Mixtec languages

Mixtec
Native to	Mexico
Region	Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero, California, Washington
Ethnicity	Mixtecs
Native speakers	480,000 (2010 census)
Language family	Oto-Manguean Mixtecan Mixtec
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Mexico
Regulated by	Academy of the Mixtec Language
Language codes
ISO 639-3	(fifty individual codes)
Glottolog	mixt1427
The Mixtec languages, number 10 (blue-green), center-south.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Mixtec /ˈmiːstɛk/, /ˈmiːʃtɛk/ languages belong to the Otomanguean language family of Mexico, and are closely related to the Trique and Cuicatec languages. They are spoken by over half a million people. Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this complex dialect continuum poses challenges at the level of linguistic theory. Depending on the criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages, there may be as many as fifty Mixtec languages.

The name "Mixteco" is a Nahuatl exonym, from [miʃ] 'cloud' [teka] 'inhabitant of place of'. Speakers of Mixtec use an expression (which varies by dialect) to refer to their own language, and this expression generally means "sound" or "word of the rain": dzaha dzavui in Classical Mixtec; or "word of the people of the rain", dzaha Ñudzahui (Dzaha Ñudzavui) in Classical Mixtec.

Denominations in various modern Mixtec languages include tu'un savi [tũʔũ saβi], tu'un isasi [tũʔũ isasi] or isavi [isaβi], tu'un va'a [tũʔũ βaʔa], tnu'u ñuu savi [tnũʔũ nũʔũ saβi], tno'on dawi [tnõʔõ sawi], sasau [sasau], sahan sau [sãʔã sau], sahin sau [saʔin sau], sahan ntavi [sãʔã ndavi], tu'un dau [tũʔũ dau], dahan davi [ðãʔã ðaβi], dañudavi [daɲudaβi], dehen dau [ðẽʔẽ ðau], and dedavi [dedavi].