Sochiapam ( ) is a
Chinantec language of
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. It is most similar to
Tlacoatzintepec Chinantec, with which it has 66% intelligibility (intelligibility in the reverse direction is 75%, presumably due to greater familiarity in that direction).
Sochiapam has seven
tones: high, mid, low, high falling, mid falling, mid rising, low rising.
Like other Chinantec and
Mazatec languages, Sochiapam Chinantec is noted for having
whistled speech (produced only by men, but understood by all). More unusually, it has also been reported to have a rare
marked absolutive case system.
Phonology
The following are sounds of Sochiapan Chinantec:
[Foris, David. (1973). Sochiapan Chinantec Syllable Structure. ''International Journal of American Linguistics, 39''(4), 232-235.]
:1. Parenthesised sounds are loans, allophones, or free variants
:2. /p, t, k/ tends to be slightly aspirated
:3. Alveolar and velar consonants are palatalised before the semivowel /j/
;Tones
References
* Foris, David Paul. 2000. ''A grammar of Sochiapam Chinantec''. ''Studies in Chinantec languages'' 6. Dallas: SIL International and UT Arlington.
External links
* A whistled conversation i
Sochiapan Chinantec (SIL-Mexico)* A documentary on Sochiapam Chinantec Whistled Speec
(Whistles in the Mist)Sochiápam Chinantec Whistled Speech Collection of Mark Sicoli
at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America
{{Oto-Manguean languages
Chinantec languages
Whistled languages