Highland Popoluca

Sierra Popoluca, also known as Soteapanec, Soteapan Zoque, or Highland Popoluca, is a developing Mixe-Zoquean language of the Zoquean branch. It has 35,050 speakers (INALI, 2009) who live in the southern part of Veracruz, Mexico. Sierra Popoluca has two sister languages, Texistepec and Ayapanec, both of which are severely endangered.

The word popoluca means "gibberish” in Nahuatl, and the name Sierra Popoluca comes from the language being labelled as such at the time of conquest. To avoid the derogatory connotations of popoluca, some researchers have adopted the name Soteapanec for the language instead (named after the largest municipality it is spoken in). However, modern speakers do not seem to be concerned with the history of the word and simply see it as the name of their language.

摘自英文维基百科 · Sierra Popoluca · CC BY-SA 4.0