Huave language

Not to be confused with the Hoava language of the Solomon Islands.
Huave
Ombeayiiüts, Umbeyajts
Native toMexico
RegionOaxaca
EthnicityHuave people
Native speakers
20,000 (2020 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Eastern (San Dionisio and San Francisco del Mar)
  • Western (San Mateo and Santa Maria del Mar)
Language codes
ISO 639-3Variously:
hue – San Francisco del Mar
huv – San Mateo del Mar
hve – San Dionisio del Mar
hvv – Santa María del Mar, Oaxaca
Glottologhuav1256
ELPHuave
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Huave (also spelled Wabe) is a language isolate spoken by the indigenous Huave people on the Pacific coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The language is spoken in four villages on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the southeast of the state, by around 20,000 people (see table below).

Constenla Umaña (1994) suggests that Huave may have been the language of the Tacacho, a group that lived in a town called Yacacoyaua located in Maribio territory in sixteenth-century Nicaragua.[2]

  1. ^ Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020 INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.
  2. ^ The Archaeology of Greater Nicoya: Two Decades of Research in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. United States, University Press of Colorado, 2021.