| Tzeltal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bats'il K'op | ||||
| Spoken in | Mexico | |||
| Region | Chiapas | |||
| Ethnicity | Tzeltal | |||
| Native speakers | 372,000[1] (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Mayan
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | tzh | |||
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Tzeltal is a Mayan language spoken in the Mexican state of Chiapas, mostly in the municipalities of Ocosingo, Altamirano, Huixtán, Tenejapa, Yajalón, Chanal, Sitalá, Amatenango del Valle, Socoltenango, Villa las Rosas, Chilón, San Juan Cancun, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Oxchuc. It is a living language with some 371,730 speakers as of 2005, including a number of monolinguals.[2]
Tzeltal forms, together with the Tzotzil language, a sub-branch of the Mayan languages, called Tzeltalan, which again forms a sub-branch called Cholan-Tzeltalan, together with the Ch'ol languages, Chontal, Ch'ol and Ch'orti'. All these languages are the most spoken Mayan languages in Chiapas today. Historically, the branches are believed to have split about 1,400 years ago. Also, some researchers believe that the Tzeltal language has been spoken as far away as in Guatemala.
One of the primary differences between the Tzeltalan and the Ch'ol languages today is that while the Ch'ol languages feature split ergativity, the Tzeltalan languages are fully morphologically ergative.
Tzeltal language programming is carried out by the CDI's radio station XEVFS, broadcasting from Las Margaritas, Chiapas.
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The phonology of Tzeltal is quite straightforward with a common vowel inventory and a typical consonant inventory for Mayan languages. Some phonological processes do occur, however, including assimilation, epenthesis, lenition and reduplication.
Tzeltal has 5 vowels:
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | |
| Close | i | u |
| Close-mid | e | o |
| Open | a |
Whether vowel length is phonemic distinctive in Tzeltal is debatable.[3]
Tzeltal has 21 consonants, including the glottal stop:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Aspirated | p [pʰ] | t [tʰ] | k [kʰ] | ' [ʔ] | |||
| Ejective | p' [pʼ] | t' [tʼ] | k' [kʼ] | |||||
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n] | ||||||
| Fricative | s [s] | x [ʃ] | j [x] | h [h] | ||||
| Affricate | Aspirated | tz [t͡sʰ] | ch [t͡ʃʰ] | |||||
| Ejective | tz' [t͡sʼ] | ch' [t͡ʃʼ] | ||||||
| Trill | r [r] | |||||||
| Approximant | l [l] | y [j] | w [w] | |||||
[pʼ] has three allophones:[4]
[w] has two allophones:
Note, however, that it can be interchangeably [w] or [β] in the beginning of a word, as in older sister, wix [wiʃ] ~ [βiʃ].
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