| Also Known As: Yaqui
Description:
Yaqui (Yoem Noki), or Yoeme, is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It is spoken by about 15,000 people, mostly of the border Yaqui tribe, in the region around the Mexican state of Sonora, and Arizona in the United States.
The remarks below use the orthography used by the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in the United States. There are also several orthographic systems used in Mexico differing slightly from this, mainly in using Spanish language values for several consonants and Spanish language spelling rules [e.g., "rohikte" would be written "rojicte"]. There are minor differences between Mexican and US dialects in inclusion or exclusion of sounds, most notably the US dialects tend to exclude an intervocalic "r" and final "k".
It is important to bear in mind that Yaqui, although it has been written for almost 500 years, is a language of an oral culture. The Yaqui language uses much subtlety in facial expression, gesture, and cultural context that cannot be economically conveyed in writing - and "Phonology" is quite inadequate a heading for the basic building block of Yaqui oral communication.
Yaqui vowels are pronounced very much like they are in standard Spanish:
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