The Zoque () languages form a primary branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family indigenous to southern Mexico by the

Zoque people The Zoque are an indigenous people of Mexico. They speak variants of the Zoque languages. This group consists of 41,609 people, according to the 2000 census. They live mainly in the northerly sector of Chiapas state, principally in the '' municipio ...

. Central (Copainalá) Zoque-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station

XECOPA XECOPA-AM (''La Voz de los Vientos'' – "The Voice of the Winds") is an indigenous community radio station that broadcasts in Spanish, Zoque and Tzotzil from Copainalá, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is run by the Cultural Indigenist ...

, broadcasting from

Copainalá Copainalá is a town and one of the 119 Municipalities of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. It covers an area of 330.4 km². As of 2010, the municipality had a total population of 21,050, up from 19,298 as of 2005. As of 2010, the town of Copai ...

Chiapas Chiapas (; Tzotzil language, Tzotzil and Tzeltal language, 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 Political divisions of Mexico, ...

. There are over 100,000 speakers of Zoque languages. 74,000 people reported their language to be "Zoque" in a 2020 census, and an additional 36,000 reported their language to be

Sierra Popoluca Sierra Popoluca, also known as Soteapanec, Soteapan Zoque, or Highland Popoluca, is a developing Mixe-Zoquean language of the Zoquean branch. It has 35,050 speakers (INALI, 2009)INALI (2009)''Catálogo de las Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales: Vari ...

. Most of the remaining 8,400 "

Popoluca Popoluca is a Nahuatl term for various indigenous peoples of southeastern Veracruz and Oaxaca. Many of them (about 30,000

" speakers are presumably also Zoque.Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020
INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.

Languages

Zoquean languages fall in three groups: *;Gulf Zoquean (Veracruz Zoque) **

(Soteapan Zoque) **

Texistepec Popoluca Texistepec, commonly called either ''Texistepec Popoluca'' or ''Texistepec Zoque'', is a Mixe–Zoquean languages, Mixe–Zoquean language of the Zoque languages, Zoquean branch spoken by a hundred indigenous Popoluca people in and around the tow ...

** Ayapa Zoque (Tabasco Zoque) *;Oaxacan Zoque ** Chimalapa Zoque (dialects:

Santa María Chimalapa Santa María Chimalapa is a town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico. It is part of the Juchitán District in the west of the Istmo de Tehuantepec region. Environment The municipality has an area of 3572.31 km², much of it ...

, San Miguel Chimalapa) *;

Chiapas Zoque Chiapas Zoque is a dialect cluster of Zoquean languages indigenous to southern Mexico (Wichmann 1995). The three varieties with ISO codes, Francisco León (about 20,000 speakers in 1990), Copainalá (about 10,000), and Rayón (about 2,000), ar ...

** Copainalá Zoque ** Francisco León Zoque ** Rayón Zoque (a

dialect cluster A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

) Justeson and

Kaufman Kaufman or Kauffman may refer to: People * Kaufmann (surname) ''Includes Kaufman, Kauffman, Kauffmann'' Places * Kaufman, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Madison Count * Kaufman, Texas, a city in Kaufman County * Kaufman County, Texa ...

also classify Epi-Olmec as a Zoquean language, although this claim is disputed by Andrew Robinson.Robinson, Andrew (2008) ''Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts'', Thames & Hudson, .

Demographics

List of

ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for i ...

codes and demographic information of Mixean languages from ''

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 ...

'' (22nd edition):

References

* Wichmann, Søren, 1995. ''The Relationship Among the Mixe–Zoquean Languages of Mexico''. University of Utah Press. Salt Lake City.

Recordings

Sierra Popoluca Collection of Lynda Boudreault
at the

Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) is a digital repository housed in LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at the University of Texas at Austin. AILLA is a digital language archive dedicated to the digi ...

. Contains audio recordings and transcriptions of Zoque and Soteapan in a wide range of genres. Some files are restricted but may be available upon request.

Languages

Demographics

References

Recordings

See also