Mochoʼ or Motozintleco is a moribund
Mayan language
Mayan most commonly refers to:
* Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Mayan languages, language family spoken ...
spoken by the
Motozintleco people of
Chiapas
Chiapas (; Tzotzil and Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 124 municipalities ...
, Mexico. It is part of the western branch of Mayan languages. Mochoʼ speakers refer to their own language as ''qatô:k'' (spelled "Cotoque" in some older sources), which means 'our language'.
Mochoʼ has a dialect called Tuzantec spoken in Tuzantan, Chiapas.
Mochoʼ is considered a
moribund language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langua ...
, with fewer than 30 currently recorded speakers, and no focus on passing down the language to children. Most speakers are bilingual in modern
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
, which is effectively displacing the Mochoʼ language in southern Mexico.
Demographics
Mocho is a moribund language with less than 30 fluent speakers as of 2011. All speakers are over the age of 70. As of 2009, there are fewer than 5 speakers of Tuzanteco, a closely related language variety.
The two dialects of Mochoʼ are spoken in two different villages: the Tuzantec dialect in
Tuzantán (a town near
Huixtla, Chiapas), and the Motozintlec dialect in
Motozintla de Mendoza. Historically, the two groups descend from a single population living in the region of
Belisario Dominguez
''Belisario'' (''Belisarius'') is a ''tragedia lirica'' (tragic opera) in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after Luigi Marchionni's adaptation of play, ''Belisarius'', first staged in Munich in 182 ...
about 500 years ago. According to local legend, the split and migration was caused by a plague of bats. Speakers have also been reported in the nearby towns of Tolimán, Buenos Aires, and Campana. Palosaari (2011) describes the Motozintlec dialect.
Phonology
Unlike most Mayan languages, Mochoʼ is
tonal. Stress is regular and at the last syllable.
*Short vowels have level or rising pitch.
*Long vowels have tonal contrast, with falling pitch found only in stressed syllables. Stressed plain long vowels have a rising pitch or a level high pitch.
In Mochoʼ, Proto-Mayan *j
and *h
have merged to /j/ in Motozintleco, while Tuzanteco preserves this distinction. Tuzanteco, however, has lost vowel length.
It is worth noting that pronunciation rules change compared to modern
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
, as ñ becomes an "ng" sound like in sing, and
glottalization
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
becomes important for many consonants.
Orthography
All Orthographical information below is sourced directly from th
Native Languages of the Americas website Included are the standard characters for each alphabetical sound, as well as replacement symbols used in varying scholarly texts.
References
Further reading
*Kaufman, T. (1969). ''Preliminary Mochoʼ vocabulary'' (Working Paper 5). Berkeley, CA: University of California.
*Campbell, L. (1988). ''The linguistics of southeast Chiapas, Mexico'' (Vol. 50). Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.
*Martin, L. (1998). Irrealis constructions in Mochoʼ (Mayan). ''Anthropological Linguistics'' (2), 198-213.
*Martin, L. (1987). The interdependence of language and culture in the bear story in Spanish and Mocho. ''Anthropological Linguistics'' (4), 533-548.
*England, N. C., & Maldonado, R. Z. (2013). ''Mayan languages''. Oxford University Press.
*Schuman, Otto. 1969. "El tuzanteco y su posición dentro de la familia mayense" en ''Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia''. México. pp. 139–148.
External links
Mayan Languages Collection of Laura Martin Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.
udio recordings, transcriptions, translations, and field notes on Mocho' and other Mayan languages. Free registration required.br>
MesoAmerican Languages Collection of Lyle Campbell Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.
udio recordings, transcriptions, and translations of several languages including Mocho'. Free registration required.*
*
Articles in class projects/Rutgers
Agglutinative languages
Tonal languages
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Mayan languages
Mesoamerican languages
Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas
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