Chiapas Zoque is a
dialect cluster
A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...
of
Zoquean languages
The Zoque () languages form a primary branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family indigenous to southern Mexico by the Zoque people.
Central (Copainalá) Zoque-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XECOPA, broadcasting f ...
indigenous to southern Mexico (Wichmann 1995). The three varieties with ISO codes,
Francisco León (about 20,000 speakers in 1990),
Copainalá
Copainalá is a town and municipality in the Mexican state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. It covers an area of 330.4 km2.
As of 2010, the municipality had a total population of 21,050, up from 19,298 as of 2005.
As of 2010, the town of Cop ...
(about 10,000), and
Rayón (about 2,000), are named after the towns they are spoken in, though residents of Francisco León were relocated after their town was buried in the eruption of
El Chichón Volcano in 1982. Francisco León and Copainalá are 83%
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 ...
according to ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
''.
Classification
The following classification of Chiapas Zoque dialects is from.
;Chiapas Zoque
*North: Francisco León, Ostuacán
*Northeast: Rayón, Pantepec, Tapilula, Tapalapa, Ocotepec, Chapultenango, Amatán, Tapijulapa, Oxolotán
*Central: Copainalá, Tecpatán, Coapilla
*South: Tuxtla Gutiérrez (Copoya), Berriozabal, San Fernando, Ocozocuautla
Another language, Jitotolteco, was announced in 2011.
[Zavala, Roberto. 2011. El jitotolteco: Una lengua zoqueana desconocida. Keynote Presentation, Conference on the Indigenous Languages of Latin America VI. October, 2011.] Jitotoltec is a recently discovered language belonging to the Zoquean branch of the Mixe-Zoquean language family spoken in Chiapas. It is not a dialect of Chiapas Zoque.
Current situation
There are about 15,000 speakers of Chiapas Zoque, although the number is rapidly decreasing (Faarlund 2012:3). The vast majority of speakers reside in Tapalapa, Ocotepec, and Pantepec. 80%–90% of the population in Tapalapa and Ocotepec (combined population: about 10,000) are speakers of Zoque (Faarlund 2012). 50% of the population in Pantepec (pop. 8,000) are Zoque speakers.
Before the publication of
Jan Terje Faarlund
Jan Terje Faarlund (born May 3, 1943) is a Norwegian linguist and professor emeritus of North Germanic languages at the University of Oslo. 's ''A Grammar of Chiapas Zoque'' (2012), the best documented Chiapas Zoque variety has been that of Copainalá due to the work of William Wonderly and other scholars. More detailed work has been done on Gulf Zoque and Oaxaca Zoque languages. Chiapas Zoque is an endangered language due to rapid language shift to Spanish among Zoque youths, although this is mitigated by the
Zoque people
The Zoque are an Indigenous people of Mexico, who are related to the Mixe. They speak various languages, also called Zoque, which has several branches and dialects.
The Zoque consists of 41,609 people, according to the 2000 census. They live ma ...
's attempts to preserve their culture and language (Faarlund 2012:3).
Phonology
The liquids /l, r/ mostly occur in Spanish loanwords.
Lexical comparison
The following table shows how numerals in two of the principal varieties of Chiapas Zoque compare to the numerals of proto-Zoque.
[Søren Wichmann, 2007, pp. 231-233]
References
* Faarlund, Jan Terje. 2012. ''A Grammar of Chiapas Zoque''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Wichmann, Søren, 1995. ''The Relationship Among the Mixe–Zoquean Languages of Mexico''. University of Utah Press. Salt Lake City.
External links
Copainalá Zoque
*
OLAC resources in and about the Copainalá Zoque language
Francisco León Zoque
*
OLAC resources in and about the Francisco León Zoque language
Rayón Zoque
*
OLAC resources in and about the Rayón Zoque language
{{Mixe-Zoque languages
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Mesoamerican languages
Zoque languages