October 1, 1999
Los Angeles -- Six years ago, Oaxacan immigrant Felipe H. Lopez approached UCLA Linguistics Professor Pamela Munro. "My language has never been written down," he said, thinking of the Mexican village where he grew up. "In a few generations, it may be lost. Can you help me?" Now, their dream of having a dictionary of his language has come true.
The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center announced today that it has published the first dictionary with English definitions of a Zapotec language. The co-authors are Munro, a leading scholar of indigenous languages of the Americas, and Lopez, a graduate student at UCLA. Lopez was featured a year ago in a Los Angeles Times article that detailed his efforts to document the Zapotec language.
The Oaxacan community will be celebrating this milestone at the Oaxacan restaurant Guelaguetza - which Hispanic Magazine chose this month as one of the top three Hispanic restaurants in Los Angeles - on Saturday, October 16, from 3 to 5 p.m. Guelaguetza is located at 11127 Palms Blvd.
The dictionary is of the endangered Zapotec language spoken in Lopez's pueblo of San Lucas Quiavin, in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, and by many immigrants in Los Angeles. The Zapotecan language family is the largest indigenous language group in Oaxaca and one of the largest in Mexico.
The two-volume dictionary contains over 9,000 entries and cross-references. Zapotec words and expressions are defined in both English and Spanish. Volume II contains English-Zapotec and Spanish-Zapotec indices with over 20,000 brief entries. The dictionary is the product of a National Science Foundation-funded project at UCLA, a center for the scholarly study of Zapotec.
One of the first ethnic studies centers, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center was established by visionary scholars in 1969. For thirty years, its publishing unit has been a leader in its field.
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