Soyaltepec Mazatec is a
Mazatecan language spoken in the
Mexican state
The states of Mexico are first-level administrative territorial entities of the country of Mexico, which is officially named Mexico, United Mexican States. There are 32 federal entities in Mexico (31 states and the capital, Mexico City, as a sepa ...
of
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 ...
, notably in the towns of
Santa María Jacatepec
Santa María Jacatepec is a town and municipality located in the state of Oaxaca 11 km north of the Valle Nacional. "Jacatepec" comes from Nahuatl meaning 'on jackal hill.'
It is part of the Tuxtepec District of the Papaloapan Region
Th ...
and
San Miguel Soyaltepec
Temascal is a town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca which is the seat of the municipality of San Miguel Soyaltepec. It is part of the Tuxtepec District of the Papaloapan Region. The name ''Soyaltepec'' means "hill of palm trees" in Náhuatl but the ...
, and on
Soyaltepec Island.
Due to flooding from the construction of a dam, the Soyaltepec-speaking area has had an influx of speakers of other Mazatecan languages. Perhaps only 900 people, mostly monolingual, still speak the original variety of Soyaltepec.
See
Mazatecan languages
The Mazatecan languages are a group of closely related indigenous languages spoken by some 200,000 people in the area known as the Sierra Mazateca, which is in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, as well as in adjacent ...
for a detailed description of these languages.
Phonology
Vowels
The Soyaltepec Mazatec dialect contains five vowel sounds and nasals:
Consonants
Glottal-sonorant consonants: /hm, hn, hɲ, ʔm, ʔn, ʔɲ, ʔw, ʔj/
Nasal-obstruent consonants: /nt, ŋk, nt͡s, nt͡ʃ/
*
occurs only in borrowed words.
* /w/ in word-initial postiions may also be heard as a voiced fricative
* /ʃ, t͡ʃ/ may be optionally heard as retroflex
, t͡ʂbefore a back vowel.
* Glottal-sonorant consonants /hm, hn, hɲ/ are articulated as voiceless nasal sounds
̥, n̥, ɲ̊when in surface form.
* Nasal-obstruent articulated consonants may also be heard as voiced
d, ŋɡ, nd͡z, nd͡ʒ
References
{{Oto-Manguean languages
Mazatecan languages