The Chapanec language is one of marked individuality. Its phonetics are harmonious, but with many obscure and fluctuating sounds. In its grammatical construction we find a singular absence of distinction between subject and object. While the appreciation of number in the form of nouns is almost absent, their relations are expressed with excessive particularity, so that a noun may have different forms, as it is used in different relations.[184] There is comparatively slight development of the polysynthetic structure which is generally seen in American languages. CHAPANEC LINGUISTIC STOCK. _Chapanecs_, on Rio Grande in Central Chiapas. _Chorotegans_, see _Mangues_. _Dirians_, in the mountains south of Lake Managua. _Guetares_, in Costa Rica. _Mangues_, on Lake Managua, Nicaragua. _Orotinans_, on the Gulf of Nicoya. 9. CHONTALS AND POPOLOCAS; TEQUISELATECAS AND MATAGALPAS. According to the census of 1880 there were 31,000 Indians in Mexico belonging to the _Familia Chontal_.[185] No such family exists. The word _chontalli_ in the Nahuatl language means simply “stranger,” and was applied by the Nahuas to any people other than their own. According to the Mexican statistics, the Chontals are found in the states of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Tobasco, Guatemala and Nicaragua. A similar term is _popoloca_, which in Nahuatl means a coarse fellow, one speaking badly, that is, broken Nahuatl. The popolocas have also been erected into an ethnic entity by some ethnographers, with as little justice as the Chontallis. They are stated to have lived in the provinces of Puebla, Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, Mechoacan, and Guatemala. Sometimes the same tribe has been called both Chontales and Popoloras, which would be quite correct in the Nahuatl tongue, since in it these words are common nouns and nearly synonymous in signification; but employed in an ethnographic sense, they have led to great confusion, and the blending into one of distinct nationalities. I shall attempt to unravel this snarl as far as the linguistic material at my command permits.