The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of 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 branch of the ...

family. Though traditionally considered a single language, ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') 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 comprehensiv ...

'' lists 14 partially

mutually unintelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

varieties of Chinantec.Palancar, Enrique L. (2014). Revisiting the Complexity of the Chinantecan Verb Conjugation Classes. In Jean-Léo Léonard & Alain Kihm (Eds.), ''Patterns in Mesoamerican Morphology'' (pp. 77–102). HAL 01100738 The languages are spoken by the indigenous Chinantec people who live in

Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...

and

Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán,

Ixtlán de Juárez Ixtlán de Juárez is a town and municipality in the Mexican state of Oaxaca about 65 km north of the city of Oaxaca on Federal Highway 175 towards Veracruz. It is part of the Ixtlán District in the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca region. Adminis ...

, Tuxtepec and Choapan, and in

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...

, New York.

Internal classification

Egland and Bartholomew (1978) established fourteen Chinantec languages on the basis of 80% mutual intelligibility. ''

'' found that one that had not been adequately compared (Tlaltepusco) was not distinct, but split another (Lalana from Tepinapa). At a looser criterion of 70% intelligibility, Lalana–Tepinapa, Quiotepec–Comaltepec, Palantla–Valle Nacional, and geographically distant Chiltepec–Tlacoatzintepec would be languages, reducing the count to ten. Lealao Chinantec (Latani) is the most divergent.

Phonology

Chinantecan languages have

ballistic syllable Ballistic syllables are a phonemic distinction in Otomanguean languages: Chinantecan languages, Chinantec and Amuzgo language, Amuzgo. They have been described as characterized with increased sub-glottis, glottal pressure (Mugele 1982) or larynx, l ...

s, apparently a kind of

phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...

. All Chinantec languages are tonal. Some, such as

Usila Chinantec Usila is a Chinantec language of Mexico. It is most similar to Tlacoatzintepec Chinantec, with which it has 50% intelligibility (intelligibility in the reverse direction is 85%, presumably due to greater familiarity in that direction). Like oth ...

and Ojitlán Chinantec, have five register tones (in addition to contour tones), with the extreme tones deriving historically from ballistic syllables.

Grammar

Grammars are published for Sochiapam Chinantec, and a grammar and a dictionary of Palantla (Tlatepuzco) Chinantec.Merrifield, William R. and Alfred E. Anderson. 2007
''Diccionario Chinanteco de la diáspora del pueblo antiguo de San Pedro Tlatepuzco, Oaxaca'' (2nd Edition)
Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves” 39. Mexico DF: Summer Linguistic Institute. Example phrase: :''ca¹-dsén¹=jni chi³ chieh³'' :‘I pulled out the hen (from the box). The parts of this sentence are: ''ca¹'' a

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...

which marks the

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...

, ''dsén¹'' which is the

verb stem In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question. In Athabaskan linguistics, for example, a verb stem ...

meaning "to pull out an animate object", the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

-''jni'' referring to the first person, the

noun classifier A classifier (abbreviated or ) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent. It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an importan ...

''chi³'' and the

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

''chieh³'' meaning chicken.

Whistled speech

The Chinantec people have practiced

whistled speech Whistled languages use whistling to emulate speech and facilitate communication. A whistled language is a system of whistled communication which allows fluent whistlers to transmit and comprehend a potentially unlimited number of messages over l ...

since the

pre-Columbian era In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the Migration to the New World, original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization of the Americas, European colonization, w ...

. The rhythm and pitch of normal Chinantec speech allow speakers of the language to have entire conversations only by whistling. The sound of whistling carries better than shouting across the canyons of mountainous Oaxaca. It enables messages to be exchanged over a distance of up to . Whistled speech is typically only used by Chinantec men, although women also understand it. Use of the whistled language is declining, as modern technology such as

walkie-talkie A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver (HT), is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, ...

s and

loudspeakers A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an Acoustical engineering#Electroacoustics, electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often ...

have made long-distance communication easier.

Media

Chinantec-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations

XEOJN XEOJN-AM (''La Voz de la Chinantla'' – "The Voice of la Chinantla") is an indigenous community radio station that broadcasts in Spanish, Mazatec, Cuicatec and Chinantec from San Lucas Ojitlán, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is run by ...

, broadcasting from

San Lucas Ojitlán San Lucas Ojitlán is a town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico. The municipality covers an area of 595.81 km². It is part of the Tuxtepec District of the Papaloapan Region The Cuenca del Papaloapan Region is in the north o ...

, and

XEGLO XEGLO-AM/XHGJO-FM (''La Voz de la Sierra Juárez'' – "The Voice of the Sierra Juárez") is an indigenous community radio station that broadcasts in Zapotec, Mixe and Chinantec from Guelatao de Juárez in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It ...

, broadcasting from

Guelatao de Juárez San Pablo Guelatao is a town and the seat of the Municipality of Guelatao de Juárez, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is part of the Ixtlán District in the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca region. Guelatao, as it is often called, is in the foothills ...

. File:Doctr crist leng chinanteca persignum.pdf, Example of Chinantec in written form from the

Biblioteca Cervantina The Cervantine Library es, link=no, Biblioteca Cervantina (also known as the Library Miguel de Cervantes) is a library located on the main campus of Tecnológico de Monterrey, in the city of Monterrey, N. L, México.The library has about 130,000 ...

File:Doctr crist leng chinanteca (1).pdf, Example of Chinantec in written form from the

References

External links

* The Chinantec language famil
(SIL-Mexico)
* Feist, Timothy & Enrique L. Palancar. (2015)
''Oto-Manguean Inflectional Class Database: Tlatepuzco Chinantec''
University of Surrey. doi:10.15126/SMG.28/1.01 {{Authority control Indigenous peoples in Mexico