They are natively spoken by 45,000 Chatino people,[2] whose communities are located in the southern portion of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

These were Tataltepec, Zacatepec, Panixtlahuaca, and the Highlands dialects, with Zenzontepec not tested but based on other studies believed to be completely unintelligible with the rest of the Chatino languages.

His Eastern Chatino contains all the other varieties, and he finds no evidence for subgrouping or further division based on shared innovations.

They hope the resources they have made will soon be used to create educational materials like books to help the Chatino people be able to read and write their language.

Tone letters in many varieties of Western Highlands Chatino are capital letters A through L. These have dedicated Unicode characters (ᴬ ᴮ ꟲ ᴰ ᴱ ꟳ ᴳ ᴴ ᴵ ᴶ ᴷ ᴸ).

The choice of prefix appears to be partially determined by the first consonant of the verb, though there are some irregular cases.

Chatino languages usually have VSO as their predominant order, as in the following example: N-daCON-givenuthexniqdogndahalazyskaonehatortillaxtlyaSpanishqitonutheqo.coyoteN-da nu xniq ndaha ska ha xtlya qi nu qo.CON-give the dog lazy one tortilla Spanish to the coyote'The lazy dog gave a sweetbread to the coyote.

'Chatino-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEJAM, based in Santiago Jamiltepec, Oaxaca.