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.
5-477: Sochiapam ( / s oʊ ˈ tʃ iː ə p æ m / soh- CHEE -ə-pam ) is a Chinantec language of Mexico . It is most similar to Tlacoatzintepec Chinantec , with which it has 66% intelligibility (intelligibility in the reverse direction is 75%, presumably due to greater familiarity in that direction). Sochiapam has seven tones : high, mid, low, high falling, mid falling, mid rising, low rising. Like other Chinantec and Mazatec languages , Sochiapam Chinantec
10-457: Is noted for having whistled speech (produced only by men, but understood by all). More unusually, it has also been reported to have a rare marked absolutive case system. The following are sounds of Sochiapan Chinantec: Chinantecan languages 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)
15-418: The noun classifier chi³ and the noun chieh³ meaning chicken. 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
20-412: The extreme tones deriving historically from ballistic syllables. Grammars are published for Sochiapam Chinantec, and a grammar and a dictionary of Palantla (Tlatepuzco) Chinantec. Example phrase: 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 ,
25-571: 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. 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
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