Chinantec

Chinantec
Tsa Jujmi
Native to	Mexico
Region	Oaxaca
Ethnicity	Chinantecs
Native speakers	130,000 (2010 census)
Language family	Oto-Mangue Western Oto-Mangue Oto-Pame–Chinantecan Chinantec
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: cco – Comaltepec Chinantec chj – Ojitlán Chinantec chq – Quiotepec Chinantec chz – Ozumacín Chinantec cle – Lealao Chinantec cnl – Lalana Chinantec cnt – Tepetotutla Chinantec cpa – Palantla Chinantec csa – Chiltepec Chinantec cso – Sochiapan Chinantec cte – Tepinapa Chinantec ctl – Tlacoatzintepec Chinantec cuc – Usila Chinantec cvn – Valle Nacional Chinantec
Glottolog	chin1484
The Chinantecan languages, number 9 (chartreuse), east.

The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean family. Though traditionally considered a single language, Ethnologue lists 14 partially mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinantec. The languages are spoken by the indigenous Chinantec people who live in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán, Ixtlán de Juárez, Tuxtepec and Choapan, and in Staten Island, New York.

Egland and Bartholomew (1978) established fourteen Chinantec languages on the basis of 80% mutual intelligibility. Ethnologue found that one that had not been adequately compared (Tlaltepusco) was not distinct, but split another (Lalana from Tepinapa). At a looser criterion of 70% intelligibility, Lalana–Tepinapa, Quiotepec–Comaltepec, Palantla–Valle Nacional, and geographically distant Chiltepec–Tlacoatzintepec would be languages, reducing the count to ten. Leolao (Latani) is the most divergent.

A typical Chinantecan phoneme inventory distinguishes 7 vowels /i, e, a, u, o, ɨ, ø/ and consonants /p f b m θ d t ts s r l n k ŋ ʔ h/. Vowels can be nasalized, except usually /u/ and /ø/.

Chinantec is a tonal language and some dialects (Usila Chinantec) have five register tones, an uncommon trait in the world's languages. Whistled language is common. In the practical orthographies for Chinantec, tones are marked with superscript numbers after each syllable; in linguistic transcription the dedicated tone diacritics ⟨◌ꜗ ◌ꜘ ◌ꜙ ◌ꜚ⟩ are used.

Chinantec also has ballistic syllables, apparently a kind of phonation.

Grammars are published for Sochiapam Chinantec, and a grammar and a dictionary of Palantla (Tlatepuzco) Chinantec.

Example phrase:

The parts of this sentence are: ca¹ a prefix which marks the past tense, dsén¹ which is the verb stem meaning "to pull out an animate object", the suffix -jni referring to the first person, the noun classifier chi³ and the noun chieh³ meaning chicken.