Tilquiapan Zapotec

Tilquiapan Zapotec
San Miguel Tilquiapan
Region	Oaxaca in Mexico
Native speakers	5,000  (2007)
Language family	Oto-Manguean Zapotecan Zapotec Central Valley Tilquiapan–Yatzechi Tilquiapan Zapotec
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zts

Tilquiapan Zapotec (Zapoteco de San Miguel Tilquiapan) is an Oto-Manguean language of the Zapotecan branch, spoken in southern Oaxaca, Mexico.

Santa Inés Yatzechi Zapotec is close enough to be considered a dialect, and Ocotlán Zapotec is also close. They were measured at 87% and 59% intelligibility, respectively, in recorded text testing.

Sounds

Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Tilquiapan Zapotec

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	ɘ		o
Open	a

Each vowel can also be glottalized, a phenomenon manifested as either creaky voice throughout the vowel or, more commonly, as a sequence of a vowel and a glottal stop optionally followed by an echo of the vowel.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Tilquiapan Zapotec

		Bilabial		Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar
										plain		labialized
Nasal		m		nˑ n
Plosive		p	b	t	d	tʃ	dʒ			k	ɡ	kʷ	ɡʷ
Fricative				s	z	ʃ	ʒ
Approximant	Central							j
	Lateral			ld l

As with other Zapotec languages, the primary distinction between consonant pairs like /t/ and /d/ is not of voicing but between fortis and lenis (measured in length), respectively, with voicing being a phonetic correlate. There are two exceptions to this in Tilquiapan:

• The contrast between fortis /nˑ/ and lenis /n/
• The contrast between fortis /ld/ and lenis /l/

Neither is voiceless, but /nˑ/ is pronounced a little longer and /ld/ replaces /l/ in certain causative verbs in ways similar to other fortis/lenis consonantal changes (e.g. [blaˀa] 'get loose' vs. [bldaˀa] 'let loose').

References

• Egland, Steven; Cruz Ramos, Saúl; Bartholomew, Doris (1978), La inteligibilidad interdialectal en México: resultados de algunos sondeos Interdialectal intelligibility in Mexico: study results (in Spanish), México: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, ISBN 9683100031 
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquiapan Zapotec", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38 (1): 107–114, doi:10.1017/S0025100308003344 
• Nellis, Donald G.; Hollenbach, Barbara E. (1980), "Fortis versus lenis in Cajonos Zapotec phonology", International Journal of American Linguistics 46: 92–105