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Matlatzinca de San Francisco Oxtotilpan Estado de México
Es conveniente resaltar la importancia del estudio lingüístico que realizaron los autores sobre el matlatzinca de San Francisco Oxtotilpan, única comunidad de esta lengua que, rodeada de pueblos de habla nahua, ha conservado no sólo el idioma sino también su cultura. Los resultados de la investigación, que durante años han llevado a cabo Escalante y Hernández, permiten el estudio de procesos de larga duración que tiendan el puente entre los matlatzincas históricos y los contemporáneos para conocer las particularidades culturales de este grupo étnico, que dominara otrora una amplia extensión territorial, y explicar, con base en los procesos históricos aquí expuestos, tanto el proceso de extinción del matlatzinca, como el origen de los habitantes de San Francisco Oxtotilpan, quienes aparecen a la luz de la historia como los descendientes de los antiguos señores matlatzincas y sus guerreros que migraron para no someterse a los conquistadores, primero mexicas y después españoles.
23 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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April 17, 2022
For the uninitiated, Matlatzinca is a language that belongs to the same linguistic family as Otomí and has very little linguistic similarities to the lingua franca Náhuatl. A lot of people don't consider Matlatzinca to be deserving of its own language status because it makes very little sense a language spoken by so few people is spread out in 5 different states in Mexico (where expectedly due to geography, these 4 major variants are barely mutually intelligible).
Somehow despite being surrounded by at least 5 competing languages in every direction and under constant linguistic siege first by Nahuatl and later on Spanish, the southwestern Oxtotilpan variant has remained rather stubborn and even today it tries not to adopt Spanish loanwords (which is quite a major feat considering Spanish is seemingly everywhere).
Is Matlatzinca really that different from Nahuatl? Well, for starters, Nahuatl doesn't have the letter R which is commonly used in this language. It also uses at least 4 diactritics that as far as I see from this book, are not used in Nahuatl either. Words like rabbit are not even remotely similar among both languages. I even have a hard time believing Matlatzinca is similar to Otomí because the diacritics are so, so, so different. They must be only 70-80% similar where the similiarities are seen in grammar. Given I don't know any Otomí words except for fömchi, I can't know for sure.
I think the best highlights of this book are the first few chapters because it focuses on the history of the language and why it is spread everywhere. Sadly, the Aztecs were a very brutal society and they would frequently send warriors to raid other cities, kidnap the men to be used as sacrifices, kidnap civilians to inhabit remote lands and erect puppet governments where the survivors had to pay taxes and assimilate. This book offers a lot of interesting literary sources, so in case anyone wants to read more about precolumban Mexican history, they would be a worthy look.
I would have wanted a chapter that explained the four main linguistic variants and the degree in which Matlatzinca differs with Otomí. How come two languages in the same family use vastly unrelated diacritics. I would have also appreciated to know if both languages at one time had their own alphabet. I believe there are some traces of an ancient Popolucan alphabet that didn't become widely used and so they made do with the Latin alphabet. We don't get any maps that show the geographic regions of the 4 major Matlatzincan variants nationwide or the percentage of remaining speakers. We only get a map to the location of San Francisco Oxtotilpan.
Now, I appreciate the dictionary and some explanations of sentence construction in this language. This is pretty much a language that uses a series of monosylable prefix and suffixes separated by occasional glottal stops which seems rather confusing at first sight. I suppose a suitable Indoeuropean linguistic resemblance would be the way German and Danish can pile up seemingly long words but Matlatzinca tightens entire sentences into bite-sized 10 letters. If Matlatzinca had adopted kanji instead of the Latin alphabet, it would share plenty in common with Mandarin when it comes to sentence compression.
If there is one thing I can't help but complain about this book, it's the fact it suffers from the same issue I have noticed in books about plenty of other endangered languages. The book was aimed at professional linguists that can decipher diactritic and tongue positions for glottal stops along with other symbols for sentence construction. The book isn't aimed at the hobbyist duolingo crowd.
When it comes to dying languages especially in a country where the dominant language is seemingly in every nick and cranny and diacritics for some of the vowels aren't available in keyboards anywhere, it would make more sense to offer a paperback/audiobook book that teaches laymen the basics of the language and the sound to reach an A2 level.
The history section of this book is great, but there are no glossaries for other sources of language material which is a real bummer. This is the reason why despite finding this book to be an absolute joy to read, I had to give it 4 stars. Still a great and well researched read.
Somehow despite being surrounded by at least 5 competing languages in every direction and under constant linguistic siege first by Nahuatl and later on Spanish, the southwestern Oxtotilpan variant has remained rather stubborn and even today it tries not to adopt Spanish loanwords (which is quite a major feat considering Spanish is seemingly everywhere).
Is Matlatzinca really that different from Nahuatl? Well, for starters, Nahuatl doesn't have the letter R which is commonly used in this language. It also uses at least 4 diactritics that as far as I see from this book, are not used in Nahuatl either. Words like rabbit are not even remotely similar among both languages. I even have a hard time believing Matlatzinca is similar to Otomí because the diacritics are so, so, so different. They must be only 70-80% similar where the similiarities are seen in grammar. Given I don't know any Otomí words except for fömchi, I can't know for sure.
I think the best highlights of this book are the first few chapters because it focuses on the history of the language and why it is spread everywhere. Sadly, the Aztecs were a very brutal society and they would frequently send warriors to raid other cities, kidnap the men to be used as sacrifices, kidnap civilians to inhabit remote lands and erect puppet governments where the survivors had to pay taxes and assimilate. This book offers a lot of interesting literary sources, so in case anyone wants to read more about precolumban Mexican history, they would be a worthy look.
I would have wanted a chapter that explained the four main linguistic variants and the degree in which Matlatzinca differs with Otomí. How come two languages in the same family use vastly unrelated diacritics. I would have also appreciated to know if both languages at one time had their own alphabet. I believe there are some traces of an ancient Popolucan alphabet that didn't become widely used and so they made do with the Latin alphabet. We don't get any maps that show the geographic regions of the 4 major Matlatzincan variants nationwide or the percentage of remaining speakers. We only get a map to the location of San Francisco Oxtotilpan.
Now, I appreciate the dictionary and some explanations of sentence construction in this language. This is pretty much a language that uses a series of monosylable prefix and suffixes separated by occasional glottal stops which seems rather confusing at first sight. I suppose a suitable Indoeuropean linguistic resemblance would be the way German and Danish can pile up seemingly long words but Matlatzinca tightens entire sentences into bite-sized 10 letters. If Matlatzinca had adopted kanji instead of the Latin alphabet, it would share plenty in common with Mandarin when it comes to sentence compression.
If there is one thing I can't help but complain about this book, it's the fact it suffers from the same issue I have noticed in books about plenty of other endangered languages. The book was aimed at professional linguists that can decipher diactritic and tongue positions for glottal stops along with other symbols for sentence construction. The book isn't aimed at the hobbyist duolingo crowd.
When it comes to dying languages especially in a country where the dominant language is seemingly in every nick and cranny and diacritics for some of the vowels aren't available in keyboards anywhere, it would make more sense to offer a paperback/audiobook book that teaches laymen the basics of the language and the sound to reach an A2 level.
The history section of this book is great, but there are no glossaries for other sources of language material which is a real bummer. This is the reason why despite finding this book to be an absolute joy to read, I had to give it 4 stars. Still a great and well researched read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review