Highland Chatino
Highland Chatino is an indigenous Mesoamerican language, one of the Chatino family of the Oto-Manguean languages. Dialects are rather diverse; Ethnologue 16 counts them as three languages as follows:
- Eastern Highland Chatino (Lachao-Yolotepec dialect)
- Western Chatino (Yaitepec, Panixtlahuaca, and Quiahije dialects)
- Nopala Chatino
| Highland Chatino | |
|---|---|
| Sierra Chatino | |
| Native to | Mexico |
| Region | Oaxaca |
Native speakers | 17,800 (2000)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously:ctp – Western Highlandcly – Eastern Highland (Lachao-Yolotepec)cya – Nopala |
| Glottolog | east2736 = Zacatepec–Highlands |
| ELP | Western Highland Chatino |
Neighboring dialects between the three groups are about 80% mutually intelligible; diversity among the three Western dialects is almost as great.
For phonological and grammatical details, see Chatino languages, which includes examples from Yaitepec dialect.
Phonology
Yaitepec Chatino
Yaitepec Chatino has the following phonemic consonants (Rasch 2002):
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | pal. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | pal. | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | kʷ | ʔ | |||
| voiced | d | ɟ | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʃ | |||||||
| voiced | d͡z | |||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | ʃ | h | hʷ | hʲ | ||||
| voiced | z | ʒ | ||||||||
| Nasal | plain | m | n | nʲ | ||||||
| preglottal | ʔn | ʔnʲ | ||||||||
| Lateral | l | lʲ | ||||||||
| Rhotic | ɾ | |||||||||
| Approximant | plain | j | w | |||||||
| preglottal | ʔj | ʔw | ||||||||
- Sounds /d͡z, ʒ/ only rarely occur.
- Other fricative sounds /ð, ɣ/ may also appear as a result of Spanish loanwords.
- /hʷ/ is heard as a labio-dental [f] when preceding consonants.
- Nasals when preceding consonants, are heard as syllabic [n̩, m̩].
- A bilabial nasal /m/ can also be written as nw orthographically. When nw is preceding a /k/, it is pronounced as [ŋʷ], elsewhere; it is heard as [m].
- /w/ can be heard as a bilabial fricative [β], when preceding sounds /j, i, e/ in word-initial position.
- /n/ assimilates as [ŋ] when preceding velar consonants /k, ɡ/.
- /k/ is heard as [kʲ] when preceding /e/.
- /j/ is heard as voiceless [j̊] when preceding a voiceless consonant.
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | ||
| Close | i | ɪ̃ | u | ũ | |
| Mid | e | ɛ̃ | (ə) | o | ɔ̃ |
| Open | a | ||||
- An extra schwa sound [ə] is heard in between consonants.
Rasch (2002) reports ten distinct tones for Yaitepec Chatino: the four level tones of high /˥/, mid /˦/, low-mid /˨/, and low /˩/; the two rising tones /˦˥/ and /˨˦/; and the three falling tones /˥˦/, /˦˨/, /˨˩/, as well as a more limited falling tone /˦˩/, found in a few lexical items and in a few completive forms of verbs.
Orthography
There are a variety of practical orthographies for Chatino, most based on Spanish orthography. Typically, ⟨x⟩ = /ʃ/, ⟨ch⟩ = /tʃ/, and /k/ is spelled ⟨c⟩ before back vowels and ⟨qu⟩ before front vowels.
In Quiahije Chatino, and perhaps more broadly across Highland Chatino, superscript capitals A–L are used as lexical tone letters: ᴬ ᴮ ꟲ ᴰ ᴱ ꟳ ᴳ ᴴ ᴵ ᴶ ᴷ ᴸ,[2] with additional letters (superscript M and S) for tone sandhi.
References
- Western Highland at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
Eastern Highland (Lachao-Yolotepec) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
Nopala at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) - Unicode submission L2/20-251
- Rasch, Jeffrey Walker. 2002. The basic morpho-syntax of Yaitepec Chatino. Ph.D. thesis. Rice University.
External links
