Western Tlacolula Valley Zapotec
a cluster of Zapotec languages spoken in the western Tlacolula Valley
Tlacolula Valley Zapotec or Valley Zapotec, known by its regional name Dizhsa, and formerly known by the varietal name Guelavia Zapotec (Zapoteco de San Juan Guelavía) is a Zapotec language of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Tlacolula Valley Zapotec is a cluster of Zapotec languages spoken in the western Tlacolula Valley, which show varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. All varieties of Valley Zapotec are endangered. The languages in this group include:
Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec
Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec
San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec
Tlacolula de Matamoros Zapotec
San Juan Guelavía Zapotec
San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya Zapotec
San Juan Teitipac Zapotec
Teotitlán del Valle dialect is divergent, 59% intelligible to San Juan Guelavía proper. Valley Zapotec is also spoken in the city of Oaxaca, capital of the state of Oaxaca.
In April 2014, linguist Brook Danielle Lillehaugen, along with students from Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, visited Tlacolula de Matamoros to present an online Tlacolula Valley Zapotec talking dictionary to local leaders. It was estimated that about 100 elderly speakers of this Zapotecan language remain.
Tlacolula Valley Zapotec is a VSO language.
Phonology
Consonants
Most stops occur to be realized as fricatives and may fluctuate as well; /p b d ɡ/ become [ɸ β ð ɣ~x]. Rhotic consonants are voiceless when preceding a voiceless consonant; /ɾ~r/ ~ [ɾ̥~r̥].
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This entry incorporates text from “Western Tlacolula Valley Zapotec” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.