Highland Chatino is an
indigenous Mesoamerican language, one of the
Chatino family of the
Oto-Manguean languages
The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean () languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of th ...
. Dialects are rather diverse; neighboring dialects are about 80%
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
.
For grammatical details, see
Chatino languages
Chatino is a group of indigenous languages of Mesoamerica, indigenous Mesoamerican languages. These languages are a branch of the Zapotecan languages, Zapotecan family within the Oto-Manguean languages, Oto-Manguean language family. They are nati ...
, which includes examples from Yaitepec dialect.
Dialects
Eastern Chatino is spoken in 14 dialects in 17 communities that centered on the economic and cultural centers of
Santa Catarina Juquila
Santa Catarina Juquila is a town in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, and is the seat of the municipality also called Santa Catarina Juquila.
It is part of the Juquila District in the center of the Costa Region.
The name "Juquila" comes from "Xuhquilill ...
and
Santiago Yaitepec. ISO assigns these dialects to four groups with different language codes, but there is no objective evidence that the dialects grouped together are closest to each other. Dialects include:
:Lachao-Yolotepec
:Yaitepec
:Panixtlahuaca
:Quiahije
:Nopala
:
Zacatepec
Zacatepec Fútbol Club is a Mexican professional football club based in Zacatepec, Morelos, that competes in Liga Premier, the third level division of Mexican football.
Founded in 1948 as Club Social y Deportivo Zacatepec by workers of the Me ...
Phonology
Yaitepec Chatino
Yaitepec Chatino has the following phonemic consonants (Rasch 2002):
* Sounds only rarely occur.
* Other fricative sounds may also appear as a result of Spanish loanwords.
* is heard as a labio-dental when preceding consonants.
* Nasals when preceding consonants, are heard as syllabic .
* A bilabial nasal can also be written as orthographically. When is preceding a , it is pronounced as , elsewhere; it is heard as .
* can be heard as a bilabial fricative , when preceding sounds in word-initial position.
* assimilates as when preceding velar consonants .
* is heard as when preceding .
* is heard as voiceless when preceding a voiceless consonant.
An
epenthetic
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...
schwa sound is heard in between consonants.
Rasch (2002) reports ten distinct tones for Yaitepec Chatino: the four level tones of high , mid , low-mid , and low ; the two rising tones /˦˥/ and /˨˦/; and the three falling tones , , , as well as a more limited falling tone , found in a few lexical items and in a few completive forms of verbs.
Orthography
There are a variety of practical orthographies for Chatino, most based on Spanish orthography. Typically, = , = , and is spelled before back vowels and before front vowels.
In Quiahije Chatino, and perhaps more broadly across Highland Chatino, superscript capitals A–L are used as lexical tone letters: , with additional letters (superscript M and S) for
tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirec ...
. Not all of these are distinct in all dialects; rather, they mark pan-dialect tone-cognate sets.
In Yaitepec dialect, the pronunciations are:
: (3)
: (24)
: = (23)
: (14)
: (1)
: = (32)
: (12)
: (43)
: (2)
: (31)
References
* Rasch, Jeffrey Walker. 2002. The basic morpho-syntax of Yaitepec Chatino. Ph.D. thesis. Rice University.
External links
{{Oto-Manguean languages
Chatino languages