Week 8 Zapotec Interviews

Interview with other Zapotec native speakers:  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview three more Oaxacan native-Zapotec speakers.  My first interview in April was with three high school students http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/week-3-interview.html.  Although I used the same interview questions for all, the responses were different.  I believe this to be so because of the age difference.  The interview yesterday was with adults; one man and woman over fifty years and one woman between twenty and thirty years.  These adults are students at an ESL/Literacy school in the Pico Union area of Los Angleles.  Like the students in the previous interview, these students only identify their language as “zapoteco.”  They did not distinguish the linguistic region.  Unfortunately, I neglected to bring along my maps, so I was not able to have them show me where in Oaxaca they are from, which would enable me to identify their language variety.  I will add to this blog when I locate their hometowns and language region.  At this time, I believe these students speak Valley Zapotec.  Each of them said that their language was a little different from the other, but were mutually intelligible; therefore, they each potentially speak a different dialect of Valley Zapotec.  I was very excited, though, because they were able to note similarities between their language and Isthmus Zapotec.  For instance, nis and nisa ‘water’ are almost the same.  The male student noted that when nis is used in a sentence, it does become nisa, but alone it is just nis.  Tree in the students’ language is yag and in IZ is yaga.  Yo’do their language is ‘church’ and in IZ is yu’du, and ‘mass’ is misa and mixa’ in IZ. 

Zapotec pragmatics:  There were pronoun similarities as well.  I learned that there is a formal “you” (le) like in Spanish.  I suspect that this would be true for Isthmus Zapotec as well.  I have not yet seen this distinction in my grammar resources.  The formal “you” is used when speaking with one’s boss or important people.  I asked about nonverbal gestures.  Are there any gestures that are unique to Zapotec?  After running through a few gesture scenarios, the answer was “no.”  Mexican Spanish and Zapotec speakers use the same body language, according to my sources.  I will continue this blog entry a little later, as I have more to share.  

Wrong about interviewees' language region:  After researching the towns of the interviewees, I discovered that they are all from the Sierra Norte region of Oaxaca.  (Please view the maps from http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/map-of-oaxaca-mexico.html).  Their towns are located in the Villa Alta District, which on the language map http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/language-maps.html is the region of Villalteco Zapotec language.  These interviewees do not speak Valley Zapotec, as did the high school interviewees in my first interview.  However, the students from both interviews have the same word for ‘water,’ nis.  I think that this word has not changed much amongst Zapotec speakers from different regions because it is such a commonly used word. 

Sociolinguistic issues:  Unlike the high school Zapotec speakers, these adults were very concerned about preserving their language.  They all shared about the problem of the younger generation not being able to speak to the older generation.  A great concern is of the young people who live in the United States that are unable to speak to their grandparents when they visit the family in Oaxaca.  The older woman I interviewed said that she is trying to teach her grandson Zapotec.  He can understand her, but does not yet speak back to his grandmother in Zapotec.  The young woman has a five-year old daughter who is learning to speak Zapotec.  It is very important to this young mother that her daughter speaks the language so she can communicate with relatives.  The male interviewee is currently working with an organization that is promoting a unified writing system for their language.  He says that many Zapotec speakers believe that putting their language in writing will preserve the language for the future.  This interviewee expressed his concern about the language being lost altogether.  I would like to learn more about how and why the Isthmus Zapotec language is prolifically written, and the other Zapotec languages are not.  Is Isthmus Zapotec viewed as a literate model for other Zapotec languages?

Still looking for a native IZ speaker:  The interviewees told me that they did not know of any Isthmus Zapotec speakers in Los Angeles.  However, the male interviewee said that there is a gringo who speaks IZ that had spent some time in his village documenting his language.  The interviewee said that his organization is trying to locate this man, who supposedly is in Los Angeles now.  They want to recruit the gringo’s help with their writing system.  Anyways, the interviewee said he will let me know if he is able to contact the man.