Цоцильский язык майя в Мексике

Mayan language spoken in Mexico

Tzotzil ('/(//t//)//s//oʊ//t//s//ɪ//l/; Batsʼi kʼop ) is a Maya language spoken by the Indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Most speakers are bilingual in Spanish as a second language. In Central Chiapas, some primary schools and a secondary school are taught in Tzotzil. Tzeltal is the most closely related language to Tzotzil and together they form a Tzeltalan sub branch of the Mayan language family. Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chʼol are the most widely spoken languages in Chiapas besides Spanish. There are six dialects of Tzotzil with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility, named after the different regions of Chiapas where they are spoken: Chamula, Zinacantán, San Andrés Larráinzar, Huixtán, Chenalhó, and Venustiano Carranza. Centro de Lengua, Arte y Literatura Indígena (CELALI) suggested in 2002 that the name of the language (and the ethnicity) should be spelled Tsotsil, rather than Tzotzil. Native speakers and writers of the language are picking up the habit of using s instead of z.

All words in Tzotzil begin with a consonant, which may be a glottal stop. Consonant clusters are almost always at the beginning of a word, with a prefix and a root. Roots in Tzotzil occur in the forms CVC (tʼul "rabbit"), CV (to "still"), CVCVC (bikʼit "small"), CV(C)VC (xu(v)it "worm", the second consonant disappears in some dialects), CVC CVC (ʼajnil "wife"), CVCV (ʼama "flute") or CVC CV (voʼne "long ago"). The most common root is CVC. Almost all Tzotzil words can be analyzed as a CVC root together with certain affixes.

In normal speech, stress falls on the first syllable of the root in each word, and the last word in a phrase is heavily stressed. For words in isolation, primary stress falls on the final syllable except in affective verbs with luh, first person plural exclusive suffixes, and reduplicated stems of two syllables. Then, the stress is unpredictable and so is indicated with an acute accent. The Tzotzil variant of San Bartolomé de Los Llanos, in the Venustiano Carranza region, was analyzed as having two phonemic tones by Sarles 1966. Research by Heriberto Avelino in 2009 was not able to confirm more than an unstable and incipient tone contrast.

When intervocalic, /b/ is pre glottalized and when it is followed by a consonant, b becomes a voiced m preceded by a glottal stop. In final position, b becomes a voiceless m preceded by a glottal stop so tzeb "girl" is pronounced When adding an affix results in double fricative consonants, only one is pronounced so xx, ss, nn, or jj should be pronounced as x [ʃ], s.[s], n [n], or j [h]. For example, ta ssut "He is returning" is pronounced [ta sut] Other double consonants are pronounced twice, like tztz or chch, in verbal construction or in words with the same two consonants appearing in conjoining syllables: chchan "He learns it" is pronounced [tʃ tʃan]. s changes to x when prefixed to a stem beginning with ch, chʼ, or x.
x changes to s when prefixed to a stem with an initial or final tz or s.

In Tzotzil, only nouns, verbs, and attributives can be inflected.

In 1975, the Smithsonian Institution produced a dictionary of Tzotzil, containing some 30,000 Tzotzil English entries, and half that number of English Tzotzil entries, the most comprehensive resource on Tzotzil vocabulary to that date. Tzotzil word lists and grammars date back to the late 19th century, most notably in Otto Stoll's Zur Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala (1884).

In 2013, Pope Francis approved translations of the prayers for Mass and the celebration of sacraments into Tzotzil and Tzeltal. The translations include "the prayers used for Mass, marriage, baptisms, confirmations, confessions, ordinations and the anointing of the sick Bishop Arizmendi said Oct. 6 that the texts, which took approximately eight years to translate, would be used in his diocese and the neighboring Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Mass has been celebrated in the diocese in recent years with the assistance of translators — except during homilies — Bishop Arizmendi said in an article in the newspaper La Jornada.

Tzotzil language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEVFS, broadcasting from Las Margaritas, Chiapas, and XECOPA, based in Copainalá, Chiapas.