Talk:Zapotecan languages

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The page Zapotec language is not about one language it is about a group of mutually unintelligible languages that shares the same name (just like Nahuatl language is about a language group). To say that the zapotecan languages consist of the Zapotec language and chatino is a gross oversimplification: there is as much diversity within the zapotec languages as there is between zapotec and chatino. It simply paints the wrong picture. I'll try to think of a better way to word the page which needs serious expansion anyway. Maunus 19:45, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

How is this article different from Zapotec language? If the difference is clear to a specialist, I think it would help to explain it. I nearly replaced this page with a redirect, but this page already links to the other one, so somebody seems to think there's a difference. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
This article is about a particular subgroup of languages, most of whose members happen to be known (for historical and cultural-identity reasons, not necessarily a reflection of their degrees of relatedness) by a name involving zapotec, such Northern Zapotec, Isthmus Zapotec. The living language exception is Chatino, also regarded as a member of the Zapotecan languages. Thus this article's scope differs from that of zapotec language(s), which are the subset of Zapotecan language/dialects spoken in communities that as a group have been called Zapotec people(s). It's a bit like how the Germanic languages grouping includes more than just varieties of German, except that in the case of Zapotecan langs the knowledge/study of them and their speakers had tended to lump them together even more so. As the documentation of these langs evolved thru the 20thC they've been more differentiated, but historical practice and cultural identity still tags most of them under Zapotec, or a variety thereof.--cjllw ʘ TALK 01:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)