Mayan language

Peninsular Mayan (autoglottonym: maayatʼaan) or Yucateco is a Mayan language spoken mainly in the peninsular Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo, as well as to a lesser extent in northern Belize. It is commonly known as Maya, although many linguists use the term Peninsular Maya or Yucatec Maya to distinguish it from other Mayan languages.

In the Yucatan Peninsula, Peninsular Maya remains the native language of a large segment of the population at the beginning of the 21st century< /span>. It has approximately 800 thousand speakers in this region. There are an estimated 3,000 Peninsular Mayan speakers in Belize. The language is part of the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language family. This is divided according to linguists into the Mopan-itzá and Yucateco-Lacandón subgroups. The Peninsular Maya belongs to the latter.

Name

According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by the American anthropologist Victoria Bricker, there is a variant of the name mayab tʼaan [majabˈtʼàːn], literally "flat speech"). An alternative etymology popular, although false, of Mayab is "ma yaʼab" ("not many" or "the few"), which is derived from New Age spiritualist interpretations of the Mayans.

The use of "Mayab" as a language name it appears to be exclusive to the town of Hocabá, as indicated by the Hocabá dictionary and is not used anywhere else in the region or in Mexico, neither by Spanish speakers nor by Mayans. As used in Hocabá, "Mayab" is not the recognized name of the language, but a "nickname" derived from a common nickname for the region, the Mayab, which emerged in the viceregal period. This usage may also derive from the title of a self-published book by a Yucatecan scholar, Santiago Pacheco Cruz (1969). The meaning and origins of "maya" as a language name (versus "mayab") and as an ethnic identity (ethnonym) are complex issues.

Linguists have added "Yucatec" to the name to clearly distinguish it from the rest of the Mayan languages (such as Kʼicheʼ and Itzaʼ). Thus, the use of the term "Yucatecan Maya" to refer to the language it is a more academic or scientific nomenclature. Native speakers do not call the language Yucatec, calling it "maaya", "maayatʼaan" or "máasewáal tʼaan" (common language), and simply (the) Mayan when Spanish is spoken.

In the Mexican state of Yucatán, parts of Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas and Quintana Roo, Yucatec Maya remains the native language of a large segment of the population at the beginning of the century XXI. It has approximately 800,000 speakers in this region. There were 2,518 additional Yucatec Maya speakers in Belize as of the 2010 national census.

Name controversy

Recently, scholars in the fields of history and anthropology have raised ethical and political questions about the continued use of the label "Yucatecan Mayan" to the language that native speakers know and call simply "Maya". These scholars argue, both explicitly and implicitly, that the use of "Yucatecan Mayan" manifests a continuation and propagation of neocolonial relations, specifically the scientific imperialism of linguistics and the cultural hegemony of Anglophone academia.

The term "Yucatec Mayan" was invented in the early and mid-century XX by linguists so as not to be confused with the use of the word "Maya&# 3. 4; (the actual name of the language) when used to refer to the language of origin of all Mayan languages. The designation "Yucatec Mayan" has been understood by generations of American scholars as a reference to the Yucatan Peninsula. However, "yucateco" Among Mexicans, especially non-academics, it has always referred mainly to the state of Yucatán (located in the extreme northwest of the Peninsula with the same name) and, in particular, to the ethnic-national identity and culture of this state.

Some Mayan linguists from Quintana Roo have identified that the term actually introduces confusion, given that in the common understanding among Mexicans the name "Maya" refers to the peoples and languages that live throughout the peninsula while the phrase "Yucatec Mayan" It would seem to denote a dialect of the language spoken only in the state of Yucatán, in contrast to the other regional dialects of Mayan such as those spoken in the states of Quintana Roo or Campeche and in north-central Belize. Thus, previous scholars argue, continuing to use the phrase "Yucatecan Maya" to refer to the people or the language instead of the proper name, that is, Maya, used by the speakers of this language, would be an injustice.

History

Pre-Hispanic era

To put it in the terms used by Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, a Mayanist, in the extensive prologue to the Mayan-Spanish, Spanish-Maya Cordemex Dictionary (1st edition) of 1980:

The peninsular Maya language is one of the oldest members of a family whose trunk receives the conventional name of protomaya, in turn a member of another family whose trunk, which gave origin to other languages such as Totonaco, came from some other Asian trunk [...] Glotocronologists, with their methods, have been able to conclude that a group, the very protomayane, came from somewhere and was established in a place of the highs of Guatemala, and still need: the Sierra de Cuchumatanes, approximately in the year 2600 B.C. (XVI century B.C.).

And later he continues saying:

[...] of that original point and group, which had already begun to diversify, was discovered approximately in 1600 a. C., that is, after a millennium of having reached the Cuchumatanes, a fraction to emigrate to the north, to the lowlands of the Yucatecan peninsula [... ]

From 200 to 800 AD. C., the Mayans prospered and made great technological advances. They created a system for recording numbers and hieroglyphs that was more complex and efficient than the previous one, Mayan writing. They migrated north and east to the Yucatan Peninsula from Palenque, Jaina and Bonampak. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a coalition (the Mayapán League) emerged in the Yucatán Peninsula between three important centers, Uxmal, Chichén Uitza and Mayapán. Society grew and people were able to practice intellectual and artistic achievements during a period of peace. When war broke out, that progress stalled. In the 15th century, the Toltec Mayans collapsed and dispersed.

Viceroyal era

Explorer Christopher Columbus traded with Mayan traders off the coast of Yucatan during his expedition in 1502, but never made landfall. During the decade that followed Columbus's first contact with the Mayans, the first Spaniards to set foot on Yucatan soil did so by chance, as survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. The Mayans ritually sacrificed most of these men, leaving only two survivors, Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, who were somehow reunited with other Spaniards.

In 1519, Aguilar accompanied Hernán Cortés to the island of Cozumel in Yucatán and also participated in the conquest of central Mexico. Guerrero became a Mexican legend as the father of the first mestizo: according to Aguilar's story, Guerrero "became Indianized". He married native women, wore traditional native clothing, and fought against the Spanish.

As Spanish settlers settled in more areas, in the 18th century they developed the lands for large plantations of corn and cattle. The elite lived on haciendas and exported natural resources as merchandise. The Mayans were subjects of the Spanish Empire from 1542 to 1821.

During the colonization of the Yucatan Peninsula, the Spanish believed that to evangelize and govern the Mayans, they needed to reform the Yucatecan Mayan language. They wanted to shape it to serve their purposes of religious conversion and social control.

The Spanish religious missionaries undertook a project of linguistic and social transformation known as "reduction." Missionaries translated Catholic Christian religious texts from Spanish into Yucatecan Maya and created neologisms to express Catholic religious concepts. The result of this reduction process was the "reduced Maya", a semantically transformed version of Yucatec Maya.

Missionaries attempted to end Mayan religious practices and destroy associated written works. Through their translations, they also shaped a language that was used to convert, subjugate, and govern the Mayan population of the Yucatan Peninsula. But Mayan speakers appropriated reduced Mayan for their own purposes, resisting colonial domination. The earliest written records in reduced Mayan (using the Roman alphabet) were written by Mayan notaries between 1557 and 1851.

Modern era

According to data from the XII general population and housing census of the INEGI, in Mexican territory the number of Mayan speakers is 859,607, which places it as the second indigenous language with the largest number of speakers in Mexico, after Nahuatl. In Belize, according to data from 1991, it was spoken by about 5,000 people and in Guatemala no speakers are recorded. This Yucatecan Mayan language does not have a linguistic community in Guatemala like the rest of the Mayan languages of the Republic of Guatemala. because there is no native speaker or any real speaking population of this language there.

The Mayan language is widely used and taught in the indicated regions, particularly in Yucatán and Campeche, there are even academies that are dedicated exclusively to its understanding and dissemination. Since the creation of the Linguistic Rights Law in 2003, Peninsular Mayan, like the rest of the native languages of Mexico, is recognized as a Mexican national language.

Linguistic description

Phonology

In the peninsular Mayan language, voiceless consonant sounds abound. A notable characteristic of Peninsular Maya, which it shares with many other Mayan languages, is the use of glottalized consonants (such as pʼ, tʼ, and kʼ). The following tables show the phonemes of the Mayan language.

Vowels

Each of these 5 vowels can be long. There are also glottalized vowels [aʔ] and [aʔa].

Consonants

Tones

In the Mayan language there are two tones: a high one that is marked with [áa] and a low one that is written with [aa].

Morphology

Maya is based on monosyllabic morphemes, that is, words or elements for their formation that resist morphological analysis. The Mayan language economizes on vowels, but does not produce overly complex groupings of consonants in a single syllable. Nor does the grouping of vowels occur in the Maya and each one that habit allows becomes the axis of the syllable. Use an intermediate apostrophe since it is used between two consonants.

Syntax

The peninsular Mayan language is synthetic. This means that it uses complex forms to express complex ideas. There are no articles, no gender. There is no infinitive mood and many verbs look like nouns and have a double function.

Writing

The Mayan language has been written with Latin characters since the conquest of the Spanish until the present, although in pre-Hispanic times the Mayans used a system of glyphs or ideograms for their writing. There is an official alphabet that was developed by linguists and specialists in 1984, which is officially recognized and used in textbooks distributed by the Mexican state, although differences appear between speakers and even language experts. of interpretation and orthographic representation. Below is the table of the Mayan alphabet:

A certain number of dictionaries have been published that serve as a reference for scholars. From the very cultured and recognized Alphabetical Coordination of the Voices of the Mayan Language, published by Juan Pío Pérez in 1898 and compiled over many years since the middle of the century XIX by himself and by Fray Pedro Beltrán, to the most modern editions such as the Mayan-Spanish, Spanish-Mayan Dictionary, edited by Cordemex in 1980, under the coordination by Alfredo Barrera Vásquez – a well-known Mayanist –, with two experts in the Mayan language as editors: Juan Ramón Bastarrachea and William Brito Sansores.

Lexical sample

Text example

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Mayan:

Tuláakal wíinik ku siijil jáalk.ab yetel keet u tsiikul yetel Najmal Sijnalil, beytun xan na.ata.an sijnalil yetel no.oja.anil u tuukulo., k.a.abet u bisikuba bey láaktsilil yetel tuláakal u baatsile..

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and, endowed with reason and conscience, they must behave fraternally with each other.

Frequent expressions

Bix a beel (in the Mayan language it is not necessary to use interrogative marks because there are specific interrogative forms)

How are you? (literally: How is your path?)

Maʼalob, kux teech

Well, what about you?

Bey xan teen.

So do I.

Bix a kʼaabaʼ

What's your name? (literally “what is your name?”)

In kʼaabaʼeʼ Jorge.

My name is Jorge

Jach kiʼimak in wóol in kʼajóolt kech.

I am very happy to meet you. (literally “I am very happy to meet you”)

Common words

Some words frequently used and mixed even today with the Spanish spoken in the Yucatan Peninsula:

Aj: (sir), before the names denote masculinity

Sooskil: henequén fiber

Puuch: crush or crush

Tuuch: navel

P 'uurux: panzón

T'eel: cock

Muuch: sapo

Tuunich: stone

Jo’ots: remove from the pot with spoon or hand a portion.

Kolis: bald, hairy

Xiix: rest (which is left of some drink or food)

Malix: current (without race... especially for ordinary dogs)

Nojoch: big

Báaxal: toy, can also be joke

Mulix: curly hair

Wiix: urine

Janal: food

Naj: house

Pixan: dead or spirit

Tirix ta ": diarrhea

Xiik: axill

KiiritsDirty

Kaas: ugly

Maax: monkey

Otoch: house

Peech: tick

Uk: piojo

Xuux: attentive, warned

Arux: goblin (legendary person)

Ch’eel: blond, of light hair

Chiichor ChichiGrandma

Soots: bat

Wáay: witch (this is also said as a thrill of surprise or astonishment)

You.: broom

Miis: cat

Ja 'Water

Ixtáabay: supernatural woman who seduces the novices.

Numerals

 1 - Jun
2 - Ka`a
3 - Oil
4 - Kan
5 - Jo
6 - Wak
7 - Wuk
8 - Waxak
9 - Bolon
10 - Lajun
11 - Buluk
12 - Laj ' a
13 - Oxylajun
14 - Kanlajun
15 - Jo`olajun
16 - Waklajun
17 - U`uklajun
18 - Waxaklajun
19 - Bolonlajun
20 - Junk`aal
400 - Junk ' aax or junbaak
8000 - Junpik
160 000 - Junkalab
3 200 000 - Junkiinchil
64 000 000 - Junalaw

Mayan and other languages

Influence of Nahuatl on Mayan

The peninsular Mayan language faced a new transformation process due to the interaction with the Xiúes groups that they brought with them from the XV century, possibly before, from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, strong Toltec influence and of course Nahuatl. This influence even had a determining effect on the Mayan pantheon with the presence of Kukulcán, which derived from Quetzalcóatl himself and generated the cultural result that the Spanish conquerors came to know and faced in the 19th century. -variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">XVI.

The Aztec or Mexican is known in peninsular Mayan as huach which means strange, which invites us to think of such an influence coming from the Nahuas of Chontalpan who had originally arrived in the region from Mexico -Tenochtitlan and that left an important legacy in the lexicon of the peninsular Mayans.

Later, once the conquest was complete, when the Spanish city of Campeche was founded (on the Mayan city A Kʼin Pech), the neighborhood of San Román was built where Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans settled. In the same way, in Mérida the Mexicas brought by the conquistadors did it in the San Cristóbal neighborhood. Some terms used in the current peninsular Mayan language account for this:

Máasewáal: masewalli (indigenous)

Tamali: tamalli (tamal)

Chimal: chimalli (listen)

Posol: posolli (posol-, relates to the word potsonalli which means sparkling or something that foams)

Iipil: wipilli (on the Yucatan peninsula)

Kotom: koton-, kotomitl (camisa)

Kama 'ach: kamachalli (quijada)

Chi’icam: xikamatl (jícama)