Tepekano

Tepecano ( Tepecano ) is a dead language belonging to a Uto-Aztec family. It was spoken by a small group of people in Askeltan (formerly Azkeltlan) of the state of Jalisco , a small village in the region of the Bolaños River in the far northern part of the state, to the east of the territory of the Huicholi . The language is most closely associated with the southern dialect of the Tepehua language, common in the state of Durango . Tepekano was a Mesoamerican language and demonstrated many of the features of its relationship to the Mesoamerican language union . As it is known so far, the last carrier of Tepecano was Lino de la Rosa (born September 22, 1895), which was still alive as of February 1980.

The study of Tepekano was first carried out by the American linguistic anthropologist John Alden Mason in Askeltan in the period 1911-1913. This work led to the publication of a monographic grammatical sketch (1916), as well as an article on native prayer for Tepano, which Mason collected from informants (1918). The study was later conducted by American linguist Dennis Holt in 1965 and 1979-1980, but none of his results have since been published.