Mixtec
Mixtec
Native to	Mexico
Region	Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero
Ethnicity	Mixtecs
Native speakers	530,000 in Mexico (2020 census)[1]
Language family	Oto-Manguean Mixtecan Mixtec
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Mexico
Regulated by	Academy of the Mixtec Language Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas
Language codes
ISO 639-3	(fifty-two individual codes)
Glottolog	mixt1427
Extent of the Mixtec languages: prior to contact (olive green) and current (red)
The distribution of various Mixtec languages and their classification per Glottolog

The Mixtec (/ˈmiːstɛk, ˈmiːʃtɛk/)^[2] languages belong to the Mixtecan group of the Oto-Manguean language family. Mixtec is spoken in Mexico and is closely related to Trique and Cuicatec. The varieties of Mixtec are spoken by over half a million people.^[3][4] Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this complex dialect continuum poses challenges at the level of linguistic theory. Depending on the criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages, there may be as few as a dozen^[5] or as many as fifty-three Mixtec languages.^[6]

Language name

The name "Mixteco" is a Nahuatl exonym, from mixtecatl, from mixtli [miʃ.t͡ɬi] ("cloud") + -catl [kat͡ɬ] ("inhabitant of place of").^[7] Speakers of Mixtec use an expression (which varies by dialect) to refer to their own language, and this expression generally means "sound" or "word of the rain": dzaha dzavui in Classical Mixtec; or "word of the people of the rain", dzaha Ñudzahui (Dzaha Ñudzavui) in Classical Mixtec.

Denominations in various modern Mixtec languages include tu'un savi [tũʔũ saβi], tu'un isasi [tũʔũ isasi] or isavi [isaβi], tu'un va'a [tũʔũ βaʔa], tnu'u ñuu savi [tnũʔũ nũʔũ saβi], tno'on dawi [tnõʔõ sawi], sasau [sasau], sahan sau [sãʔã sau], sahin sau [saʔin sau], sahan ntavi [sãʔã ndavi], tu'un dau [tũʔũ dau], dahan davi [ðãʔã ðaβi], dañudavi [daɲudaβi], dehen dau [ðẽʔẽ ðau], and dedavi [dedavi].^[8]

Distribution

Distribution of Mixtec languages within the state of Oaxaca, showing neighboring languages.

The traditional range of the Mixtec languages is the region known as La Mixteca, which is shared by the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero. Because of migration from this region, mostly as a result of extreme poverty, the Mixtec languages have expanded to Mexico's main urban areas, particularly the State of México and the Federal District, to certain agricultural areas such as the San Quintín valley in Baja California and parts of Morelos and Sonora, and into the United States. In 2012, Natividad Medical Center of Salinas, California had trained medical interpreters bilingual in Mixtec as well as in Spanish;^[9] in March 2014, Natividad Medical Foundation launched Indigenous Interpreting+, "a community and medical interpreting business specializing in indigenous languages from Mexico and Central and South America", including Mixtec, Trique, Zapotec, and Chatino.^[10][11]

Internal classification

Manuscript about the language with religious texts from the 16th century, author unknown

The Mixtec language is a complex set of regional dialects which were already in place at the time of the Spanish Conquest of the Mixteca region. The varieties of Mixtec are sometimes grouped by geographic area, using designations such as those of the Mixteca Alta, the Mixteca Baja, and the Mixteca de la Costa. However, the dialects do not actually follow the geographic areas, and the precise historical relationships between the different varieties have not been worked out.^[12] The situation is far more complex than a simple dialect continuum because dialect boundaries are often abrupt and substantial, some likely due to population movements both before and after the Spanish conquest. The number of varieties of Mixtec depends in part on what the criteria are for grouping them, of course; at one extreme, government agencies once recognized no dialectal diversity. Mutual intelligibility surveys and local literacy programs have led SIL International to identify more than 50 varieties which have been assigned distinct ISO codes.^[13] Attempts to carry out literacy programs in Mixtec which cross these dialect boundaries have not met with great success. The varieties of Mixtec have functioned as de facto separate languages for hundreds of years with virtually none of the characteristics of a single "language". As the differences are typically as great as between members of the Romance language family, and since unifying sociopolitical factors do not characterize the linguistic complex, they are often referred to as separate languages.

Phonology

This section describes the sound systems of Mixtec by each variety.

Writing systems

The Mixtecs, like many other Mesoamerican peoples, developed their own writing system, and their codices that have survived are one of the best sources for knowledge about the pre-Hispanic culture of the Oaxacan region prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. With the defeat of the lordship of Tututepec in 1522, the Mixtecs were brought under Spanish colonial rule, and many of their relics were destroyed. However, some codices were saved from destruction, and are today mostly held by European collections, including the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and the Codex Vindobonensis; one exception is the Codex Colombino, kept by the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

The missionaries who brought the Roman Catholic religion to the Mixtecs set about learning their language and produced several grammars of the Mixtec language, similar in style to Antonio de Nebrija's Gramática Castellana. They also began work on transcribing the Mixtec languages into the Latin alphabet. In recent decades small changes in the alphabetic representation of Mixtec have been put into practice by the Academy of the Mixtec Language. Areas of particular interest include the following:

• The representation of the feature that distinguishes glottalized vowels (or glottal stop, as in some earlier analyses). Some earlier alphabets used h; more commonly today a special kind of apostrophe is used.
• The representation of the high central unrounded vowel. Some earlier alphabets used y; today a barred-i (ɨ) is used.
• The representation of the voiceless velar stop. Most earlier alphabets used c and qu, in line with earlier government policies; today k is more commonly used.
• The representation of tone. Most non-linguistic transcriptions of Mixtec do not fully record the tones. When tone is represented, acute accent over the vowel is typically used to indicate high tone. Mid tone is sometimes indicated with a macron over the vowel, but it may be left unmarked. Low tone is sometimes indicated with a grave accent over the vowel, but it might be left unmarked, or it might be indicated with an underscore to the vowel.

The alphabet adopted by the Academy of the Mixtec Language and later by the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), contains the following letters (indicated below with their corresponding phonemes).

One of the main obstacles in establishing an alphabet for the Mixtec language is its status as a vernacular tongue. The social domain of the language is eminently domestic, since federal law requires that all dealings with the state be conducted in Spanish, even though the country's indigenous languages enjoy the status of "national languages". Few printed materials in Mixtec exist and, up to a few years ago, written literature in the language was practically non-existent. There is little exposure of Mixtec in the media, other than on the CDI's indigenous radio system – XETLA and XEJAM in Oaxaca; XEZV-AM in Guerrero; and XEQIN-AM in Baja California – and a bilingual radio station based in the US in Los Angeles, California, where a significant Mixtec community can be found.

At the same time, the fragmentation of the Mixtec language and its varieties means that texts published in one variety may be utterly incomprehensible to speakers of another. In addition, most speakers are unaware of the official orthography adopted by the SEP and the Mixtec Academy, and some even doubt that their language can lend itself to a written form.

Grammar and syntax

Mixtec influence on Spanish

Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Mixtec language to Mexican Spanish is in the field of place names, particularly in the western regions of the state of Oaxaca, where several communities are still known by Mixtec names (joined with a saint's name): San Juan Ñumí, San Bartolo Yucuañe, Santa Cruz Itundujia, and many more. In Puebla and Guerrero, Mixtec place names have been displaced by Nahuatl and Spanish names. An example is Yucu Yuxin (in Puebla), which is now known as Gabino Barreda.

Spanish words used in Mixtec languages are also those that were brought by the Spanish like some fruits and vegetables. An example is limun (in San Martin Duraznos Oaxaca), which is known as lemon (limón in Spanish), also referred to as tzikua Iya (sour orange).

Mixtec literature

Prior to the Spanish Conquest in the early 16th century, the native peoples of Mesoamerica maintained several literary genres. Their compositions were transmitted orally, through institutions at which members of the elite would acquire knowledge of literature and other areas of intellectual activity. Those institutions were mostly destroyed in the aftermath of the Conquest, as a result of which most of the indigenous oral tradition was lost forever. Most of the codices used to record historical events or mythical understanding of the world were destroyed, and the few that remain were taken away from the peoples that created them. Four Mixtec codices are known to survive, narrating the war exploits of the Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw. Of these, three are held by European collections, with one still in Mexico. The key to deciphering these codices was rediscovered only in the mid-20th century, largely through the efforts of Alfonso Caso, as the Mixtec people had lost the understanding of their ancient rules of reading and writing.

However, the early Spanish missionaries undertook the task of teaching indigenous peoples (the nobility in particular) to read and write using the Latin alphabet. Through the efforts of the missionaries and, perhaps more so, of the Hispanicized natives, certain works of indigenous literature were able to survive to the modern day. Of the half-dozen varieties of Mixtec recognized in the 16th century, two in particular were preferred for writing, those of Teposcolula/Tilantongo and Achiutla/Tlaxiaco in Mixteca Alta.^[25] Over the five centuries that followed the Conquest, Mixtec literature was restricted to the popular sphere. Through music or the way in which certain rituals are carried out, popular Mixtec literature has survived as it did for millennia: by means of oral transmission.

It was not until the 1990s that indigenous literature in Mexico took off again. At the vanguard were the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who had been recording their language in writing since at least the mid-19th century. Imitating the great cultural movement of the indigenous people of Juchitán de Zaragoza in the 1980s, many native cultures reclaimed their languages as literary vehicles. In 1993 the Asociación de Escritores en Lenguas Indígenas was created and, three years later, the Casa del Escritor en Lengua Indígena. At the same time, the Nezahualcóyotl Prize for indigenous language literature was created, in order to promote writing in Native American tongues.

Spanish Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Yunu Yukuninu

In the Mixteca region, the literary renaissance has been led by the peoples of the Mixteca Alta, including the cities of Tlaxiaco and Juxtlahuaca. The former has produced such notable writers as Raúl Gatica, who published works by several Mixtec poets in the book Asalto a la palabra, and Juan de Dios Ortiz Cruz, who in addition to collecting the region's lyrical compositions has also produced notable pieces of his own, such as Yunu Yukuninu ("Tree, Hill of Yucuninu"). That piece was later set to music by Lila Downs, one of the leading figures in contemporary Mixtec music; she has recorded several records containing compositions in Mixtec, a language spoken by her mother.

See also

• Classification of Mixtec languages
• Indigenous languages of the Americas
• Languages of Mexico
• Mixtec (indigenous peoples of Mexico)
• Oto-Manguean languages
• Technological University of the Mixteca
• Trique language

Notes

• "Estadística básica de la población hablante de lenguas indígenas nacionales 2015". site.inali.gob.mx. Retrieved 2019-10-26.

References

• Bradley, C. Henry & Barbara E. Hollenbach, eds. 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992. Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan languages, volumes 1–4. Dallas, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics; [Arlington, Texas:] University of Texas at Arlington.
• Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (2008). Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales. Diario Oficial de la Nación, January 14.
• Jiménez Moreno, Wigberto. 1962. Estudios mixtecos. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI); Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). (Reprint of the introduction to the Vocabulario en lengua mixteca by Fray Francisco de Alvarado.)
• Josserand, Judy Kathryn. 1983. Mixtec Dialect History. Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University.
• Macaulay, Monica & Joe Salmons. 1995. The phonology of glottalization in Mixtec. International Journal of American Linguistics 61(1):38–61.
• Marlett, Stephen A. 1992. Nasalization in Mixtec languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 58(4):425–435.
• McKendry, Inga. 2001. Two studies of Mixtec languages. M.A. thesis. University of North Dakota.

External links

Jamiltepec Mixtec test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Technological University of the Mixteca
• Spanish–Mixtec dictionary AULEX (Mexico)
• Comparative Mixtec Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary)
• SEP textbook in Guerrero Mountain Mixtec
• Mixtec family (SIL-Mexico)
• Resources for certain varieties of Mixtec
• Digital edition of Josserand (1983) at AILLA (requires creation of free account)