The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean 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 comprehensi ...

'' 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 ...

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

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and

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Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán, Ixtlán de Juárez, Tuxtepec and Choapan, and in

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, 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 syllables, 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 defin ...

. All Chinantec languages are tonal. Some, such as Usila Chinantec 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 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''. Particul ...

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 ha ...

, ''dsén¹'' which is the 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 carr ...

-''jni'' referring to the first person, the noun classifier ''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, ...

''chieh³'' meaning chicken.

Whistled speech

The Chinantec people have practiced whistled speech since the

pre-Columbian era In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

. 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-talkies and loudspeakers have made long-distance communication easier.

Media

Chinantec-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEOJN, broadcasting from San Lucas Ojitlán,

, and XEGLO, broadcasting from Guelatao de Juárez,

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

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