The Zapotec / ˈ z æ p ə t ɛ k / languages are a group of around 50 closely related indigenous Mesoamerican languages that constitute a main branch of the Oto-Manguean language family and are spoken by the Zapotec people from the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico . A 2020 census reports nearly half a million speakers, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca . Zapotec-speaking communities are also found in the neighboring states of Puebla , Veracruz , and Guerrero . Labor migration has also brought a number of native Zapotec speakers to the United States , particularly in California and New Jersey . Most Zapotec-speaking communities are highly bilingual in Spanish.
26-461: Ocotlán Zapotec (San Antonio Ocotlán Zapotec, Ocotlán Oeste Zapotec, Zapoteco del Poniente de Ocotlán) is a Zapotec language of Oaxaca , Mexico . This Oto-Manguean languages -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Zapotec language The name of the language in Zapotec itself varies according to the geographical variant. In Juchitán (Isthmus) it
52-654: A compound). Zapotec and the related Chatino languages together form the Zapotecan subgroup of the Oto-Manguean language family . Zapotec languages (along with all Oto-Manguean languages) form part of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area , an area of linguistic convergence developed throughout millennia of interaction between the peoples of Mesoamerica. As a result, languages have acquired characteristics from genetically unrelated languages of
78-613: A nasal vowel, and in Igbo nasality is a feature of the syllable; when /f v s z ʃ ʒ/ occur in nasal syllables they are themselves nasalized. Until its extinction, Ubykh may have been the language with the most fricatives (29 not including /h/ ), some of which did not have dedicated symbols or diacritics in the IPA . This number actually outstrips the number of all consonants in English (which has 24 consonants). By contrast, approximately 8.7% of
104-723: A tense, unaspirated /s͈/ in Korean ; aspirated fricatives are also found in a few Sino-Tibetan languages , in some Oto-Manguean languages , in the Siouan language Ofo ( /sʰ/ and /fʰ/ ), and in the (central?) Chumash languages ( /sʰ/ and /ʃʰ/ ). The record may be Cone Tibetan , which has four contrastive aspirated fricatives: /sʰ/ /ɕʰ/ , /ʂʰ/ , and /xʰ/ . Phonemically nasalized fricatives are rare. Umbundu has /ṽ/ and Kwangali and Souletin Basque have /h̃/ . In Coatzospan Mixtec , [β̃, ð̃, s̃, ʃ̃] appear allophonically before
130-722: Is Diidxazá [didʒaˈza] , in Mitla it is Didxsaj [didʒˈsaʰ] , in Zoogocho it is Diža'xon [diʒaʔˈʐon] , in Coatec Zapotec it is Di'zhke' [diʔʒˈkeʔ] , in Miahuatec Zapotec it is Dí'zdéh [diʔzdæ] and in Santa Catarina Quioquitani it is Tiits Së [tiˀts sæ] , for example. The first part of these expressions has the meaning 'word' (perhaps slightly reduced as appropriate for part of
156-404: Is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f] ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German [x] (the final consonant of Bach ); or the side of the tongue against the molars , in the case of Welsh [ɬ] (appearing twice in
182-525: Is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists for non-sibilant fricatives. " Strident " could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also labiodental and uvular fricatives in the class. The airflow is not completely stopped in the production of fricative consonants. In other words, the airflow experiences friction . All sibilants are coronal , but may be dental , alveolar , postalveolar , or palatal ( retroflex ) within that range. However, at
208-509: Is scattered throughout the world, but is confined to nonsibilant fricatives with the exception of a couple of languages that have [ʒ] but lack [ʃ] . (Relatedly, several languages have the voiced affricate [ dʒ ] but lack [tʃ] , and vice versa.) The fricatives that occur most often without a voiceless counterpart are – in order of ratio of unpaired occurrences to total occurrences – [ʝ] , [β] , [ð] , [ʁ] and [ɣ] . Fricatives appear in waveforms as somewhat random noise caused by
234-613: Is shown in more detail below, again following Smith Stark (2007) Teococuilco de Marcos Pérez Zapotec ( Teococuilco de Marcos Pérez ) Aloapan Zapotec Macuiltianguis Zapotec Atepec Zapotec Ixtepeji Zapotec ( Santa Catarina Ixtepeji ) Lachatao Zapotec ( Santa Catarina Lachatao ) Ixtlán de Juárez Zapotec ( Ixtlán de Juárez ) Abejones Zapotec ( Abejones ) Northern Rincon Zapotec Southern Rincon Zapotec Yatee Zapotec Choapan Zapotec Cajonos Zapotec Zoogocho Zapotec Yatzachi Zapotec Yalálag Zapotec Tabaá Zapotec Fricative A fricative
260-590: Is the loss (or partial loss) of the vowel of the second syllable. The word for 'water' illustrates this fact. In conservative varieties, the vowel of the second syllable is retained: /nisa/ in Isthmus Zapotec and /inda/ in Sierra de Juárez Zapotec, for example. In innovative varieties, the vowel of the second syllable was lost: /nis/ in Amatlán Zapotec and Mitla Zapotec, for example. The loss of
286-574: The ll of Welsh , as in Lloyd , Llewelyn , and Machynlleth ( [maˈxənɬɛθ] , a town), as the unvoiced 'hl' and voiced 'dl' or 'dhl' in the several languages of Southern Africa (such as Xhosa and Zulu ), and in Mongolian. No language distinguishes fricatives from approximants at these places, so the same symbol is used for both. For the pharyngeal, approximants are more numerous than fricatives. A fricative realization may be specified by adding
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#1732798013383312-422: The uptack to the letters, [χ̝, ʁ̝, ħ̝, ʕ̝] . Likewise, the downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, [χ̞, ʁ̞, ħ̞, ʕ̞] . (The bilabial approximant and dental approximant do not have dedicated symbols either and are transcribed in a similar fashion: [β̞, ð̞] . However, the base letters are understood to specifically refer to the fricatives.) In many languages, such as English or Korean,
338-716: The Americas. Overall, voicing contrasts in fricatives are much rarer than in plosives, being found only in about a third of the world's languages as compared to 60 percent for plosive voicing contrasts. About 15 percent of the world's languages, however, have unpaired voiced fricatives , i.e. a voiced fricative without a voiceless counterpart. Two-thirds of these, or 10 percent of all languages, have unpaired voiced fricatives but no voicing contrast between any fricative pair. This phenomenon occurs because voiced fricatives have developed from lenition of plosives or fortition of approximants. This phenomenon of unpaired voiced fricatives
364-458: The Papabuco and Western Zapotec varieties. Certain characteristics serve to classify Zapotec varieties in ways that cross-cut the geographical divisions. One of these is the distinction between disyllabic roots and monosyllabic roots. Proto-Zapotec had disyllabic roots; the vowel of the second syllable could be any one of the inventory of vowels. One innovation shared by many varieties of Zapotec
390-495: The area. Although commonly described as a language, Zapotec is a fairly extensive, if close-knit, language family. The time depth is comparable to that of the Romance languages . Dialectal divergence between Zapotec-speaking communities is extensive and complicated. Many varieties of Zapotec are mutually unintelligible with one another. There are some radical jumps in intelligibility between geographically close communities, so
416-1316: The family that contains the most languages is Central Zapotec, which includes most of the Zapotec languages of the Valley of Oaxaca and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The following figure shows the classification suggested by Smith Stark (2007). Solteco Zapotec Lachixío Zapotec El Alto Zapotec Papabuco ( Elotepec Zapotec , Texmelucan Zapotec , Zaniza Zapotec ) Northern Zapotec → ( see below for details ) Cis-Yautepec Zapotec ( Mixtepec Zapotec , Quiegolani Zapotec , Lapaguía Zapotec , Xanaguía Zapotec , Xanica Zapotec , Tlacolulita Zapotec ) Coatec ( Coatecas Altas Zapotec , Miahuatlán Zapotec , Ozolotepec Zapotec ) Albarradas Zapotec Mitla Zapotec Antequera Zapotec Guevea de Humboldt Zapotec Petapa Zapotec Lachiguiri Zapotec Quiavicuzas Zapotec San Baltasar Chichicapan Zapotec [sic] San Pablo Güilá Zapotec & San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec Western Tlacolula Valley ( San Juan Guelavía Zapotec , San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec , Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec , Tlacolula de Matamoros Zapotec ) Zaachila Zapotec Isthmus Zapotec Ocotlán Zapotec Western Ejutla Zapotec Quiatoni Zapotec The Northern branch
442-452: The final vowel: /bekoʔ/ . Another characteristic that classifies Zapotec varieties is the existence or not of a contrast between alveopalatal fricatives and retroflex fricatives. Innovative varieties have introduced the contrast while conservative varieties have not. The most influential classification of Zapotec languages is due to Thomas Smith Stark, who proposed the following overall classification of Zapotec languages. The branch of
468-556: The glottal "fricatives" are unaccompanied phonation states of the glottis, without any accompanying manner , fricative or otherwise. They may be mistaken for real glottal constrictions in a number of languages, such as Finnish . Fricatives are very commonly voiced, though cross-linguistically voiced fricatives are not nearly as common as tenuis ("plain") fricatives. Other phonations are common in languages that have those phonations in their stop consonants. However, phonemically aspirated fricatives are rare. /s~sʰ/ contrasts with
494-639: The mountainous region of Oaxaca , in the Northern Sierra Madre mountain ranges; Southern Zapotec languages and are spoken in the mountainous region of Oaxaca, in the Southern Sierra Madre mountain ranges; Valley Zapotec languages are spoken in the Valley of Oaxaca, and Isthmus Zapotec languages are spoken in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec . However, Valley Zapotec and Isthmus Zapotec group together (as Central Zapotec), and this ignores
520-431: The name Llanelli ). This turbulent airflow is called frication . A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants . When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English [s] , [z] , [ʃ] , and [ʒ] are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: " Spirant "
546-643: The other languages without true fricatives do have [h] in their consonant inventory. Voicing contrasts in fricatives are largely confined to Europe, Africa, and Western Asia. Languages of South and East Asia, such as Mandarin Chinese , Korean , and the Austronesian languages , typically do not have such voiced fricatives as [z] and [v] , which are familiar to many European speakers. In some Dravidian languages they occur as allophones. These voiced fricatives are also relatively rare in indigenous languages of
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#1732798013383572-626: The postalveolar place of articulation, the tongue may take several shapes: domed, laminal , or apical , and each of these is given a separate symbol and a separate name. Prototypical retroflexes are subapical and palatal, but they are usually written with the same symbol as the apical postalveolars. The alveolars and dentals may also be either apical or laminal, but this difference is indicated with diacritics rather than with separate symbols. The IPA also has letters for epiglottal fricatives, with allophonic trilling, but these might be better analyzed as pharyngeal trills. The lateral fricative occurs as
598-451: The turbulent airflow, upon which a periodic pattern is overlaid if voiced. Fricatives produced in the front of the mouth tend to have energy concentration at higher frequencies than ones produced in the back. The centre of gravity ( CoG ), i.e. the average frequency in a spectrum weighted by the amplitude (also known as spectral mean ), may be used to determine the place of articulation of a fricative relative to that of another. Symbols to
624-517: The varieties do not form a dialect continuum in a strict sense, though neither are there clear-cut divisions between groups of varieties. As a result, the Mexican government officially recognizes sixty Zapotec languages. Zapotec languages fall into four broad geographic divisions: Zapoteco de la Sierra Norte (Northern Zapotec), Valley Zapotec, Zapoteco de la Sierra Sur (Southern Zapotec), and Isthmus Zapotec . Northern Zapotec languages are spoken in
650-421: The vowel /i/ often resulted in palatalized consonants, and the loss of /u/ often resulted in labialized consonants. Compare the words for 'dog' in conservative varieties (Isthmus /beʔkuʔ/ , Sierra de Juárez /bekuʔ/ ) and innovative varieties (Amatlán /mbak/ and Mitla /bæʔkʷ/ ). In this particular word Amatlán does not have a labialized consonant at the end, and the otherwise innovative variety Yatzachi keeps
676-429: The world's languages have no phonemic fricatives at all. This is a typical feature of Australian Aboriginal languages , where the few fricatives that exist result from changes to plosives or approximants , but also occurs in some indigenous languages of New Guinea and South America that have especially small numbers of consonants. However, whereas [h] is entirely unknown in indigenous Australian languages, most of
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