Identification of Vowel Sounds of the Choapan Variant of Zapotec Language

Many pre-hispanic languages in Mexico, including the Zapotec language, are faced with the real possibility of extinction in the near future. There are many reasons for this, such as the younger indigenous populations who prefer to speak Spanish instead and a dwindling number of older native speakers. This means that often there is a loss of information about the language’s correct pronunciation. In particular, in the Choapan Zapotec variant there are six vowels, of which five are similar to those in Spanish; the sixth vowel is /ë/, and although it is similar to the /e/ vowel, some confusion arises due to the previously mentioned problems. In this paper, Dynamic Time Warping was applied in order to determine the phonetic sound from the two most important phonetic alphabets (IPA & SAMPA) for the /e/ vowels. Two databases of Choapan Zapotec were obtained and the vowel phonemes were segmented and their tonal characteristic prevailed for the symbol assignation in both alphabets. This paper aims to provide valuable information for modeling the sounds of this Zapotec variant, in order that it help conserve the language.