Even though more than 99% of Mexico’s population speaks Spanish, most as native speakers, the country nonetheless ranks sixth in terms of the number of languages indigenous to its borders. Although communities still speaking indigenous languages today can be found all across the Latin American country, by far the biggest concentration is in the south of the country, particularly in the state of Oaxaca. And indeed, that’s where you’ll find, among many others, Isthmus Zapotec.
Isthmus Zapotec, alternatively called Juchitán Zapotec, is but one of many Zapotec languages, with the overall Zapotec language group collectively boasting more than 490,000 native speakers. The Zapotec languages sometimes differ significantly from one another, with some variants mutually unintelligible. The Mexican government officially recognizes 60 Zapotec languages, with Isthmus Zapotec standing as one of the largest with 85,000 native speakers. But still, translation services are rare, so we at TranslationServices.com have proudly put together our own Isthmus Zapotec translation team.
Reach out to us with a message if you’d like to see a free quote for our Isthmus Zapotec translation services!
Discovering the Isthmus Zapotec language
As the name clearly suggests, Isthmus Zapotec is spoken on an isthmus—specifically, Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Isthmus Zapotec is spoken in the southern part of the isthmus, in the municipalities of Tehuantepec and Juchitán de Zaragoza. Another Zapotec language, Guevea de Humbolt Zapotec, is sometimes called Northern Isthmus Zapotec, but the two are separate languages. All Zapotec languages hail from the Oto–Manguean language family, an extensive language family of southern Mexico that accounts for many of the languages in the linguistically diverse state of Oaxaca.
Like many other Oto–Manguean languages, Isthmus Zapotec uses a default word order of verb-subject-object, a trait shared by only 9% of the world’s languages. The language lacks case marking, and in fact, Isthmus Zapotec nouns are rarely inflected, not even to indicate the plural form—rather, there’s a separate plural word. Verbs, however, are conjugated, with prefixes indicating the tense and aspect of an action and affixes denoting the subject performing the action. Nouns tend to precede modifiers, coming before adjectives, demonstratives, and relative clauses, but numerals come before nouns. Even vocabulary can be tricky in Isthmus Zapotec, which makes no distinction between “arm” and “hand” (although there is a difference between “arm/hand” and “finger”). But it’s clear that translating to and from Isthmus Zapotec is no walk in the park—which is why it’s worth it to work with native-speaking translators like the ones we’ve hired.
The best Isthmus Zapotec translation services—for any project!
What do you want to translate to or from Isthmus Zapotec? No matter what your project is, we’d love to help you. Our Isthmus Zapotec translators are native speakers from Tehuantepec, Juchitán de Zaragoza, and elsewhere in Oaxaca and beyond, who work passionately to help clients from around Mexico and the rest of the world communicate clearly. Our translators handle requests to translate both into Isthmus Zapotec and from Isthmus Zapotec, making our team highly versatile.
We also accept a wide range of project types, helping clients from different walks of life access reliable Isthmus Zapotec translation services for a variety of needs. Our academically oriented clients can make use of our academic translation team, which specializes in translation of journal articles, research questionnaires, and more from various fields. Clients from the business world may be interested in our translation services for companies in various industries, covering everything from financial reports to advertisement copy. If you work with creative materials, allow our literary team to help you carve out new audiences for your books, poems, games, apps, and more with specialized Isthmus Zapotec literary translation services.
Whatever you need, our Isthmus Zapotec translation team is eager to help you achieve it. Take a moment to place an order today!