| Tilquiapan Zapotec | |
|---|---|
| San Miguel Tilquiápam | |
| Region | Oaxaca in Mexico |
Native speakers | 5,000 (2007)[1] |
| Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | zts |
| Glottolog | tilq1235 |
Tilquiapan Zapotec (Zapoteco de San Miguel Tilquiápam) 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.[2]
| 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.[4]
| Bilabial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | m | nː n | |||||||||||
| Plosive | pː | b | tː | d | tːʃ | dʒ | kː | ɡ | kːʷ | ɡʷ | |||
| Fricative | sː | z | ʃː | ʒ | |||||||||
| Approximant | central | j | |||||||||||
| lateral | l͡d 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[6]), respectively, with voicing being a phonetic correlate.[5] There are two exceptions to this in Tilquiapan:
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').[5]