David Beck includes Coyutla under Sierra Totonac. However, MacKay and Trechsel say that Coyutla Totonac also seems to share a great deal of its morphology with the Northern varieties and thus may not be "Sierra" as Beck claims. The classification of these and many other varieties must remain "open" until further fieldwork can be done and additional material made available.

The categorization adopted here is that of Carolyn MacKay and Frank Trechsel. However, all acknowledge that there is no real consensus on the linguistic categorization of this area.