Highland Chatino is an indigenous Mesoamerican language, one of the Chatino family of the Oto-Manguean languages. Dialects are rather diverse; neighboring dialects are about 80% mutually intelligible.

For grammatical details, see Chatino languages, which includes examples from Yaitepec dialect.

Eastern Chatino is spoken in 14 dialects in 17 communities that centered on the economic and cultural centers of Santa Catarina Juquila and Santiago Yaitepec. ISO assigns these dialects to four groups with different language codes, but there is no objective evidence that the dialects grouped together are closest to each other. Dialects include:

Lachao-Yolotepec

Yaitepec

Panixtlahuaca

Quiahije

Nopala

Zacatepec

There are a variety of practical orthographies for Chatino, most based on Spanish orthography. Typically, ⟨x⟩ = /ʃ/, ⟨ch⟩ = /tʃ/, and /k/ is spelled ⟨c⟩ before back vowels and ⟨qu⟩ before front vowels.

In Quiahije Chatino, and perhaps more broadly across Highland Chatino, superscript capitals A–L are used as lexical tone letters: ᴬ ᴮ ꟲ ᴰ ᴱ ꟳ ᴳ ᴴ ᴵ ᴶ ᴷ ᴸ,^[2] with additional letters (superscript M and S) for tone sandhi.^{[citation needed]} Not all of these are distinct in all dialects; rather, they mark pan-dialect tone-cognate sets.

In Yaitepec dialect, the pronunciations are:^[3]

ᴬ [˧] (3)

ᴮ [˦˨] (24)

ꟲ = ᴷ [˦˧] (23)

ᴰ [˥˨] (14)

ᴱ [˥] (1)

ꟳ = ᴸ [˧˦] (32)

ᴳ [˥˦] (12)

ᴴ [˨˧] (43)

ᴵ [˦] (2)

ᴶ [˧˥] (31)