It is spoken by about 40,000 people, the Mexican Mayo or Yoreme Indians, who live in the South of the Mexican state of Sonora and in the North of the neighboring state of Sinaloa.

Under the General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, it is recognized as a "national language" along with 62 other indigenous languages and Spanish which all have the same validity in Mexico.

Programming in both Mayo and Yaqui is carried by the CDI's radio station XEETCH, broadcasting from Etchojoa, Sonora.

[4] Mayo is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

Nominal and Adjectival Predication in Yoreme/Mayo of Sonora and Sinaloa