Yucatec Maya language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Yucatec Maya (Yukatek Maya in the revised orthography of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala), called Màaya t'àan (lit. "Maya speech") by its speakers, is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. To native speakers, it is known only as Maya - "Yucatec" is a tag linguists use to distinguish it from other Mayan languages (such as K'iche' and Itza' Maya).

In the Mexican states of Yucatán, some parts of Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Quintana Roo, Maya remains many speakers' first language today, with approximately 800,000 to 1.2 million speakers.

Phonology[link]

A characteristic feature of Yucatec Mayan (and all Mayan languages) is the use of ejective consonants - /pʼ/, /tʼ/, /kʼ/. Often referred to as glottalized consonants, they are produced at the same place of oral articulation as their non-ejective stop counterparts - /p/, /t/, /k/. However, the release of the lingual closure is preceded by a raising of the closed glottis to increase the air pressure in the space between the glottis and the point of closure, resulting in a release with a characteristic popping sound. These sounds are written using an apostrophe after the letter to distinguish them from the plain consonants (e.g., t'àan "speech" vs. táan "forehead"). The apostrophes indicating these sounds were not common in written Maya until the 20th century but are now becoming more common. The Mayan b is also glottalized, an implosive /ɓ/, and is sometimes written b', though this is becoming less common.

Yucatec Maya is one of only three Mayan languages to have developed tone, the others being Uspantek and one dialect of Tzotzil. Yucatec distinguishes short vowels and long vowels - indicated by single versus double letters (ii ee aa oo uu) - and between high- and low-tone long vowels. High-tone vowels begin on a high pitch and fall in phrase-final position but rise elsewhere, sometimes without much vowel length; in either case this is indicated in writing by means of an acute accent (íi ée áa óo úu). Low-tone vowels begin on a low pitch and are sustained in length; they are sometimes but not always indicated in writing by means of a grave accent (ìi èe àa òo ùu). Also, Yucatec has contrastive laryngealization (creaky voice) on long vowels, sometimes realized by means of a full intervocalic glottal stop and written as a long vowel with an apostrophe in the middle, as in the plural suffix -o'ob'.

Grammar[link]

Like almost all Mayan languages, Yucatec Maya is verb initial. Word order varies between VOS and VSO, with VOS being the most common. Many sentences may appear to be SVO, but this order is due to a topic–comment system similar to that of Japanese. One of the most widely studied areas of Yucatec is the semantics of time in the language. Yucatec, like many other languages of the world (Kalaallisut, arguably Mandarin Chinese, Guaraní and others) does not have the grammatical category of tense. Temporal information is encoded by a combination of aspect, inherent lexical aspect (aktionsart), and pragmatically governed conversational inferences. Yucatec is further unusual for lacking temporal connective such as 'before' and 'after'. Another aspect of the language is the core-argument marking strategy, which is a 'fluid S system' in the typology of Dixon (1994)^[2] where intransitive subjects are encoded like agents or patients based upon a number of semantic properties as well as the perfectivity of the event.

Orthography[link]

The Maya were literate in pre-Columbian times, when the language was written using Maya script. The language itself can be traced back to proto-Yucatecan, the ancestor of modern Yucatec Maya, Itza, Lacandon and Mopan. Even further back, the language is ultimately related to all other Maya languages through proto-Mayan itself.

Yucatec Maya is now written in the Latin script. This was introduced during the Spanish Conquest of Yucatán which began in the early 16th century, and the now-antiquated conventions of Spanish orthography of that period ("Colonial orthography") were adapted to transcribe Yucatec Maya. This included the use of x for the postalveolar fricative sound (often spelled as sh in English), a sound that in Spanish has since turned into a velar fricative nowadays spelled j, except in a few geographic names such as "México".

In colonial times a "reversed c" (⟨ɔ⟩) was often used to represent [tsʼ], which is now more usually represented with ⟨dz⟩ (and with ⟨tz'⟩ in the revised ALMG orthography).

Examples[link]

English words derived from Yucatec Maya[link]

The word "shark" almost certainly derives from Yucatec Maya xoc.^[3] The OED still describes the origin of shark as "uncertain", noting that it "seems to have been introduced by the sailors of Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins's expedition, who brought home a specimen which was exhibited in London in 1569." These dates, however, helped establish its recently discovered etymology, and very few dictionaries have had the chance to update this entry.

Use in modern-day media and popular culture[link]

Yucatec-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEXPUJ-AM (Xpujil, Campeche), XENKA-AM (Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo) and XEPET-AM (Peto, Yucatán).

The 2006 film Apocalypto, directed by Mel Gibson, was filmed entirely in Yucatec Maya. The script was translated into Maya by Hilario Chi Canul of the Maya community of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who also worked as a language coach on the production.

See also[link]

• Yucatec Maya Sign Language

Notes[link]

References[link]

Language courses[link]

In addition to universities and private institutions in Mexico, (Yucatec) Maya is also taught at:

• OSEA - The Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology
• The University of Chicago
• Leiden University, Netherlands
• Harvard University
• Tulane University
• [1]
• Indiana University (Minority Languages & Culture Program)
• University of Wisconsin–Madison
• The University of North Carolina
• INALCO, Paris, France

Audio course materials are available for purchase at

• The University of Chicago Digital Media Archives
• Spoken Yucatec Maya, by Robert Blair & Refugio Vermont Salas
• Spoken Maya Lessons by Robert Blair and Refugio Vermont-Salas can be borrowed in Microfilm and Audio Cassette format through Inter-library Loan services with the University of Chicago. Microfilm Collection on Manuscripts on American Indian Cultural Anthropology, Series No. X, Reels 65 and 66 (1965-1966).

Free online dictionary, grammar and texts:

• FAMSI © 2001: David Bolles
• University of Quintana Roo, 2009 (pdf)

v t e  Languages of Belize Official language: English Non-official languages: Kriol · Spanish · Garifuna · Q'eqchi' · Mopan · Yucatec Maya · Plautdietsch

v t e  Languages of Guatemala Official language Spanish Other National Languages Achi · Akatek · Awaketek · Chuj · Garifuna · Ch'orti · Itza' · Ixil · Jakaltek · K'iche' · Kaqchikel · Mam · Mopan · Poqomam · Poqomchi' · Q'anjob'al · Q'eqchi' · Sakapultek · Sipakapense · Tektitek · Toquegua · Tz'utujil · Uspantek · Xinca · Yucatec Maya