Huarijio ( in Spanish; also spelled GuarijÃÂo, VarihÃÂo, and WarihÃÂo) is a Uto-Aztecan language of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in northwestern Mexico. It is spoken by around 2,100 Huarijio people, most of whom are monolinguals.
The language has two variants, known as Mountain Guarijio () and River Guarijio (). The mountain variant is spoken in the Chihuahuan municipalities of ChÃÂnipas, Moris, and Uruachi. The river variant is found in the Sonoran municipalities of ÃÂlamos and Quiriego.
Speakers of Mountain Guarijio self-identify as and call River Guarijio speakers or . River Guarijio speakers call themselves and call Mountain speakers tarahumaras. Contact between the two groups is scant and, although the linguistic differences between the two are slight, speakers report that mutual comprehension is difficult.
Guarijio is an agglutinative language, where words are morphologically complex to accomplish various grammatical purposes, i.e. several morphemes are strung together. The Guarijio language typologically has the tendency to show a final verb order. However, the word order in Guarijio is rather free.
The consonant inventory includes:
The vowel inventory includes: , , , , .
Programming in Guarijio is carried by the CDI's radio station XEETCH, broadcasting from Etchojoa, Sonora.