Mayan languages: Difference between revisions

- This article uses the ALMG orthographies for the Mayan languages of Guatemala, and the Mexican languages Chʼol, Wastek and Tojolabʼal. Traditional Spanish spellings are used for Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Lacandón and Chicomuceltec. The Cordemex orthography is used for the Yucatec language. For Classical CHiché the traditional spanishSpanish spelling is used. The name Jakaltek is preferred over the alternative Poptiʼ.

|mapcaption=Location of Mayan speaking populations. See [[#Distribution|below]] for a detailed map of the different languages.{{imagefact|date=December 2022}}

The '''Mayan languages'''<ref group=notes>In [[linguistics]], it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural [[noun]], and as the [[adjective|adjectival]] form.</ref> form a [[language family]] spoken in [[Mesoamerica]], both in the south of Mexico and northern [[Central America]]. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6six million [[Maya peoples|Maya people]], primarily in [[Guatemala]], [[Mexico]], [[Belize]], [[El Salvador]] and [[Honduras]]. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name,{{sfn|Spence|Dye|Worby|de Leon-Escribano|1998}}<ref group=notes>Achiʼ is counted as a variant of Kʼicheʼ by the Guatemalan government.</ref> and Mexico [[Languages of Mexico|recognizes]] eight within its territory.

During the Spanish colonization of Central America, all [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|indigenous]] languages were eclipsed by [[Spanish language|Spanish]], which became the new prestige language. The use of Mayan languages came to an end in many important domains of society, including administration, religion and literature, came to an end. Yet the Maya area was more resistant to outside influence than others,<ref group=notes>The last independent Maya kingdom ([[Tayasal]]) was not conquered until 1697, some 170 years after the first ''[[conquistador]]es'' arrived. During the Colonial and Postcolonial periods, Maya peoples periodically rebelled against the colonizers, such as the [[Caste War of Yucatán]], which extended into the 20th century.</ref> and perhaps for this reason, many Maya communities still retain a high proportion of [[monolingual]] speakers. The Maya area is now dominated by the Spanish language. While a number of Mayan languages are [[moribund language|moribund]] or are considered [[endangered language|endangered]], others remain quite viable, with speakers across all age groups and native language use in all domains of society.<ref group=notes>Grenoble & Whaley (1998) characterized the situation this way: "Mayan languages typically have several hundreds of thousands of speakers, and a majority of Mayas speak a Mayan language as a first language. The driving concern of Maya communities is not to revitalize their language but to buttress it against the increasingly rapid spread of Spanish ... [rather than being] at the end of a process of language shift, [Mayan languages are] ... at the beginning."{{harvtxt|Grenoble|Whaley|1998|pages=xi-xiixi–xii}}</ref>

The Mayan family consists of thirty languages. Typically, these languages are grouped into 5-65–6 major subgroups (Yucatecan, Huastecan, Chʼolan–Tzeltalan, Qʼanjobʼalan, Mamean, and Kʼichean).{{sfn|Campbell|Kaufman|1985}}{{sfn|Campbell|2015}}{{sfn|Bennett|Coon|Henderson|2015}}

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| caption1 = Present geographic distribution of Mayan languages in Mexico and Central America

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| caption2 = Map of Mayan language communities—font size indicates relative size of speaker population. (Yucatec and Kʼicheʼ with 900,000 and 400,000 speakers respectively; 100,000–500,000 speakers; 10,000–100,000 speakers; and under 10,000 speakers.){{imagefact|date=December 2022}}

Studies estimate that Mayan languages are spoken by more than 6six million people. Most of them live in Guatemala where depending on estimates 40%-60–60% of the population speaks a Mayan language. In Mexico the Mayan speaking population was estimated at 2.5 million people in 2010, whereas the Belizean speaker population figures around 30,000.{{sfn|Bennett|Coon|Henderson|2015}}

[[File:Map-Maya in Mexico.svg|thumb|The area where Yucatec Maya is spoken in the peninsula of Yucatán{{imagefact|date=December 2022}}]]

Due to subsequent vowel loss, many Mayan languages now show complex consonant clusters at both ends of syllables. Following the reconstruction of [[Lyle Campbell]] and [[Terrence Kaufman]], the Proto-Mayan language had the following sounds.{{sfn|Campbell|2015}} It has been suggested that proto-Mayan was a [[Tonal Language|tonal language]], based on the fact that four different contemporary Mayan languages have tone (Yucatec, Uspantek, San Bartolo Tzotzil<ref group=notes>{{harvtxt|Campbell|2015}} mistakenly writes Tzeltal for Tzotzil, {{harvtxt|Avelino|Shin|2011}} states that the reports of a fully developed tone contrast in San Bartolome Tzotzil are inaccurate</ref> and Mochoʼ), but since these languages each can be shown to have innovated tone in different ways, Campbell considers this unlikely.{{sfn|Campbell|2015}}

A Mayan loanword is ''[[cigar]]''. The Mayan word for "tobacco" is {{lang|myn|sic}} is Mayan for "tobacco" and {{lang|myn|sicar}} means "to smoke tobacco leaves". This is the most likely origin for cigar and thus cigarette.<ref>[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cigar Cigar], Online Etymology Dictionary.</ref>

[[File:Dresden Codex p09.jpg|thumb|upright=0.68|right|Page 9 of the ''[[Dresden Codex]]'' showing the classic Maya language written in [[Maya script|Mayan hieroglyphs]] (from the 1880 Förstermann edition)]] The complex script used to write Mayan languages in pre-Columbian times and known today from engravings at several Maya archaeological sites has been deciphered almost completely. The script is a mix between a logographic and a syllabic system.<ref name="Kettunen & Helmke 2020, p. 8">{{harvtxt|Kettunen|Helmke|2020|page=8}}</ref>

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| footer = Two different ways of writing the word ''bʼalam'' "jaguar" in the Maya script. First as logogram representing the entire word with the single glyph <small>BʼALAM</small>, then phonetically using the three syllable signs ''bʼa'', ''la'', and ''ma''.

*{{cite journal|last=French|first=Brigittine M.|title=The politics of Mayan linguistics in Guatemala: native speakers, expert analysts, and the nation.|journal=Pragmatics|volume=13|issue=4|year=2003|pages=483–498|doi=10.1075/prag.13.4.02fre|s2cid=145598734|urldoi-access=https://semanticscholar.org/paper/3603510fc2880f041a615112163f4cfe70f42075free}}

*{{cite journal|last=Mora-Marín|first=David|year=2009|title=A Test and Falsification of the 'Classic Chʼoltiʼan' Hypothesis: A Study of Three Proto Chʼolan Markers|journal=International Journal of American Linguistics|volume=75|issue=2|pages=115–157|doi=10.1086/596592|s2cid=145216002|url=https://semanticscholar.org/paper/74d67ba1bedc9dec86a5c1d28c597813d4b36b71}}

* {{cite journal|last=Wichmann|first=S.|year=2006|title=Mayan historical linguistics and epigraphy: a new synthesis|journal=Annual Review of Anthropology|volume=35|pages=279–294|doi=10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123257|s2cid=18014314|url=https://semanticscholar.org/paper/c5ba3211b17e0766d7ae7de919d32f486ea26ce8}}

*[http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/24 Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927062939/http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/24 |date=2011-09-27 }}