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Chinantec
Tsa Jujmi
Native to	Mexico
Region	Oaxaca
Ethnicity	Chinantecs
Native speakers	140,000 (2020 census)
Language family	Oto-Manguean Western Oto-Pame–Chinantecan Chinantec
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: cco – Comaltepec Chinantec chj – Ojitlán Chinantec chq – Quiotepec Chinantec chz – Ozumacín Chinantec cle – Lealao Chinantec cnl – Lalana Chinantec cnt – Tepetotutla Chinantec cpa – Palantla Chinantec csa – Chiltepec Chinantec cso – Sochiapan Chinantec cte – Tepinapa Chinantec ctl – Tlacoatzintepec Chinantec cuc – Usila Chinantec cvn – Valle Nacional Chinantec
Glottolog	chin1484
ELP	Central Chinantec
The Chinantecan languages, number 9 (chartreuse), east.

The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean family. Though traditionally considered a single language, Ethnologue lists 14 partially mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinantec. The languages are spoken by the indigenous Chinantec people who live in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán, Ixtlán de Juárez, Tuxtepec and Choapan, and in Staten Island, New York.

Internal classification

Egland and Bartholomew (1978) established fourteen Chinantec languages on the basis of 80% mutual intelligibility. Ethnologue 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.

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.

Example phrase:

ca¹-dsén¹=jni chi³ chieh³

‘I pulled out the hen (from the box).

The parts of this sentence are: ca¹ a prefix which marks the past tense, dsén¹ which is the verb stem meaning "to pull out an animate object", the suffix -jni referring to the first person, the noun classifier chi³ and the noun chieh³ meaning chicken.

Whistled speech

The Chinantec people have practiced whistled speech since the pre-Columbian era. 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 one kilometre (0.62 mi). 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, Oaxaca, and XEGLO, broadcasting from Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca.

• Example of Chinantec in written form from the Biblioteca Cervantina
• Example of Chinantec in written form from the Biblioteca Cervantina

References

1. "Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020". Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020. INEGI.
2. Palancar, Enrique L. (2014). "Revisiting the Complexity of the Chinantecan Verb Conjugation Classes". In Léonard, Jean-Léo; Kihm, Alain (eds.). Patterns in Mesoamerican Morphology. pp. 77–102. HAL 01100738.
3. Torrens, Claudio (2011-05-28). "Some NY immigrants cite lack of Spanish as barrier". UTSanDiego.com. Retrieved 2015-03-02.
4. Egland, S.; Bartholomew, D. (1978). La inteligibilidad inter-dialectal en Mexico: Resultados de algunos sondeos (PDF). Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Linguistico de Verano. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-12-02.
5. Merrifield, William; Rensch, Calvin R., eds. (1990). Syllables, Tone, and Verb Paradigms (PDF). Studies in Chinantec Languages. Vol. 4 Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0-88312-105-0. LCCN 90-71408. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-12-12.
6. Mugele, R. L. (1982). Tone and Ballistic Syllables in Lalana Chinantec (Ph.D. dissertation). Austin: University of Texas.
7. Rensch, Calvin (1978). "Ballistic and controlled syllables in Otomanguean Languages". In Bell, Alan; Hooper, Joan B. (eds.). Syllables and Segments. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company. pp. 85–92.
8. Edmondson, Jerold A.; Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1992). "On Five-level Tone Systems". In Hwang, Shin Ja J.; Merrifield, William R. (eds.). Language in Context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics. pp. 555–576.
9. Foris, David Paul (2000). A grammar of Sochiapam Chinantec. Studies in Chinantec languages. Vol. 6. Dallas, TX: SIL International and The University of Texas at Arlington.
10. Merrifield, William R. (1968). "Palantla Chinantec grammar". Papeles de la Chinantla 5. Serie Científica. Vol. 9. México: Museo Nacional de Antropología.
11. ^ Merrifield, William R.; Anderson, Alfred E. (2007). Diccionario Chinanteco de la diáspora del pueblo antiguo de San Pedro Tlatepuzco, Oaxaca (PDF). Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves”. Vol. 39 (2nd ed.). Mexico DF: Summer Linguistic Institute.
12. Schachar, Natalie (8 September 2017). "The decline of Chinantec whistled speech in Mexico". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 15 July 2019.

External links

• The Chinantec language family (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

• Indigenous peoples in Mexico
• Chinantec languages