Chiapas Zoque


Chiapas Zoque is a dialect cluster of Zoquean languages indigenous to southern Mexico. The three varieties with ISO codes, Francisco León, Copainalá, and Rayón, are named after the towns they are spoken in, though residents of Francisco León were relocated after their town was buried in the eruption of El Chichón Volcano in 1982. Francisco León and Copainalá are 83% mutually intelligible according to Ethnologue.

Classification

The following classification of Chiapas Zoque dialects is from.
;Chiapas Zoque
Another language, Jitotolteco, was announced in 2011. Jitotoltec is a recently discovered language belonging to the Zoquean branch of the Mixe-Zoquean language family spoken in Chiapas. It is not a dialect of Chiapas Zoque.

Current situation

There are about 15,000 speakers of Chiapas Zoque, although the number is rapidly decreasing. The vast majority of speakers reside in Tapalapa, Ocotepec, and Pantepec. 80%–90% of the population in Tapalapa and Ocotepec are speakers of Zoque. 50% of the population in Pantepec are Zoque speakers.
Before the publication of Jan Terje Faarlund's A Grammar of Chiapas Zoque, the best documented Chiapas Zoque variety has been that of Copainalá due to the work of William Wonderly and other scholars. More detailed work has been done on Gulf Zoque and Oaxaca Zoque languages. Chiapas Zoque is an endangered language due to rapid language shift to Spanish among Zoque youths, although this is mitigated by the Zoque people's attempts to preserve their culture and language.

Phonology

BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Stopptkʔ
Affricatet͡s
Fricativesh
Nasalmnŋ
Approximantjw

The liquids /l, r/ mostly occur in Spanish loanwords.

Lexical comparison

The following table shows how numerals in two of the principal varieties of Chiapas Zoque compare to the numerals of proto-Zoque.
Numeralproto-ZoqueCopainalá ZoqueFrancisco León Zoque
1*tum-tumitumi
2*mehts-, *wis-metsametskuy
3*tuku-tukaʔytuʔkay
4*maks-makškuʔmaksikuy
5*mos-mosaʔmosay
6*tuhtu-tuhtaʔtuhtay
7*wis.tuh-kuʔyaʔykuʔyay
8*tuku.tuhtu-tukutuhtaʔytakutuh-
9*maks.tuhtu-makstuhtaʔymaks.tuh-
10*mahk-mahkaʔymahkay

Copainalá Zoque

*