Chatino is a group of
indigenous Mesoamerican languages. These languages are a branch of the
Zapotecan family within the
Oto-Manguean
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 languages, Ma ...
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...
. They are natively spoken by 45,000
Chatino people,
whose communities are located in the southern portion of the
Mexican state of
Oaxaca
Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...
.
The Chatinos have close cultural and linguistic ties with the
Zapotec people, whose
languages
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is ch ...
form the other branch of the Zapotecan language family. Chatinos call their language '. Chatino is recognized as a national language in Mexico.
Varieties
The Chatino languages are a group of three languages: Zenzontepec Chatino, spoken in about 10 communities in the district of Sola de Vega; Tataltepec Chatino, spoken in Tataltepec de Valdés; and a group of dialects collectively called the Eastern Chatino language, spoken in about 15–17 communities. Egland & Bartholomew (1983) conducted
mutual intelligibility
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 intelli ...
tests on the basis of which they concluded that four varieties of Chatino could be considered separate languages with respect to mutual intelligibility, with 80% intelligibility being needed for varieties to be considered part of the same language. (The same count resulted from a looser 70% criterion.) These were Tataltepec, Zacatepec, Panixtlahuaca, and the Highlands dialects, with Zenzontepec not tested but based on other studies believed to be completely unintelligible with the rest of the Chatino languages. The Highlands dialects fall into three groups, largely foreshadowing the divisions in ''Ethnologue''.
Campbell (2013), in a study based on shared innovations rather than mutual intelligibility, first divides Chatino into two groups: Zenzontepec and Coastal Chatino. He then divides Coastal Chatino into Tataltepec and Eastern Chatino. His Eastern Chatino contains all the other varieties, and he finds no evidence for subgrouping or further division based on shared innovations. This division mirrors the divisions reported by Boas (1913), based on speaker comments, that Chatino comprised three "dialects" with limited mutual intelligibility. Sullivant (2016) finds that Teojomulco is the most divergent variety.
*
Teojomulco
*Core Chatino
**
Zenzontepec
**Coastal Chatino
***
Tataltepec
***
Eastern Chatino (incl.
Zacatepec, Lachao-Yolotepec, Yaitepec, Panixtlahuaca, Quiahije and Nopala dialects)
Revitalization
The Mexican Secretariat of Education uses a four risk scale to measure endangered languages. The lowest is no immediate risk of disappearance, then medium risk, high risk, and lastly very high risk of disappearance. Currently, Chatino dialects vary from high risk of disappearance () to medium risk () to no immediate risk (, and ).
In an effort to help revitalize the Chatino language, a team of linguists and professors came together to make The Chatino Language Documentation Project. The team included
Emiliana Cruz, Hilaria Cruz, Eric Campbell, Justin McIntosh, Jeffrey Rasch, Ryan Sullivant, Stéphanie Villard, and Tony Woodbury. They began the Chatino Documentation Project in the summer of 2003 hoping to document and preserve the Chatino Language and its dialects. Using audio and video recordings they have been able to document the language during everyday life interactions. Up until 2003, Chatino was an oral language, with no written form. After beginning the Chatino Documentation project, the team began to create a written form of the Chatino Language. This transition has created more resources for revitalization projects. They hope the resources they have made will soon be used to create educational materials like books to help the Chatino people be able to read and write their language.
Orthography
The glottal stop is variously written as a 'q' (as here), a '7', IPA '
Ê”', or a
saltillo ''. The last can be confused with the tone letter '
I' in a non-serif font.
Tone letters in many varieties of Western Highlands Chatino are capital letters A through L. These have dedicated Unicode characters ().
Morphology
Transitive-Intransitive alternations
Chatino languages have some regular alternations between transitive and intransitive verbs. In general this change is shown by altering the first consonant of the root, as in the following examples from Tataltepec Chatino:
Causative alternations
There is also a morphological causative in Chatino, expressed by the causative prefix /x-/, /xa-/, /y/, or by the palatalization of the first consonant. The choice of prefix appears to be partially determined by the first consonant of the verb, though there are some irregular cases.
The prefix /x/ occurs before some roots that start with one of the following consonants: /c, qu, ty/ or with the vowels /u,a/, e.g.
The prefix /xa/ is put before certain roots that begin with /t/, e.g.
Palatalization occurs in some roots that begin with /t/, e.g.
: 'will give'
: 'will pay'
(Pride 1970: 95–96)
The alternations seen here are similar to the
causative alternation seen in the related
Zapotec languages.
Aspect
Pride (1965) reports eight aspects in Yaitepec Chatino.
#potential The majority of the verbs have no potential prefix, and its absence indicates this aspect.
#habitual This is indicated by the prefixes /n-, nd-, l-/ and /n-/ with palatalization of the first consonant of the root, e.g.:
#:' 'puts it in'
#::' 'puts the box on the table'
#:' 'graze'
#::' 'The people of this town graze'
#:' 'sow'
#::' 'The people of this town sow chile.'
#continuative Roots that take /n-/ or /nd-/ in the habitual have the same in the continuative plus palatalization; roots that have /n-/ plus palatalization in the habitual have /ndya-/, e.g.
#:' 'is putting the box on the table'
#:' 'The people of this town are grazing.'
#:' 'The people of this town are sowing chile.'
#completive This is indicated with the prefix /ngu-/, and verbs that start with /cu-, cui-, qui-/ change to /ngu-/ and /ngüi-/ in the completive:
#:' 'will put it'
#::' 'Someone put the box on the table'
#:' 'will teach it'
#::' 'The teacher taught it.'
#imperative This aspect is indicated by palatalization in the first consonant of the potential form of the verb. If the potential is already a palatalized consonant, the imperative is the same, e.g.:
#:' 'will slacken', ' 'let it loose!'
#:' 'will cut', ' 'cut it!'
#perfective This aspect is indicated by the particle /cua/, which is written as a separate word in Pride (1965).
#:' 'will end'
#:' 'is ended'
#:' 'is gone'
#passive potential /tya-/
#:' 'The door will be opened.'
#passive completive /ndya-/
#:' 'The door is open.'
Syntax
Chatino languages usually have VSO as their predominant order, as in the following example:
Use and media
Chatino-language programming is carried by the
CDI's radio station
XEJAM, based in
Santiago Jamiltepec,
Oaxaca
Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...
.
In 2012, the
Natividad Medical Center of
Salinas, California
Salinas (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Salt pan (geology), Salt Flats") is a city in the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Monterey County, California, Monterey County. With a population of 163,542 in the 2020 Census, Salinas is ...
had trained medical interpreters bilingual in Chatino as well as in Spanish; in March 2014, Natividad Medical Foundation launched Indigenous Interpreting+, "a community and medical interpreting business specializing in indigenous languages from Mexico and Central and South America," including Chatino,
Mixtec
The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are Indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica of Guerrero, Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerre ...
,
Trique, and
Zapotec.
See also
*
Chatino Sign Language, used in the
Western Highland Chatino villages of San Juan Quiahije and Cieneguilla
Bibliography
*Boas, Franz. 1913. "Notes on the Chatino language of Mexico," American Anthropologist, n.s., 15:78–86.
*Campbell, Eric. 2013. "The Internal Diversification and Subgrouping of Chatino," International Journal of American Linguistics 79:395–420.
*Cruz, Emiliana. 2004. The phonological patterns and orthography of San Juan Quiahije Chatino. ''University of Texas Masters Thesis. Austin''.
*Cruz, Emiliana and Anthony C Woodbury. 2014
Finding a way into a family of tone languages The story and methods of the Chatino Language Documentation Project.  Language Documentation & Conservation 8: 490—524.
*Cruz, Hilaria. 2015. ''Linguistic poetic and rhetoric of Eastern Chatino of San Juan Quiahije'' (Ph.D thesis, University of Texas at Austin).
*Egland, Steven, Doris Bartholomew & Saúl Cruz Ramos. 1978
La inteligibilidad interdialectal de las lenguas indÃgenas de México Resultado de algunos sondeos. Mexico City: Instituto LingüÃstico de Verano (1983 reprint).
*Pride, Kitty. 1965. Chatino syntax. SIL Publications in Linguistics #12.
*Pride, Leslie and Kitty. 1970. Vocabulario Chatino de Tataltepec. Serie de vocabularios indigenas mariano silva y aceves, no. 15. Summer Institute of Linguistics.
*Rasch, Jeffrey Walker. 2002. The basic morpho-syntax of Yaitepec Chatino. Ph.D. thesis. Rice University.
*Sullivant, J. Ryan. 2016. "Reintroducing Teojomulco Chatino," International Journal of American Linguistics 82:393–423.
*Villard S. Grammatical sketch of Zacatepec Chatino. Master's thesis, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas. 2008.
Notes
References
External links
at native-languages.org
Resources on the Chatino languages at the website of the Chatino Language Documentation Project
from the
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20160701174255/http://www.ailla.utexas.org/search/collection.html?c_id=157 Chatino Documentation of Hilaria Cruzat
AILLA.
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Oto-Manguean languages
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Verb–subject–object languages
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