Tapachultec is a Mixean language spoken in

Chiapas Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises Municipalities of Chiapas, 124 municipalities and its capital and large ...

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 ...

, in the town of Tapachula. It is now

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

. Some of its vocabulary was suspected by Campbell to be loanwords from

Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...

, Mam or Kʼicheʼ.

History

In the 16th century, according to the testimony of Spanish friar Alonso Ponce, it was allegedly spoken along much of the Chiapas coast, including Tonalá, Pijijiapan, Mapastepec, Huixtla, Huehuetán, and Ayutla. Ponce did not give a name for this language, but described it as similar to Zoque, but possessing some

Yucatec Maya Yucatec Maya ( ; referred to by its speakers as or ) is a Mayan languages, Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including part of northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Fra ...

vocabulary. This has been equated with Tapachultec by

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeri ...

. At this time,

was used by the speakers of said language to communicate with Spanish authorities. Tapachultec seems to have been termed Vebetlateca by Palacio in 1576, which probably refers to Huehuetán given that it was the chief town of the region in that era. By the 17th century, the

Mam people The Mam are an Indigenous Maya people in the western highlands of Guatemala and in south-western Mexico who speak the Mam language. Most Mam (617,171) live in Guatemala, in the departments of Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Quetzaltenango. ...

had migrated to the area after the original population had declined due to epidemics, and the

Mam language Mam is a Mayan language spoken by about half a million Mam people in the Guatemalan departments of Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Retalhuleu, and the Mexican states of Campeche and Chiapas. Thousands more make up a Mam di ...

replaced Tapachultec in a few places, such as Ayutla.Campbell, Lyle, et al. The linguistics of Southeast Chiapas, Mexico. United States, New World Archaeological Foundation, Brigham Young University, 1988. Little is known about the language. However according to Otto Shuman, a researcher of linguistics at the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico (, UNAM) is a public university, public research university in Mexico. It has several campuses in Mexico City, and many others in various locations across Mexico, as well as a presence in nine countri ...

, the language was lost in the 1930s, during the reign of Chiapan Governor Victorico Grajales. Grajales banned the use of indigenous languages in order to attempt to create a stronger bond between Chiapas and the rest of Mexico. The presence of Mixe-Zoque languages in

Soconusco Soconusco is a region in the southwest corner of the state of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico along its border with Guatemala. It is a narrow strip of land wedged between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It is the sout ...

is speculated to go back to

Izapa Izapa is a very large pre-Columbian archaeological site located in the Mexican state of Chiapas; it is best known for its occupation during the Late Formative period. The site is situated on the Izapa River, a tributary of the Suchiate River, ...

and the

Mokaya Mokaya were pre- Olmec cultures of the Soconusco region in Mexico and parts of the Pacific coast of western Guatemala, an archaeological culture that developed a number of Mesoamerica’s earliest-known sedentary settlements. The Soconusco regio ...

culture. Tapachultec thus is possibly descended from languages spoken by those cultures, and may have been related to extinct varieties of the Pacific coast of Guatemala.

References

* * * * Mixean languages Mesoamerican languages Extinct languages of North America Languages extinct in the 1930s Chiapas {{Na-lang-stub