| Tilquiapan Zapotec | |
| Also Known As: | San Miguel Tilquiápam |
| Region: | Oaxaca in Mexico |
| Speakers: | 5,000 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Fam1: | Oto-Manguean |
| Fam2: | Zapotecan |
| Fam3: | Zapotec |
| Fam4: | Central |
| Fam5: | Valley |
| Fam6: | Tilquiapan–Yatzechi |
| Iso3: | zts |
| Glotto: | tilq1235 |
| Glottorefname: | Tilquiapan Zapotec |
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.
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | |||
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.
| Bilabial | Dental/ Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /nː/ pronounced as /n/ | |||||||||||
| Plosive | pronounced as /pː/ | pronounced as /b/ | pronounced as /tː/ | pronounced as /d/ | pronounced as /tːʃ/ | pronounced as /dʒ/ | pronounced as /kː/ | pronounced as /ɡ/ | pronounced as /kːʷ/ | pronounced as /ɡʷ / | |||
| Fricative | pronounced as /sː/ | pronounced as /z/ | pronounced as /ʃː/ | pronounced as /ʒ/ | |||||||||
| Approximant | central | pronounced as /j/ | |||||||||||
| lateral | pronounced as /l͡d/ pronounced as /l/ | ||||||||||||
As with other Zapotec languages, the primary distinction between consonant pairs like pronounced as //t// and pronounced as //d// is not of voicing but between fortis and lenis (measured in length[1]), respectively, with voicing being a phonetic correlate. There are two exceptions to this in Tilquiapan:
Neither is voiceless, but pronounced as //nˑ// is pronounced a little longer and pronounced as //ld// replaces pronounced as //l// in certain causative verbs in ways similar to other fortis/lenis consonantal changes (e.g. pronounced as /[blaˀa]/ 'get loose' vs. pronounced as /[bldaˀa]/ 'let loose').