Sierra Popoluca

Sierra Popoluca
Soteapan Zoque
Nuntajɨyi
Native to	Mexico
Region	Veracruz
Native speakers	unknown (30,000 cited 1992)
Language family	Mixe–Zoquean Zoque Gulf Zoquean Sierra Popoluca
Language codes
ISO 639-3	poi
Glottolog	high1276

Sierra Popoluca, also sometimes referred to as Soteapanec, Soteapan Zoque, or Highland Popoluca, is a Mixe–Zoquean language of the Zoquean branch. It is spoken by 28,000 (INALI 2008, based on INEGI 2000, 2005) indigenous Popoluca people in and around the town of Soteapan in the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The speakers themselves call their language Nundajɨɨyi which means "true speech", and themselves Nundajɨypappɨc.

Distribution

Sierra Popoluca is spoken in the following municipalities in the southern foothills of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas (de Jong Boudreault 2009).

• Soteapan
• Tatahuicapan
• Hueyapan de Ocampo
• Benito Juárez

Towns where the language is spoken include San Pedro Soteapan, La Piedra Labrada, and Santa Rosa Cintepec. The Nahuatl language is also spoken in nearby Mecayapan, Tatahuicapan de Juárez, and Pajapan, and has influenced Sierra Popoluca as well.

Phonology

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Alveolo-Palatal		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosives		b, p		d, t		ɟ, c		ts		ɡ, k		ʔ
Fricatives				s		ʃ						h
Nasals		m		n		ɲ				ŋ
Approximants		w				j

Grammar

Sierra Popoluca is an ergative, agglutinating, polysynthetic, head-marking language (de Jong Boudreault 2009).

References and further reading

• de Jong Boudreault, Lynda J. 2009. A Grammar of Sierra Popoluca (Soteapanec, a Mixe-Zoquean Language). Ph.D. dissertation: The University of Texas at Austin.
• Gutiérrez-Morales, Salomé. 2008. Borrowing and Grammaticalization in Sierra Popoluca: The Influence of Nahuatl and Spanish. Ph.D. dissertation: University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Reading and Writing in Sierra Popoluca (SIL International) http://www-01.sil.org/americas/mexico/mixe/popoluca-sierra/L204c-Lectoescritura_Leer-poi.pdf