Guerrero Chontal language

Not to be confused with Chontal Maya language.

Guerrero Chontal (or Chontal of Guerrero, Chontal de Guerrero) is an unclassified language of Mexico, now extinct. There is no existing description of this language.

Guerrero Chontal
Native to	Mexico
Region	Guerrero
Extinct	after 16th century
Language family	unclassified
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)

Guerrero Chontal should not be confused with Chontal Maya, which is a Mayan language that is still spoken, nor with Oaxaca Chontal, an endangered language spoken in Oaxaca. Chontal is a generic Nahuatl word for foreigner, applied to several unrelated ethnic groups.

Distribution

According to colonial records, this language was spoken to the north of the Balsas River and to the west of the Coixca River, in the northern region of the state of Guerrero. In the 16th century, the primary Chontal settlements were Ixcateopan, Alahuistlan, Ostuma, Coatepec, Toltoltepec, Teloloapan and Acastla.^[1]

Classification

Due to the lack of data, Chontal of Guerrero is unclassifiable. One 16th-century report mentioned that it was "spoken in the throat" and that "it wasn't written because it wasn't pronounced". The same report related it to Tuxtec, another unclassified language spoken to the east. It has thus been suggested that Chontal and Tuxtec could have been related, or even dialects of the same language. However, a different source mentioned that Tuxtec was once spoken in Ixcateopan, but by 1579 Chontal had replaced it.

In the 16th century, Chontal was evidently a fairly widespread language, but was ignored by Spanish missionaries, despite smaller languages receiving some attention. Given that the Chontal region was home to many people bilingual in both Chontal and Nahuatl, the missionaries were perhaps able to rely on the latter language in order to communicate and preach their religion, without needing to know Chontal.

Donald Brand opined that Chontal was probably an Oto-Manguean language.^[2]