Mixe–Zoque languages

The Mixe–Zoque /ˌmiːheɪˈsoʊkeɪ/ (also Mixe–Zoquean, Mije–Soke, Mije–Sokean) languages are a language family whose living members are spoken in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The Mexican government recognizes three distinct Mixe–Zoquean languages as official: Mixe or ayook with 188,000 speakers, Zoque or o'de püt with 88,000 speakers, and the Popoluca languages of which some are Mixean and some Zoquean with 69,000 speakers. However, the internal diversity in each of these groups is great. Glottolog counts 19 different languages, whereas the current classification of Mixe–Zoquean languages by Wichmann (1995) counts 12 languages and 11 dialects. Extinct languages classified as Mixe–Zoquean include Tapachultec, formerly spoken in Tapachula, along the southeast coast of Chiapas.

Historically the Mixe–Zoquean family may have been much more widespread, reaching into the Soconusco region and the Guatemalan Pacific coast. It has been hypothesized that Mixean speakers were present, and perhaps represented ruling classes, at the preclassic sites of Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Izapa.

Terrence Kaufman and Lyle Campbell have argued, based on a number of widespread loanwords in other Mesoamerican languages, that it is likely that the Olmec people, generally seen as the earliest dominating culture of Mesoamerica, spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language. Kaufman and John Justeson also claim to have deciphered a substantial part of the text written in Isthmian script (called also by them and some others 'Epi-Olmec') which appears on La Mojarra Stela 1, based upon their deciphering of the text as representing an archaic Mixe–Zoquean language. Languages with proposed Mixe-Zoque loanwords include Totonac, Nahuatl, Purepecha, Matlatzinca, Mayan languages, Zapotec, Huave, Xinca, and Tol.

Both of these claims have been criticized: Michael D. Coe and David Stuart argue that the surviving corpus of the few known examples of Isthmian inscriptions is insufficient to securely ground any proposed decipherment. Their attempt to apply Kaufman's and Justeson's decipherments to other extant Isthmian material failed to produce any meaningful results. Wichmann (1995) criticizes certain proposed Mixe–Zoquean loans into other Mesoamerican languages as being only Zoquean, not Mixean, which would put the period of borrowing much later than the Proto-Mixe–Zoquean time-frame in which the Olmec culture was at its height. The date of the Mixe–Zoque split has however since been pushed back, and the argument is therefore much weaker than it once was thought to be.

Later, Kaufman (2001), again on the basis of putative loans from Mixe–Zoque into other Mesoamerican languages, argued a Mixe–Zoquean presence at Teotihuacan, and he ascribed to Mixe–Zoquean an important role in spreading a number of the linguistic features that later became some of the principal commonalities used in defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.

Brian Stross proposed that the so-called "language of Zuyua [es]", which was used by some of the nobility and priesthood of the postclassic Yucatan region, may have been a Mixean language.

The Mixe–Zoque languages have been included in several long-range classification proposals, e.g. in Edward Sapir's "Mexican Penutian" branch of his proposed Penutian linguistic superfamily, or as part of the Macro-Mayan proposal by Norman McQuown which groups together the Mixe–Zoque languages with the Mayan languages and the Totonacan languages. At the end of the last century, Lyle Campbell dismissed most earlier comparisons as methodologically flawed, but considered the Macro-Mayan proposal the most promising, but yet unproven hypothesis. In two more recently published articles, evidence is presented for linking the Mixe–Zoque languages either with the Totonacan languages ("Totozoquean"), or with the Mayan languages.

The following internal classification of the Mixe–Zoquean languages is by Søren Wichmann (1995).