Indigenous Oaxacan Dialects/Languages

In California, the most spoken Oaxacan dialects are Mixteco, Zapotec, and Triqui. Of the indigenous Oaxacan population in California, over 50% speak Mixteco, 25% speak Zapoteco, and little less than 10% speak Triqui. Though these indigenous peoples are very closely related historically and geographically, all communities contain unique cultural traits and are distinct from one another as are their languages. These languages are part of the larger Oto-Manguean family that comprises several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. The largest number of its speakers today are found in Oaxaca.

The Mixtecs and the Zapotecs each have about a half million speakers, accounting for those in both the United States and Mexico.  There is a third group with a significant presence in California agriculture, the Triquis, but this is a smaller linguistic community with only about 40,000 speakers in Mexico and the United States combined.  Together, members of these three language groups represent the great majority (about nine out of ten) of the Mexican indigenous farmworkers in California agriculture.