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to accept that they have a common language. The only
way to determine the number of languages there are
and where they are spoken is to carry out a detailed
sociolinguistic study.

Mazahua and Pame consist of two languages and Zapotec
of as many as forty. This illustrates that, in general, what
was previously defined as a language with
a name occupied since colonial times, i.e. commitment
(n.): compromiso
Mixtec or Totonac, is in reality a family of languages.
The constituents of these language families often
go unnamed. In a sense, INALI’s commitment to
the protection of languages has resulted in over-
differentiation and to the classific tion of dialects as
separate languages. This needs to be kept in mind
when looking at the maps in this Atlas because in many
cases we have used the names provided by INALI.

The language classific tion in Campbell (1997) is
what INALI uses.However, instead of what linguists
consider a stock, the term "language family" is used.
"Linguistic group" is substituted for what linguists would
normally call a family, and "language or language
variety" replaces what linguists would call languages
or transformed dialects. The classific tions have been
determined as 11 stocks, or "language families", 68
families, or "linguistic groups" and 364 languages or
transformed dialects, or "varieties".

The INALI publications we’ve mentioned above and an
unpublished INALI article form the basis of the research
that was undertaken for this Atlas. The unpublished
article includes both the number of adult
and child speakers of a given language. undertaken
Glossary on
page 86

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