This lesson will  introduce you to some additional things about pronunciation guides and Valley Zapotec pronunciation. Remember to listen to your teacher, and work hard at trying to repeat all the words exactly as your teacher says them. Whenever you say something in Zapotec, try hard to make it sound like what your teacher would say.

_{Lecsyony Tap, Picture 1. Oxcart on the road from San Lucas to Tlacolula.}

Section §4.1 presents more vowel patterns, and section §4.2 shows how hyphens are used in pronunciation guides. §4.3 introduces the concept of lenis versus fortis consonants. Section §4.4 shows how Spanish borrowed words are written in Zapotec and how the acute accent mark (´ ) is used in pronunciation guides. Section §4.5 presents a complete summary chart for vowel patterns. Section §4.6 discusses writing sentences in Zapotec, and section §4.7 is about using the dictionary.

§4.1. More vowel patterns

Although Lecsyony Chon has introduced you to the most important Valley Zapotec vowel patterns, there are a number of additional ones. Four are presented below, and you’ll learn others as you go along.

§4.1.1. New vowel patterns with falling tone. The PB pattern includes a plain vowel followed by a breathy vowel, as in words like the following:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 1. (With Ana López Curiel.)}

This vowel pattern has a falling tone. As the examples show, this pattern is especially common in diphthong syllables.

Two other vowel patterns with falling tone end with CB sequences. The KCB pattern (with a creaky vowel followed by a checked vowel followed by a breathy vowel) is quite common, and is often used with both single vowels and diphthongs, usually at the end of a word:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 2. (With Ana López Curiel.)}

The PCB pattern (plain, creaky, breathy) is much less common:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 3. (With Ana López Curiel.)}

You will need to distinguish these from the KCP pattern (section §3.3.3), which also has a falling tone. Listen carefully to the following words:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 4. (With Ana López Curiel.)}

(These two examples begin with a rr that is actually a sequence of two single r‘s, as described in Lecsyony Tyop. You’ll learn more about why this is so in later lessons!)

The PC pattern, with a plain vowel followed by a checked vowel, also makes a syllable with falling tone. Here are some examples:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 5. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

This vowel pattern is especially common, you’ll learn, in the next-to-last syllable of verbs with a “we” subject (where “we” are performing the action):

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 6. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

The KPC pattern, again with falling tone, is a sequence of a creaky vowel plus a plain vowel plus a checked vowel. This pattern is uncommon, but it is used in several important words:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 7. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

4.1.2. High tone syllables with diphthongs. Two types of diphthong syllables have high tone. One is the familiar PP pattern, as in

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 8. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Much more commonly, however, a PPP pattern,  with three plain vowels, is used, as in

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 9. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

The PPP pattern is only used with diphthongs. These examples show that although the PPP pattern is very common with words borrowed from Spanish, it is also used with other words. Examples like chia versus xnia show that the same spelling, ia, can represent either a [iia] diphthong or a [iaa] diphthong. (Any time you have a vowel pattern whose pronunciation guide contains three vowels, either the first or the second vowel in the diphthong may be doubled.)

§4.2. Using hyphens

§4.2.1. Hyphens in pronunciation guides. A hyphen (-) is occasionally used in a pronunciation guide to show that two vowel letters in a row do not form a single syllable (a diphthong). Here are some examples, using words that express the idea of a verb and its subject:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 10. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

As you can see, the two vowels in the written version of the word may be the same, or they may be different. What’s important is that the pronunciation guide contains two syllables rather than one. Normally Zapotec syllables start with consonants. When a new syllable starts with a vowel, we indicate this with a hyphen before that vowel in the pronunciation guide.

Hyphens are written in pronunciation guides like these when PRONOUN endings (meaning “I”, “you”, “he”, “she”, and so on) beginning with vowels are added to words ending in vowels. The separate syllables can become especially hard to hear with pronouns beginning with ë, like the -ëng ending you learned about in Lecsyony Tyop. Words like the following may actually sound more like one syllable than two to you:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 11. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Listen as your teacher pronounces these words. The added second syllable makes the vowel pattern sound different from the way it would sound by itself. You’ll learn more about how this works in Lecsyony Tseiny (13).

§4.2.2. Hyphens in ordinary spelling. Normally, hyphens are used only in pronunciation guides, not in ordinary Zapotec spelling. There is one exception that affects only a few words. Rgu-i ‘he puts (it) into (it)” [rgùu’-ih] is one of the verbs whose pronunciation guide needs a hyphen to separate two vowels in different syllables, as described in section §4.2.1. Normally, we wouldn’t write a hyphen between the two vowels in a word like this, but in this word, we do, since otherwise the letter sequence gui would represent the sound [g] followed by the sound [i], as explained in §2.4.4. Compare the following:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 12. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

We spell “he puts (it) into (it)” with a hyphen to show that the u and the i are in separate syllables. You’ll learn more about this special spelling rule in Lecsyony Tseiny (13).

§4.3. Lenis and fortis consonants

§4.3.1. Lenis-fortis consonant pairs. The consonant sounds of Valley Zapotec (and almost all other Zapotec languages) can be divided into two groups, called LENIS and FORTIS.

Most of the Valley Zapotec consonants occur in lenis-fortis pairs, as shown in the following chart. (B and p form a pair, as do zh and x, and so on.)

“Lenis” means something like “relaxed”, while “fortis” means something like “tense”, “tight”, or “forceful”. If you compare any lenis consonant in the chart with the corresponding fortis consonant, you will probably see why these terms are used. For each pair, the two consonants are made with the same parts of the mouth, but tension of the speech organs is different.

Even pairs of consonants that are written the same and indicated only in pronunciation guides have lenis and fortis pronunciations:

The six remaining Valley Zapotec consonants don’t come in pairs:

If you say them aloud, however, and compare them with the lenis and fortis consonants in the first chart, you can probably see why w and y can be grouped with the lenis consonants you saw in the first chart, and why f, j, ts, and ch are grouped with the fortis consonants.

§4.3.2. Differences between lenis and fortis consonants. There are several general differences in pronunciation between lenis and fortis consonants.

First, fortis consonants take longer to say than lenis ones. This is one difference between rr and r, and why the pronunciation of sounds like [mm], [ll], and [nn] are indicated with double letters.

On the other hand, the same vowel or vowel sequence sounds longer before a lenis consonant than it does before a fortis consonant. Compare the following pairs of words, and see if you agree:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 13. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

The differences in vowel length we’re talking about here made automatically, and are not indicated in the pronunciation guides (or in spelling). As you practice speaking Zapotec, you’ll learn to make these distinctions with no difficulty.

Such differences in pronunciation are a bit trickier when they involve fortis-lenis consonant pairs that are written identically, as in the following examples:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 14. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

With practice, you’ll learn to make these distinctions too.

§4.3.3. Lenis and fortis consonants at the ends of words. Another difference between lenis and fortis consonants has to do with the way these groups of sounds change their pronunciations in different types of words.

Fortis consonants sound pretty much the same all the time, although at the end of a word they may sound even more forceful. Lenis consonants, however, often change their pronunciation when they are at the end of a word (or at the end of the word before a final y) or when they are next to a fortis consonant. In these positions, lenis consonants often sound more like their fortis counterparts. Say rbab and teiby aloud. You’ll probably agree that the b sounds at the end of these words sound different from b sounds at the beginning of words. You may even feel that these final b sounds are a lot like p (the fortis counterpart of b). Now consider the zh in dizh. It is different from the zh sound at the beginning of a word, more like a fortis x sound (though certainly not the same). The difference is that when these lenis consonant sounds occur at the end of a word, the vocal cords usually do not vibrate.

Listen to your teacher pronounce other lenis consonants at the end of words, and see if you observe the same type of change.

_{Lecsyony Tap, Picture 2. The Sunday market in Tlacolula de Matamoros, with the church in the background.}

§4.4 Borrowings from Spanish into Zapotec

§4.4.1 Spanish-style accents on vowels in pronunciation guides. There’s one more thing you need to learn about Zapotec pronunciation guides. Some Zapotec words are shown in pronunciation guides with an accent mark like the one used on some words in Spanish (an acute accent, rising from left to right, as in [á], [é], [í], [ó], and [ú] — this is different from the grave accent that is used to show creaky vowels in pronunciation guides, as in [à], [è], [ì], [ò], and [ù]). Here are some examples:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 15. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Normally, the key syllable is the last syllable in the vocabulary entry for a word, but this is not always true. Words like those above are different from most other Zapotec words in that their key syllable is not their last one. Words like these are written with an acute accent mark on their key syllable. Each of these borrowed words has one of the same types of vowel patterns you’ve learned about in its key syllable, but that key syllable does not come at the end of the word.

§4.4.2. Borrowings from Spanish into Zapotec. This section explains some of the changes that occur when Spanish words are borrowed into Zapotec. If you’re not too interested in Spanish, you can skip ahead to section §4.5, as long as you understand the use of accents in pronunciation guides described in §4.4.1 above.

Most Spanish words that end in a vowel sound are accented (pronounced with more stress) on the next to the last syllable. In the Spanish examples below, the vowel of the accented or stressed syllable is underlined. (This underlining is not a normal feature of Spanish spelling, but is included here to make our comparisons with Zapotec clearer.)

An accent mark (´ ) is sometimes written in a Spanish word to show that a vowel is accented or stressed. According to the rules of Spanish spelling, this mark is not written in words like those above, which have regular stress on the next-to-last syllable and end in either a vowel or the letters s or n. An accent mark is written, however, when the next-to-last syllable is stressed in words that end with a consonant other than s or n. The Spanish words below have the same next-to-last-syllable stress pattern as those above, but they end in z and l, so (according to the rule) the stressed vowel (again underlined here) must have an accent:

The accent mark is always written in Spanish words where the stress goes on any syllable before the next-to-last syllable, such as the following:

Valley Zapotec does not have accent or stress as Spanish (or English) does. When Valley Zapotec speakers borrow Spanish words, they always make the stressed syllable into the key syllable of the word, and key syllables are almost always the last syllable of the basic form of a Zapotec word. When Zapotec speakers borrow a word that ends in a vowel that is not stressed, they usually drop that vowel off the end of the word:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 16. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

A whole unstressed syllable, like the ez of López, drops in many words:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 17. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

(Other changes may occur as well, such as changing Spanish p to b and adding extra y‘s, especially at the ends of words.) In all these examples, the key syllable of the borrowed word is the one that is stressed in Spanish.

Examples like Pepsy and maestr show that borrowed words that have dropped vowels may end in two or three consonants (as well as, sometimes, an added y). Zapotec words usually have only one consonant (at most) after the last vowel, however (not counting an extra y or w), so in many cases extra consonants like the d of Hernández, the r of Pedro, and the tr of maestro are dropped from the borrowed words:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 18. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

In these examples, only one vowel is dropped from the end of the Spanish word. Sometimes, though, the vowels of two unstressed syllables may be dropped when a Spanish stressed syllable becomes a Zapotec key syllable:

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 19. (With Ana López Curiel.)}

(Other changes in vowels and consonants may occur as well, as we have already seen. The words mes and maestr, which both come from Spanish maestro, show that a Spanish word is sometimes borrowed into Zapotec more than once, at different times, with different meanings! And the example above shows that borrowed words may change their meaning as well as their pronunciation.)

Sometimes, especially in words borrowed more recently, unstressed vowels and syllables are not dropped when Spanish words are used in Zapotec, producing Zapotec words with additional vowels following their key syllables. This is when we use the accented vowels [á], [é], [í], [ó], and [ú] in Zapotec pronunciation guides.

^{Lecsyony 4, Video 20. (With Ana López Curiel.)}

The accent marks on the vowels [á], [é], [í], [ó], and [ú] in the pronunciation guides for these words indicate that their key syllable is not the last syllable, as in all other Zapotec words. Such accents are used in pronunciation guides for Zapotec words borrowed from Spanish whenever the key syllable (corresponding to the stressed syllable in Spanish) is not at the end of the word.

§4.4.3. Comparing accents in Zapotec pronunciation guides and in Spanish. The use of accented vowels in Zapotec pronunciation guides does not correspond with the use of these symbols in Spanish, because the rules for writing accents are different between the two languages. In many cases, as with [fá’sihlly], [jí’quëmm], and [ú’taleh], the accented vowel in Zapotec pronunciation guides is the same vowel that is written with an accent mark in Spanish. But in cases like [ónseh] and [té’nnihzy] the accented vowel in Zapotec pronunciation guides (though stressed in Spanish) is not written with an accent mark in Spanish. Furthermore, in words like [Rna’anny] and [Lo’oby] vowels that are written with an accent mark in Spanish do not need to be written with an accent mark in the Zapotec pronunciation guides, because later syllables in the word have been dropped.

Thus, although the accented vowels [á], [é], [í], [ó], and [ú] in Zapotec pronunciation guides look like Spanish accented vowels, they are not used exactly the same way. These Zapotec vowels are used in pronunciation guides any time the independent form of a word (without added endings like -ag “this”, -ëng “he, she, his, her”, or -ën “we, our”, as discussed further in Lecsyony Gaz) does not end with a key syllable. The Spanish rules for using accents, as you’ve seen here (and we haven’t mentioned them all!), are more complicated.

§4.5. A fuller vowel pattern summary

Lecsyony Chon presented a chart of the most common Valley Zapotec vowel patterns (in section §3.7). That chart is repeated below, slightly reorganized, with the added patterns introduced in this lesson.

In the chart, vowel patterns are presented in four groups, according to their tone (high, low, rising, or falling). Within each tone group, the vowel patterns are organized alphabetically. References are given to the sections where the vowel patterns were first introduced.

Work hard at trying to imitate your teacher and the speakers on the recordings, and to refer back to this unit — especially the writing and pronunciation guide summary in S-I — whenever you need to.

§4.6. Writing Zapotec Sentences

When you begin writing your own sentences in Zapotec, you can use capital letters and punctuation marks just the same as you would in writing in other languages.

You’re already seen in our examples that Zapotec names of people, places, and certain things are capitalized:

In this book, we generally follow English rules for capitalization. This means that some words that would not be capitalized in Spanish are capitalized in Zapotec:

Zapotec sentences start with a capital letter, and end with a period — unless they need to end with a question mark or an exclamation point!

These sentences provide some more examples of the use of the ending -ëng, which you saw in Lecsyony Tyop (you’ll learn how to use this ending in Lecsyony Gaz). The first example shows another instance of a Zapotec sentence like Ntonëng that consists of a single word.

In the remainder of this book, pronunciation guides will not be given for most sentences. (They will be discussed any time new or unexpected pronunciations come up, of course.) Sentences and other examples will usually be presented in two columns, with Zapotec on the left and English on the right, as follows:

It’s a good idea to try reading every new example to yourself (or out loud). If you are uncertain as to the pronunciation of any word, you can check the Rata Ra Dizh at the end of this book, or ask your teacher for help.

§4.7. Using the Valley Zapotec Dictionary

Many people studying Valley Zapotec may want to learn more words than are given in the Rata Ra Dizh (vocabulary) at the end of this book. The Di’csyonaary X:tèe’n Dìi’zh Sah Sann Lu’uc (Dictionary of San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec / Diccionario Zapoteco de San Lucas Quiaviní) is a dictionary of the variety of Valley Zapotec used in San Lucas Quiaviní by Pamela Munro and Felipe H. Lopez with the assistance of Olivia V. Méndez (Martínez), Rodrigo Garcia, and Michael R. Galant, published in 1999 by the Chicano Studies Research Center of UCLA. If you look at the title of this dictionary, you’ll see that it’s given as a pronunciation guide rather than in the spelling system used here (in which it would be written Dicsyonary Xten Dizhsa San Luc).

You’ll find that this dictionary lists many more words than we have included here, with lots of other valuable information, but that it is a little tricky to use, since all words are listed under their pronunciation guide rather than their spelling. (In addition, we recognize now that there are some errors in the dictionary, which was the first dictionary of modern Valley Zapotec ever written.) If you can’t find a word in the Zapotec-English/Spanish section, you can look it up in either the English or Spanish index and then proceed to the main Zapotec section for more information. (A revision of the dictionary using the same spelling system employed in this book is in progress. If you have comments on the content or organization of the dictionary, please let us know!)