Misantla Totonac is an indigenous language of Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 which is spoken by fewer than 500 indigenous Totonac

Totonac

The Totonac people resided in the eastern coastal and mountainous regions of Mexico at the time of the Spanish arrival in 1519. Today they reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo. They are one of the possible builders of the Pre-Columbian city of El Tajín, and further maintained...

s in central Veracruz

Veracruz

Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...

. It belongs to the Totonacan

Totonacan languages

The Totonacan languages are a family of closely related languages spoken by approximately 200,000 Totonac and Tepehua people in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo in Mexico...

 family. Misantla Totonac is highly endangered

Endangered language

An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....

 and most speakers are elderly, and the language is no longer in daily use in the communities where it was spoken earlier. The language was spoken in the area between Misantla and Xalapa

Xalapa

Xalapa-Enríquez, commonly Xalapa or Jalapa, is the capital city of the Mexican state of Veracruz and the name of the surrounding municipality. In the year 2005 census the city reported a population of 387,879 and the municipality of which it serves as municipal seat reported a population of...

 in central Veracruz, but no speakers live in either of those localities, the remaining speakers instead being found only in outlying towns and rural areas along the road from Xalapa to Misantla. The only town with a viable speech community is the town of Yecuatla, where 293 speakers were counted in 1990 . Other towns with speakers of Misantla Totonac include San Marcos Atexquilapan, Landero y Coss and Chiconquiaco.

In the eighteenth century Zambrano Bonilla published a grammar and Francisco Domínguez published a doctrina (a catechism) of the Totonac language of Naolinco, another town where Misantla Totonac is no longer spoken. Beginning in the 1980s, the American linguist Carolyn MacKay has done fieldwork in Misantla Totonac speaking communities. She has published a grammar and several articles about the language.

Consonants

Consonants of Misantla Totonac

IPA chart for Consonants of Misantla Totonac

	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Uvular	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p	t		k	q	ʔ
Fricatives		s ɬ	ʃ			h
Affricates		ts	tʃ
Approximants	w		j
Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m	n
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....		l

Vowels

IPA chart for Vowels of Misantla Totonac

	front		central		back
	laryngealized	plain	laryngealized	plain	laryngealized	plain
high	ḭ ḭː	i iː			ṵ ṵː	u uː
low			a̰ a̰ː	a aː