IV: The Linguistic Tangle of Oaxaca

The state of confusion of our knowledge of the linguistics of Central America needs no better comment than the hodge-podge in that section of Les Langues du Monde, recently edited by Meillet. Oaxaca is a veritable tangle-knot of linguistic stocks. One is reminded of the Ca'ifornia of early days with its twenty-one unconnected families. Oaxaca is a comparatively small state, but there are fourteen tongues spoken within its borders. With the exception of Aztec not one of them has been seriously studied until now. As for the classifications, they vary all the way from Belmar, who reduces them all to three families, to Meillet, who has eight different stocks represented in the state, four of which would be made up of one single isolated language. I hope that the present paper will help to clear the situation.