Zapotec Language Course offered online

Instructor Rayo Cruz was part of a special summer ethnohistory workshop led by Dr. Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, which was part of the Penn-Mellon Dispossessions in the Americas project. Rayo is a Master's student working on his thesis in Applied Linguistics at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. As a speaker of the Zapotec language, his guiding principles and foundation are the revitalization and strengthening of his language and culture. Zapoteca is an important language of southern and central Mexico, and there is a significant community of Zapoteca speakers in Southern California. He's offering 20 online lessons on weekends, recorded lessons will be also be available. 

Have you ever wondered how or where to learn Zapotec? This is one of the native languages with the highest number of speakers in Mexico and one of the most widely spoken on the entire continent. It is spoken in four regions across the state of Oaxaca, although the number of native Zapotec speakers has decreased in recent decades.

At present, many people are willing to learn Zapotec as a second language. However, since this is a minoritized and oppressed language, there are no actual places offering methodical and systematic teaching. Recently, some people and organizations have started to offer Zapotec language courses, but they are facing many obstacles. To start with, there are no materials for teaching Zapotec as a second language and there are no institutions where you can get training as a Zapotec instructor.

See this talk at APS for more information: https://youtu.be/59Z0DET1GxU?si=bArHGvJF9IYS128K