LW/D 48: Latyaygi – English – Español: A trilingual dictionary of Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca

Latyaygi – English – Español:  A trilingual dictionary of Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca

Loretta O’Connor
Lowland Chontal digital archive

Lowland Chontal is an endangered language of southeastern Mexico. It is one of two surviving sisters of Oaxaca Chontal, an unclassified language family with proposed links to the California linguistic area. The language is spoken fluently by fewer than 100 elders along the coastal plain of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Many more people speak Lowland Chontal with varying degrees of proficiency and as a second language.

This trilingual dictionary is based primarily on the author’s years of fieldwork in San Pedro Huamelula and surrounding areas. The target audience includes Chontal learners and educators as well as academic linguistics. Introductory prefaces in English and Spanish orient the user to basic sounds and grammatical patterns in the language, with links to online materials, and glossaries from English and Spanish are provided. Dictionary entries include cross-references between related words and copious example sentences from field recordings. An interactive version of the dictionary on CD (included with the print volume) permits sorting and access through multiple fields, automatic jumping between searchable terms in entries and example sentences, and the ability to print vocabulary alphabetically or by semantic domain.

The author has various publications on this language and is curator of the Lowland Chontal digital archive in the DoBeS corpus.

ISBN 9783862884438 (Hardbound). Languages of the World/Dictionaries 48. 287pp. + CD. 2013.