The majority of people in Mexico—more than 99%, to be exact—speak Spanish, and for most of them, it’s their native language. So you may be surprised to learn that Mexico is, in fact, one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with hundreds of languages spanning its borders. That’s thanks to the rich mosaic of indigenous languages that populate the land, and despite endangerment, many—such as Mitla Zapotec—are still alive today.
The Zapotec languages are a cluster of related languages spoken in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state, and although Zapotec is often classified as a single language, in reality, it’s a group of around 50 languages that are often not even mutually intelligible. Mitla Zapotec, also called Didxsaj, is one of these Zapotec languages, with Ethnologue recording the language as having around 18,000 native speakers.
Like nearly all other indigenous languages in Mexico, Mitla Zapotec is endangered, with most speakers bilingual in Spanish. This situation reduces the number of resources and translation services available for the language, but we at TranslationServices.com are proud to provide dedicated translation services for Mitla Zapotec with our brand-new team.
We can provide a free quote for our Mitla Zapotec translation services—all you need to do is ask!
Let’s take a closer look at Mitla Zapotec.
Like most other Zapotec languages, Mitla Zapotec is spoken in Oaxaca, a southern state in Mexico that houses more than half of Mexico’s speakers of indigenous languages. Specifically, Mitla Zapotec speakers are found in the aptly named Mitla Valley. Mitla Zapotec speakers report being able to understand around 75% of Guelavía Zapotec, a variety of Western Tlacolula Valley Zapotec, but Guelavía Zapotec speakers can’t understand Mitla Zapotec. All Zapotec languages belong to the Oto–Manguean family, a major language family in southern Mexico unrelated to other major languages like Nahuatl or Yucatec Maya.
Mitla Zapotec’s default word order is verb-subject-object, but subject-verb-object is also common and can alter the nuance of the sentence. Nouns have minimal inflection beyond a plural prefix, and a certain type of possessed nouns takes the prefix x-, with the possessor specified after the noun (e.g., xcojb Maria, meaning “Maria’s dough,” or xcu’nreni, meaning “their tortillas,” with -reni functioning as a third-person marker). Verbs are more complicated, inflecting for six different aspects: continuative, habitual, completive, potential, unfulfilled, and incomplete. Mitla Zapotec’s various grammatical complexities mean it’s quite a difficult language to translate to or from, but don’t worry—that’s why we’ve hired skilled native speakers.
Proudly providing customizable Mitla Zapotec translation services
Whereas most translation services just offer overarching “Zapotec translation services” at best, we at TranslationServices.com are proud to go deeper, catering specifically to languages like Mitla Zapotec. Our recruitment efforts have taken us all over Mitla Valley, and speakers of different varieties of the language populate our team. They love their native language, and they love helping people translate to and from it, so whether you’re looking for translation services from Mitla Zapotec to English or from English to Mitla Zapotec, we’re here for you.
Looking for specialized services for your Mitla Zapotec translation project? Don’t hesitate to ask—we’ll do our best! We have quite a diverse team of passionate native speakers with experience in different areas of translation, so if you’re looking for specialty academic translation, business translation, literary translation, or localization, we’ll do our best to set you up with the right person from our team. Additionally, some of our translators boast expertise in unrelated fields, so if you need a Mitla Zapotec translator who’s familiar with a particular field, just ask. For translation projects of any type and content, we’re eager to help.
Let’s discuss your Mitla Zapotec translation needs! Just send a message describing your project, and we’ll get back to you!