Lenguas indígenas y desplazamiento lingüístico: el caso de la lengua ombeayiüts (huave) de Oaxaca

In a multilingual and pluricultural country like Mexico, diverse phenomena or elements lead to the displacement of indigenous languages by the official language, Spanish. This work explores the linguistic situation surrounding one of the native languages spoken in Oaxaca, the Ombeayiuts language, better known as Huave. The study refers to data from a larger research project, “Teaching and Dialectal Variation of the Imbeayiuts Language,” carried out in the four communities where Huave is spoken: San Mateo, San Francisco, San Dionisio, and Santa Maria del Mar. It addresses trends of linguistic displacement that prevail in each of the four communities studied through the perceptions of the inhabitants in relation to generational transmission, spaces and spheres of use, and the importance of language proficiency.