Tzotzil language

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Tzotzil Batzil k'op
Spoken in:	Mexico
Region:	Chiapas
Total speakers:	approx. 200,000
Language family:	Mayan Cholan-Tzeltalan Tzeltalan Tzotzil
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`myn`
ISO 639-3:	variously: `tzc` — Tzotzil, Chamula `tze` — Tzotzil, Chenalhó `tzs` — Tzotzil, San Andrés Larrainzar `tzo` — Tzotzil, Venustiano Carranza
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Tzotzil is a Maya language spoken by the indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in Chiapas, Mexico. Tzeltal is the most closely related language to Tzotzil and together they form a Tzeltalan sub-branch of the Mayan language family. Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Ch'ol are the most widely-spoken languages in Chiapas. Unlike Ch'ol, which features split ergativity, Tzeltal and Tzotzil are fully morphologically ergative. There are very few prepositions and each has a wide semantical spectrum.

Centro de Lengua, Arte y Literatura Indígena (CELALI) suggested in 2002 that the name of the language (and the ethnicity) should be spelled Tsotsil, rather than Tzotzil. Native speakers and writers of the language are picking up the habit of using s instead of z.^{[citation needed]}