Zapotec

Introduction

Mayan Temple

The Zapotecan branch is one of the largest in the Oto-Manguean family in terms of the number of speakers. It also has more distinct local variants than any other branch of the Oto-Manguean Zapotec Map family. It is composed of two subfamilies: Chatino and Zapotec. Chatino has several variants, all spoken in Oaxaca. Zapotec is a large sub-family, (possibly with as many as forty mutually unintelligible variants), in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Linguists have done research on some, but not all varieties of these languages.

According to Ethnologue, there are 58 varieties of Zapotec spoken in Mexico. The bulk of Zapotec speakers live in the state of Oaxaca, the site of one of the major Mesoamerican civilizations in Pre-Columbian times. These 58 varieties share some basic phonological and structural similarities, there there are also so many differences between/among them, that forty of them are considered to be mutually unintelligible.

There are approximately 423,000 speakers of Zapotec. While most of them are proficient in Spanish, there are still many who speak only their native Zapotec. In some areas, Zapotec is used orally in local administration, commerce, literature, and religious services (e.g., Zapotec Amatlan). In other areas, the language is on the brink of extinction (e.g., Zapotec Asunción Mixtepec). Many people speak more than one variety of Zapotec.

Structure

Sound System

Family

Children

Sound system
The sound systems of Zapotec languages share some common features. The sound system of San Augustin Mixtepec Zapotec (SAMZ) will be described below to exemplify some of the typical features of Zapotec languages.

Vowels
SAMZ has six vowels, /i/, /e/, /ë, /a/, /o/, /u/. These vowels can appear in three shapes:

Plain vowels lack glottalization.
Rearticulated vowels are cut short by a glottal stop which is followed by an echo of the same vowel.
Checked vowels are followed by a glottal stop.

Consonants
Like other Zapotec languages, SAMZ has a large inventory of consonants.

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Retroflex	Velar	Labiovelar	Glottal
Voiceless stops	p	t	tz	(ky)	ch	k	kw	.
Voiced stops	b	d	.	.	.	g	.	.
Voiceless fricatives	.	th	s	.	x	.	.	(h)
Voiced fricatives	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
Prenasalized stops	mb	.	ndz	.	ndzh	ng	ngw	.
Nasals	m	n	.	.	.	(nh)	.	.
Liquids	.	.	r, (rr)	(ly)	l	.	.	.
Glides	w	.	.	y	.	.	.	.

Tone
Like other Oto-Manguean languages, SAMZ is tonal, i.e., pitch makes a difference in word meaning. SAMZ distinguishes three tones: high, low, and rising. All three tones can occur with plain and checked vowels, but only high and low tones can be used with rearticulated vowels. Tone is used to mark grammatical categories. Tonal morphology is extremely complex. Tone is generally not represented in practical orthographies.

Click here to listen to recordings of Villa Alta Zapotec.

Grammar

Woman

Vases

Grammar
Zapotecan languages are agglutinative, i.e., they add prefixes and suffixes to roots to mark grammatical functions.

Nouns and Pronouns
Nouns and pronouns vary in accordance with the relationship of speaker to object. For instance, nouns and pronouns indicate whether one speaks of, or to, a human, animal, inanimate object or a supernatural being. One can also indicate an intimate or formal, and inclusive or exclusive, relationship with the object by choice of nouns and pronouns. In some cases, gender-specfic forms of speech exist as well.

Zapotec languages distinguish between inalienable (cannot be removed or gotten rid of) and alienable (can be removed or gotten rid of) possession. Possessors follow possessed nouns, e.g., làb "sandal," làb lè "your sandal."

Verbs
Prefixes and suffixes are added to verbs to indicate voice, tense and mood.

Prepositions
Zapotec languages do not have prepositions. Instead, they use nouns denoting body parts to express spatial relations. Below are a few examples from Mitla Zapotec:

Zapotec prepositions	English equivalents	Literal meaning
yejc	head	on top of
ni'	foot	at the foot of
xque'	belly	around
loj	face	in front of
dejtz	back	behind
xhajn	buttocks	below
cuä'	side	beside

Word order
As in many other languages in the Oto-Manguean stock, the normal word order in Zapotecan languages is Verb - Subject - Object. Numerals precede nouns, but adjectives follow them.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary
There are significant differences in vocabulary among the Zapotec languages. As you can see, there are few similarities in the vocabulary of the two texts in the following section.

Take a look at Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in two Zapotec languages.

Do you see any similarities between the two texts?
Which text has borrowings from Spanish?

Zapotec Central Miahuatlán
UHDR Zapotec

Zapotec Central Villa Alta
UHDR Zapotec

Translation
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Writing

Mont Alban

Oaxaca

The Zapotec script is one of the earliest writing systems in Mesoamerica. The first examples of Zapotec writing are brief inscriptions found on stone monuments dated between 400 and 200 BC, most of which are found in Monte Alban, a large archeological site in the state of Oaxaca. The Zapotec writing system used a separate glyph to represent each syllable of the language. It is considered to be the basis of other Mesoamerican scripts developed by the Mayas, Mixtecs, and Aztecs. Compared to other these other Mesoamerican scripts, Zapotec is less well understood partly because there are no records of the language on which the script is based, partly because there are few records and the records are very brief. Use of the Zapotecan script eventually declined, and it was replaced by another form of writing in the 10th century AD.

Today, Zapotecan languages are written in the Latin alphabet adapted to represent some of the sounds of the language. It must be kept in mind, that the orthographies were designed by Spanish friars who imposed Spanish orthographic tradition on the Zapotec languages that have many sounds which do not exist in European languages. The Mexican branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) has attempted to design an orthography for the Zapotec languages, following general linguistic and orthographic principles. However, linguists encountered difficulties in trying to represent the wide range of sounds found in these languages with one single orthography. Thus, the issue remains unresolved.

Click here to find out more.

The first of its kind: Di'csyonaary X:tee'n Dii'zh Sah Sann Luu'c: San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec Dictionary: Diccionario Zapoteco de San Lucas Quiavini.
Zapotec Dictionary of San Lucas Quiavini, by Pamela Monroe and Felipe Lopez

In 1999, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) published the first dictionary in Zapotec. It includes 9,000 words translated into English and Spanish. It was designed for the 50,000 Oaxaca Indians living in California. The dictionary bears the name of the hometown of the dictionary's main author, Felipe Lopez, a Oaxaca Indian who arrived in California as an undocumented immigrant 25 years ago. He worked in agriculture and then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a dishwasher until he became a legal resident.

Lopez was inspired to compile the two-volume dictionary because his language had never been written and because it was becoming endangered. The dictionary was prepared with the help of Pamela Munroe, a UCLA linguist, and Guillermo Hernandez, head of the Chicano Studies Center at UCLA.

Resources

Zapotec language and culture resources
Zapotec Writing
Ancient Scripts - Zapotec
Tzapotecapan - Zapotec Culture Resources (with video)
Zapotec language (with audio recordings)
Zapotec script
Zapotec (culture notes)
Zapotec word set
Be'ena' Za'a: The Cloud People (with video)