Palantla Chinantec, also known as ''Chinanteco de San Pedro Tlatepuzco'', is a major
Chinantecan language of Mexico, spoken in
San Juan Palantla and a couple dozen neighboring towns in northern
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 ...
. The variety of San Mateo Yetla, known as
Valle Nacional Chinantec, has marginal mutual intelligibility.
A grammar and a dictionary have been published.
[Merrifield, William R. 1968. Palantla Chinantec grammar. Papeles de la Chinantla 5, Serie Científica 9.México: Museo Nacional de Antropología]
/ref>[Merrifield, William R. and Alfred E. Anderson. 2007. Diccionario Chinanteco de la diáspora del pueblo antiguo de San Pedro Tlatepuzco, Oaxaca. nd Edition Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves” 39. Mexico DF: Summer Linguistic Institute]
Phonology
Vowels
Close vowels /i u/ typically are articulated as more open ʊand are realized as more closed when represented by different tones. The close back vowel /ɯ/ tends to be articulated as when present in vowel clusters following /u/, or when preceding the /j/ consonant, and may also have a higher central sound. The mid back vowel /ɤ/ tends to be articulated as or when preceding a /w/ consonant. The low central vowel /a/ tends to be realized as following /i/ when one of the consonants /t l n/ occurs.
Each vowel can be nasalized as /ĩ ɯ̃ ũ ɛ̃ ɤ̃ õ ã/. The language is unusual in having, for some speakers, a three-way contrast between non-nasalized
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internationa ...
, lightly nasalized, and heavily nasalized vowels.
Stress tones may include either high or low /v́ v̀/ tones.
Consonants
References
{{Oto-Manguean languages
Chinantec languages