Tequistlatecan

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Tequistlatecan, Chontal de Oaxaca Slijuala xanuk
Spoken in:	Mexico
Region:	Oaxaca
Total speakers:	~4500 (1990 (Ethnologue))
Language family:	American Language isolate Tequistlatecan, Chontal de Oaxaca
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3:	either: `clo` – Highland Chontal `chd` – Coastal Chontal
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Tequistlatecan language group also called Chontal of Oaxaca consists of three distinct languages. One called Huamelultec or Lowland Oaxaca Chontal, Tequistlatec (which is probably extinct), and Highland Oaxaca Chontal. The Chontal languages are spoken by the Chontal people of the Mexican state of Oaxaca (not to be confused with the Chontal Maya of Tabasco). Highland Chontal and Lowland Chontal (Huamelultec) are mutually-unintelligible languages. Together, they are spoken by about 4,000 people.

Highland Oaxacan Chontal has some dialectical variation. Speakers of Lowland Oaxacan Chontal (also called Huamelulteca) are very bilingual (in Spanish) and the native language is in danger of extinction. According to the 2005 Census, there were 1100 speakers over 65 years but only 91 were younger than 15.

The Tequistlatecan languages are part of some versions of the controversial Hokan Macro-family proposal, but generally considered to be isolates. Campbell and Oltrogge (1980) believe that the Tequistlatecan languages may be related to Jicaquean but this hypothesis remains to be explored further.

[edit] References

Campbell, Lyle and David Oltrogge, 1980, Proto-Tol (Jicaque), International Journal of American Linguistics, 46:205-223
Campbell, Lyle. (1979). Middle American languages. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.), The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment (pp. 902-1000). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Campbell, Lyle (1997) American Indian Languages, The Historical Linguistics of Native America, Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, Oxford University Press