The Mazatecan languages are a closely related group of highly tonal languages. They are classified, linguistically, as a division of the Popolocan subfamily of the Oto-Manguean language family. They are spoken mostly in northern Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. They are called Mazatec in English, Mazateco in Spanish. This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ... The Popolocan languages are a subfamily of the Oto-Manguean language family of Mexico. ... Oto-Manguean languages are a large family of Native American languages spoken in Mexico. ... The Mexican state of Oaxaca is in the south west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. ...
Like the neighboring Zapotecan languages, the highly tonal phonology of the Mazatecan languages makes them particularly well suited to be whistled. Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... Whistled languages are spoken languages conveyed through the medium of whistling. ...
The Ethnologue enumerates eight Mazatecan languages, which it calls
Mazatec, Ayautla
Mazatec, Chiquihuitlán
Mazatec, Huautla
Mazatec, Ixcatlán
Mazatec, Jalapa de Díaz
Mazatec, Mazatlán
Mazatec, San Jerónimo Tecóatl
Mazatec, Soyaltepec
There are nearly 200,000 speakers of Mazatecan languages, and while most adult speakers know and use Spanish for some purposes, many Mazatec children know little or no Spanish when they enter school.
External links
SIL Ethnologue entry for the Mazatecan Languages
Mazatec Languages - Some notes on six of the Mazatecan dialects.
This article is a list of different language classification proposals developed for indigenous languages of the Americas.
Terrence Kaufman's classification is meant to be a rather conservative genetic grouping of the languages of South America (and a few in Central America).
Kaufman uses more specific terminology than only language family, such language area, emergent area, and language complex, where he recognizes issues such as partial mutual intelligibility and dialect continuums.
The Mazatecanlanguages are a closely related group of highly tonal languages.
Like the neighboring Zapotecan languages, the highly tonal phonology of the Mazatecanlanguages makes them particularly well suited to be whistled.
There are nearly 200,000 speakers of Mazatecanlanguages, and while most adult speakers know and use Spanish for some purposes, many Mazatec children know little or no Spanish when they enter school.
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