Tilquiapan Zapotec

Tilquiapan Zapotec
San Miguel Tilquiápam
Region	Oaxaca in Mexico
Native speakers	5,000 (2007)
Language family	Oto-Manguean Zapotecan Zapotec Central Valley Tilquiapan–Yatzechi Tilquiapan Zapotec
Writing system	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.

Sounds

Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Tilquiapan Zapotec

	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.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Tilquiapan Zapotec

		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), respectively, with voicing being a phonetic correlate. There are two exceptions to this in Tilquiapan:

• The contrast between fortis /nː/ and lenis /n/
• The contrast between fortis /ld/ and lenis /l/

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').