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OMG, I totally went reference librarian on today's blog. Twice in the past couple of weeks, this guy has come in (once with a younger lady and once with an older lady) to my work to make copies. They speak a little English but speak to each other in a different language. Before I really paid attention I just assumed they were speaking Spanish, but when I tuned in I realized that it definitely wasn't Spanish. At all. It also wasn't Portuguese or any language that kind of sounds like Spanish. It totally started driving me nuts and I HAD to figure out what language these people were speaking.

Well, I had only one real clue to go on...the stuff they were copying was documents from Oaxaca, Mexico. So just now I went to a Wikipedia article on indigenous languages of the Americas. On that page I found a map of Mexico with different regions colored in to show what languages are common in which areas. I then opened up a new tab and went to the Wikipedia article on Oaxaca, Mexico to see where in Mexico that is. I compared the two maps, and the most widespread native language in the Oaxaca area is Zapoteco. Finally, I went to the Wikipedia article on the Zapotec language, where it's confirmed that the majority of Zapotec speakers live in the state of Oaxaca. Woohoo! I feel very smart. Obviously I have no way of confirming that this is the language that my customer speaks (without, um, asking him, but that seems kind of overly nosy), but I think it is a good guess. I think this was some pretty slick librarian work, if I do say so myself. Somebody give me a damn job.