Mesoamerican languages: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:44, 9 March 2007

Revision as of 10:56, 9 March 2007

Line 9:

Many Mesoamerican linguistic groupings have not had different names in common usage for their different languages and some linguistic groups known by a single name show a sufficiently significant variation to warrant division into a number of languages which are quite low in mutual intelligibility. This is the case for example for the Mixtecan, Zapotecan and Nahuan linguistic groups, which all contain distinct languages that are none the less referred to by a single name. Sometimes a single name has even been used to describe completely unrelated linguistic groups, as is the case with the terms "[[Popoluca]]" or "[[Chichimeca]]". This shortage of language names has meant that the convention within Mesoamerican linguistics when writing about a specific linguistic variety is to always mention the name of the broad linguistic group as well as the name of the community, or geographic ___location in which it is spoken, for example [[Isthmus-Mecayapan Nahuatl]], [[Zoogocho Zapotec]] or [[Usila Chinantec]]. Some language groups however have been more adequately named. This is the case of the Mayan languages, with an internal diversity that is arguably comparable to that found between the [[Nahuatl dialects]], but many of whose linguistic varieties have separate names, such as [[K'iche' language|K'iche']], [[Tzotzil language|Tzotzil]] or [[Wastek language|Huastec]]<ref>Suárez 1983 p20</ref>.

==Geography and overview==

==Linguistic prehistory==