Tzotzil language

Tzotzil
Batsʼi kʼop
Pronunciation[ɓatsʼi kʼopʰ]
Native toMexico
RegionChiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz
EthnicityTzotzil
Native speakers
550,000 (2020 census)
Mayan
Dialects
  • Chamula
  • Zinacantán
  • San Andrés Larráinzar
  • Huixtán
  • Chenalhó
  • Venustiano Carranza
Language codes
ISO 639-3tzo
Glottologtzot1259
ELPTzotzil

Tzotzil (/ˈ(t)stsɪl/; Batsʼi kʼop [ɓatsʼi kʼopʰ]) is a Maya language spoken by the Indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Some speakers may be somewhat bilingual in Spanish, but many are monolingual Tzotzil speakers. In Central Chiapas, some primary schools and a secondary school are taught in Tzotzil. Tzeltal is the most closely related language to Tzotzil and together they form a Tzeltalan sub-branch of the Mayan language family. Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chʼol are the most widely spoken languages in Chiapas besides Spanish.

There are six dialects of Tzotzil with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility, named after the different regions of Chiapas where they are spoken: Chamula, Zinacantán, San Andrés Larráinzar, Huixtán, Chenalhó, and Venustiano Carranza.