zapotec

The Zapotec civilization pre-dates the Aztecs and Maya and were the first to develop a writing system in Mexico.

The Zapotec people are still around today and a large number still speak their ancient language.

Unless Zapotec has remained uniquely isolated from quite strong Spanish/Mexican cultural identity and influence.

This inscription dates back to 600 BCE and is associated with the Zapotec civilization.

Of course this was the dye of royalty halfway around the world to the Zapotec people even before the Aztec conquered them, but details, details.

I just had traditional breakfast in an isolated Zapotec village in Mexico.

My ex-wife’s name is Zapotec and spelled with ll representing a y-sound, something that has caused her continual distress in the roughly three decades she’s lived in the US.

But it's also like, we know what we mean, if the Zapotec people/community are fairly insular or at least in marriage/procreation like to be with their own then that's for casual purposes 'mostly pure'.

(Even ignoring the 200 million speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.) If you combine just Mayan, Nahuatl, Mixtec, and Zapotec you're already in the millions.

This writing system, I believe, is connected to Zapotec and epi-Olmec writing systems, but disentangling who created what and who borrowed from whom in Mesoamerica is challenging.

Just guessing, but I imagine that Google Translate probably will, assuming, say, we represent Zapotec to English as f and English to Kannada as g use f ∘ g to infer the translation of Zapotec to Kannada.

I mean they've written a lot of stuff on their web site about their motivations — they saw that electronics were the wave of the future, they wanted to make Mexico technologically independent and limit the damage of the neoliberal economic model, they wanted to preserve the Zapotec culture from obliteration, and so on — but I think basically it's that they like doing it, in the way Mozart liked music.

How many are "pure Zapotec" vs a blend of Spanish/Aztec/Mayan/Tlaxcalan/Cempoaloan/Texcocan?

The “Hispanic” category covers those whose ancestral language is Spanish, Basque, or Catalan— but it also covers individuals of Mayan, Mixtec, or Zapotec descent who do not speak any of those languages and whose ancestry does not trace to the Iberian Peninsula but bears deep ties to the Americas.

Noticing my immediate confusion, my aunt replied with one word I had never heard before: Zapotec.

Benito Juarez, President of Mexico during their revolution, was Zapotec.

Oaxaca and its surroundings are still identifiably Zapotec!