It is spoken by one of the most isolated groups in Oaxaca, the Chatino people in the municipalities of Santa Cruz Zenzontepec and San Jacinto Tlacotepec, and in the former municipality of Santa María Tlapanalquiahuitl.
[3] Stops and affricates are voiced when preceded by a nasal consonant, but are otherwise voiceless.
In native vocabulary, the only permissible coda is the glottal stop.
Phonological evidence, including evidence from a play language, suggests that the glottal stop of word-medial ʔC clusters belongs to the onset of the following syllable rather than the coda of the preceding syllable, and therefore true codas are only found word-finally.
[3] Speakers of Zenzontepec Chatino formerly used a play language called nchakwiʔ tsūʔ ntīlú 'speaking backwards' in which a word's first syllable was transposed to the end of the word, and its tones were replaced with /HØ/.