Tzotzil language in the context of Chʼol language

San Cristóbal de las Casas (Spanish: [saŋkɾisˈtoβal de las ˈkasas] ), also known by its native Tzotzil name, Jovel (pronounced [xɤ̞ˈve̞l]), is a town and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. It was the capital of the state until 1892, and is still considered the cultural capital of Chiapas.

The municipality is mostly made up of mountainous terrain, but the city sits in a small valley surrounded by hills. The city’s center maintains its Spanish colonial layout and much of its architecture, with red tile roofs, cobblestone streets and wrought iron balconies often with flowers. Most of the city’s economy is based on commerce, services and tourism.

The National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (Spanish: Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas, INPI, Tzotzil: Instituto Ta Sjunul Jlumaltik Sventa Batsi Jnaklometik, Q'eqchi': Molam Tk’anjelaq Chi Rixeb’ Laj Ralch’och’, Ixil: Jejleb’al Unq’a Tenam Kumool, Chocholtec: Ncha ndíe kie tía ndie xadë Ndaxingu, Awakatek: Ama’l Iloltetz e’ Kmon Qatanum) is a decentralized agency of the Mexican Federal Public Administration. It was established on December 4, 2018, though the earliest Mexican government agency for indigenous matters was created in 1948. It is headquartered in Mexico City and headed by Adelfo Regino Montes.

In linguistic typology, a verb–object–subject or verb–object–agent language, which is commonly abbreviated VOS or VOA, is one in which most sentences arrange their elements in that order. That would be the equivalent in English to "Ate apples Sam." The relatively rare default word order accounts for only 3% of the world's languages. It is the fourth-most common default word order among the world's languages out of the six. It is a more common default permutation than OVS and OSV but is significantly rarer than SOV (as in Hindi and Japanese), SVO (as in English and Mandarin), and VSO (as in Filipino and Irish). Families in which all or many of their languages are VOS include the following:

• the Algonquian family (including Ojibwa)
• the Arawakan family (including Baure and Terêna)
• the Austronesian family (including Dusun, Malagasy, Toba Batak, Tukang Besi, Palauan, Gilbertese, Fijian and Tsou)
• the Chumash family (including Inoseño Chumash)
• the Mayan family (including Huastec, Yucatec, Mopán, Lacondón, Chol, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chuj, Tojolabal, Cakchiquel, Tzutujil, Sacapultec, Pocomam, Pocomchí and Kekchi)
• the Otomanguean family (including Mezquital Otomi and Highland Otomi)
• the Salishan family (including Coeur d'Alene and Twana)

Uspantek (Uspanteco, Uspanteko, Uspantec) is a Mayan language of Guatemala, closely related to Kʼicheʼ. It is spoken in the Uspantán and Playa Grande Ixcán municipios, in the Department El Quiché. It is also one of only four Mayan languages to have developed contrastive tone (the others being Yukatek, Mochoʼ and one dialect of Tzotzil). It distinguishes between vowels with high tone and vowels with low tone.