaqui speakers live in Mexico and 1,000 in the United States, mostly Arizona.
The Yaqui call themselves Yoeme, the Yaqui word for person (yoemem or yo'emem meaning "people"). The Yaqui call their homeland Hiakim, from which some say the name "Yaqui" is derived. They may also describe themselves as Hiaki Nation or Pascua Hiaki, meaning "The Easter People", as most had converted to Catholicism under Jesuit influence in colonial Mexico. Many folk etymologies account for how the Yoeme came to be known as the "Yaqui"
Read more about this topic: Yaqui People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the “blocking” techniques, the outright prohibitions, the “no’s” and go heavy on “substitution” techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, & what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, & what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way;Mall this comes of Authorship.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)