Week 3 An Interview

Oaxacan High School Students:  I was able to interview three high school students from Oaxaca this week.  It was an incredible experience.  I was nervous as I prepared for the interview because I had very little information about the student I would be speaking with.  I did not know how long I would be able to speak with the student, if there would be a place where we could talk in private, or if the student would even want to talk to me.  My strategy was to prepare for the best-case-scenario.  I prepared for a full interview: created a list of questions, created an information handout about myself and the project for the student’s records, printed maps of Oaxaca http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/map-of-oaxaca-mexico.html, packed some reference materials, etcetera.  It turned out that this student did not speak Zapotec.  He is from the northwestern Mixtec region of Oaxaca, near the city of Huajuapan de León. Nonetheless, he was knowledgeable about many things about the indigenous languages in Oaxaca, and knew much about the history of the language policies in Mexico.  I learned a great deal from him.  I was offered to speak with two other students in the school that did speak a Zapotec language.  These two students joined us in the interview.  We were allowed to use an empty classroom which gave us a little privacy and minimal interruptions.  This was a priceless experience, the four of us talking together about Oaxaca, their language, and culture.  The interview was even better than “best-case-scenario.”  The two Zapotec speakers were from the same village near Tlacolula (central Oaxaca, southeast of Oaxaca city), and interestingly did not identify their language with any more descriptive name than just “Zapoteco” http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/language-maps.html.  (According to the Zapotec language map, the city of Tlacolula is located in the Valley Zapotec language region.)  In order to demonstrate that there are different Zapotec languages, I asked them if they knew what bidxiˈ meant (the IZ word for ‘frog’).  They did not, and said that in their Zapotec language, ‘frog’ is sap.  We had a good laugh over how different the words were.  One of the students looked through my IZ dictionary and said that the only word that looked similar to her language was nisa ‘water.’  In her Zapotec, ‘water’ is nis. 

Teenage POV:  The interview was enlightening and gave me a perspective about the indigenous languages and people of Oaxaca that I would not have gained otherwise.  The perspective of these students reflects a teenage point of view.  They have not noticed linguistic discrimination perhaps because they have been sheltered from it.  They were not as sentimental about their indigenous tongue as I would have expected.  This may be because Spanish is their first language and, now living in the U.S., English is their primary language.  At home, they speak Spanish, Zapoteco, and English with their family.  Even though their parents are native Zapotec speakers, these students learned Zapotec at school on the playground from their peers. 

Prospective native speaker:  I may have an opportunity to meet an Isthmus Zapotec speaker after all!  The first student I spoke to told me that a friend of the family speaks IZ and lives nearby.  I will be incredibly grateful if he follows up on his offer to call me with this man’s address.  He said he is a local herb doctor whose door is always open, and is a very nice man.  He does not speak English, however.  No problem, I will bring a translator.