José Manuel speaking Triqui

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CC BY-SA 4.0

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This video was recorded by Gary Quintanilla Ordoñez in Oaxaca, Mexico and features José Manuel Hernández speaking Triqui de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla. Also known as Chicahuaxtla Trique was spoken by around 4,060 people as of 2007. Chicahuatla Trique, as a variety of Trique, is a Mixtecan language belonging to the Amuzgo-Mixtecan group within the Otomanguean language family. Trique is primarily spoken in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Baja California. The two other major varieties of Trique are Triqui de Copala, spoken by around 15,000 people in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, and Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso, spoken by about 2,000 people in San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca. Like other Mixtecan languages, all Triqui dialects are tonal, and while the Copala variety is the most well documented tonal system, the Chicahuaxtla variety is the most complex with somewhere between 10 and 16 tones. In 2012, the Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California began training interpreters in medicine who were bilingual in Spanish and one of the Oaxacan languages (including Trique). Natividad Medical Foundation launched Indigenous Interpreting+ in March 2014, creating a community for medical interpretation for indigenous languages from Mexico, Central, and South America.

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