Documentation of Zenzontepec Chatino language and culture

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

This project will produce transcribed and analyzed texts from Zenzontepec Chatino (CZN), the most divergent Chatino language (Otomanguean), spoken in the southern Sierra Madre of Oaxaca, Mexico (16°32"N, 97°30"W). There are about 8,000 speakers, but communities are shifting to Spanish. The corpus will document naturally occurring narrative, dialogue, ritual speech, traditional medicine, ethnobiological information, and geographic knowledge. The texts will be the basis of a descriptive grammar, augment a tri-lingual dictionary in progress, and be shared with the community in printed booklets, CDs, and through archival. Native speakers will be trained in documentation methods and transcription. Primary investigator: Eric Campbell

Project Details


Location: Mexico, Mexico, Philippines, Central America, South-Eastern Asia, Mexico, Asia, Americas, United States of America Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Texas at Austin Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £32,607.00 Commencement Date: 01/2006
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