Language
See also: Zapotec languages and List of Zapotec languagesThe Zapotec language belongs to a language family called Oto-manguean, an ancient family of Mesoamerican languages. By 1500 BC the Oto-manguean language began to differ. The Manguean languages probably split first, then the Oto-pamean branch and later the divergence of Mixtecan and Zapotecan languages. The Zapotecan group includes the Zapotec languages and the closely related Chatino. Zapotec languages are spoken in the southwest part of the state of Oaxaca.
Zapotec is a tone language, which means that the meaning of a word is often determined by voice pitch. These tones are essential to understand the meaning of different words. The technical word for it is tonemes. The Zapotec language has several tonemes, in some there are 4 tones; high, low, rising and falling, and in some there are three; high, low and rising.
Read more about this topic: Zapotec Civilization
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Our goal as a parent is to give life to our children’s learning—to instruct, to teach, to help them develop self-discipline—an ordering of the self from the inside, not imposition from the outside. Any technique that does not give life to a child’s learning and leave a child’s dignity intact cannot be called discipline—it is punishment, no matter what language it is clothed in.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen—but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“I suggested to them also the great desirability of a general knowledge on the Island of the English language. They are under an English speaking government and are a part of the territory of an English speaking nation.... While I appreciated the desirability of maintaining their grasp on the Spanish language, the beauty of that language and the richness of its literature, that as a practical matter for them it was quite necessary to have a good comprehension of English.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)