The
Mixtec languages belong to the
Otomanguean language family of
Mexico, and are closely related to the
Trique and
Cuicatec languages. They are spoken by over half a million people. Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this complex
dialect continuum poses challenges at the level of linguistic theory. Depending on the criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages, there may be as many as fifty Mixtec languages.