Yucatec Maya language

Yucatec Maya (/ˈjuːkətɛk ˈmaɪə/; referred to by its speakers simply as Maya or as maaya t’aan [màːjaʔˈtʼàːn]) is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including part of northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Francisco, though most Maya Americans are speakers of other Mayan languages from Guatemala and Chiapas.^[3]

Etymology

According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by American anthropologist Victoria Bricker, there is a variant name mayab tʼàan [majabˈtʼàːn], literally 'flat speech'^[4]). A popular, yet false, alternative etymology of Mayab is ma ya'ab or 'not many, the few', which derives from New Age spiritualist interpretations of the Maya. The use of "Mayab" as the name of the language seems to be unique to the town of Hocabá, as indicated by the Hocabá dictionary^[4] and is not employed elsewhere in the region or in Mexico, by either Spanish or Maya speakers. As used in Hocabá, "Mayab" is not the recognized name of the language, but instead a "nickname" derived from a common nickname for the region, the Mayab ("Mayab, the land of pheasant and deer"), the use of which emerged in the colonial period. This use may also derive from the title of a self-published book by a Yucatec scholar, Santiago Pacheco Cruz (1969).^[5] The meaning and origins of "Maya" as the name of the language (versus Mayab) and as the ethnic identity (ethnonym) are complex questions (see etymology and social history of the word as ethnic identity and name of the language in Restall (2004)^[6] and Restall and Gabbert (2017).^[7]

Recently, scholars in the fields of history and anthropology have raised ethical and political questions about the continued use of the label "Yucatec Maya" to the language that is known and named by native speakers as simply "Maya" (see Castañeda (2021),[10] Castillo Cocom (2021),^[11] Hernandez Reyna and Castillo Cocom (2021),^[12] Restall (2004),^[6] Restall and Gabbert (2017).^[7] These scholars argue, both explicitly and implicitly, that the use of "Yucatec Maya" manifests a continuation and propagation of neocolonial relationships, specifically the scientific imperialism of linguistics and the cultural hegemony of anglophone academia. The term "Yucatec Maya" was invented in the early-mid 20th century by linguists so as to not confuse themselves with the use of word "Maya" (the actual name of the language) when this was used to reference the ancestral language (proto-language) of all the Mayan languages; this ancestral language is now no longer called "Proto-Maya", but is instead called Proto-Mayan. The designation "Yucatec Maya" has been understood by generations of US scholars to refer to the Yucatan Peninsula. However, "Yucateco" amongst Mexicans, especially non-academics, has always primarily referenced the state of Yucatan (located in the northwestern corner of the Peninsula with the same name) and, in particular, the ethnic-national identity and culture of this state. Thus, Maya linguists from Quintana Roo, for example Jaime Chi and Edber Dzidz Yam, have identified that the term actually introduces confusion, given that in common understanding among Mexicans the name Maya refers to the peoples and language living throughout the Peninsula while the phrase "Yucatec Maya" would seem to denote a dialect of the Maya language that is spoken in the state of Yucatan, Mexico, in contrast to other regional dialects of Maya such as spoken in the states of Quintana Roo, or Campeche and in northern Belize. Thus, the above scholars argue, to continue to use the phrase "Yucatec Maya" to refer to either the people or the language instead of the proper name, that is, Maya, used by the speakers of this language would be an injustice. On the new politics of using Maya and not Mayan as an ethnic label see:^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

History

Yucatec Maya forms part of the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language family. The Yucatecan branch is divided by linguists into the subgroups Mopan-itza and Yucatec-Lacandon. These are made up by four languages:

• Itza
• Mopan
• Yucatec Maya
• Lacandon

All the languages in the Mayan language family are thought to originate from an ancestral language that was spoken some 5,000 years ago, known as Proto-Mayan.^[18]

The Maya had been in a stable decline when Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1517 AD. From 200 to 800 AD the Maya were thriving and making great technological advances. They created a system for recording numerals and hieroglyphs that was more complex and efficient than what had come before. They migrated northward and eastward to the Yucatán peninsula from Palenque, Jaina, and Bonampak. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a coalition emerged in the Yucatán peninsula among three important centers, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Mayapan. The society grew and the people were able to practice intellectual and artistic achievement during a period of peace. When war broke out, such progress was stalled. By the 15th century, the city of Tula had collapsed and was abandoned.

The Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast of Yucatán during his expedition for the Spanish Crown in 1502, but he never made landfall. During the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spaniards to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, as survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. The Maya ritually sacrificed most of these men, leaving just two survivors, Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, who somehow rejoined other Spaniards.^[19]

In 1519, Aguilar accompanied Hernán Cortés to the Yucatán island of Cozumel, and also took part in the conquest of central Mexico. Guerrero became a Mexican legend as father of the first Mestizo: by Aguilar's account, Guerrero "went native". He married native women, wore traditional native apparel, and fought against the Spanish.^{[19][page needed]}

Francisco de Montejo's military incursion of Yucatán took three generations and three wars with extended fighting, which lasted a total of 24 years.^{[clarification needed]}

As the Spanish colonists settled more areas, in the 18th century they developed the lands for large maize plantations and cattle farms. The elite lived in haciendas and exported natural resources as commodities.^[20] The Maya were subjects of the Spanish Empire from 1542 to 1821.

During the colonization of the Yucatán peninsula, the Spanish believed that in order to evangelize and govern the Maya, they needed to reform Yucatec Maya. They wanted to shape it to serve their ends of religious conversion and social control.^[21]

Spanish religious

A characteristic feature of Yucatec Maya, like other 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. The sounds are written using an apostrophe after the letter to distinguish them from the plain consonants (tʼàan "speech" vs. táan "forehead"). The apostrophes indicating the 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 bʼ, but that 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. It is indicated in writing by an acute accent (íi ée áa óo úu). Low-tone vowels begin on a low pitch and are sustained in length; they are sometimes indicated in writing by 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 -oʼob.

Consonants

Some sources describe the plain consonants as aspirated, but Victoria Bricker states "[s]tops that are not glottalized are articulated with lung air without aspiration as in English spill, skill, still."^[22]

Vowels

In terms of vowel quality, Yucatec Maya has a straightforward five vowel system:

For each of these five vowel qualities, the language contrasts four distinct vowel "shapes", i.e. combinations of vowel length, tone, and phonation. In the standard orthography first adopted in 1984,^[23] vowel length is indicated by digraphs (e.g. "aa" for IPA [aː]).

In fast-paced speech, the glottalized long vowels may be pronounced the same as the plain long high vowels, so in such contexts ka’an [ká̰ːn] 'sky' sounds the same as káan [káːn] 'when?'.

Stress

Mayan words are typically stressed on the earliest syllable with a long vowel. If there is no long vowel, then the last syllable is stressed. Borrowings from other languages such as Spanish or Nahuatl are often stressed as in the original languages.

Debuccalization

An important

Meanwhile, if the final consonant is one of the other consonants, it debuccalizes to /h/: nak [nak] 'to stop sth' + -kúuns [-kúːns] (a

This change in the final consonant is often reflected in orthographies, so [majaʔˈtʼàːn] can appear as maya’ t’àan, maya t'aan, etc.

Acquisition

Phonology acquisition is received idiosyncratically. If a child seems to have severe difficulties with affricates and sibilants, another might have no difficulties with them while having significant problems with sensitivity to semantic content, unlike the former child.^[24]

There seems to be no incremental development in phonology patterns. Monolingual children learning the language have shown acquisition of aspiration and deobstruentization but difficulty with sibilants and affricates, and other children show the reverse. Also, some children have been observed fronting palatoalveolars, others retract lamino-alveolars, and still others retract both.^[24]

Glottalization was not found to be any more difficult than aspiration. That is significant with the Yucatec Mayan use of ejectives. Glottal constriction is high in the developmental hierarchy, and features like [fricative], [apical], or [fortis] are found to be later acquired.^[25]

Grammar

Like almost all Mayan languages, Yucatec Maya is verb-initial. Word order varies between

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.

In the video game Civilization V: Gods & Kings, Pacal, leader of the Maya, speaks in Yucatec Maya.^{[citation needed]}

In August 2012, the Mozilla Translathon 2012 event brought over 20 Yucatec Mayan speakers together in a localization effort for the Google Endangered Languages Project, the Mozilla browser, and the MediaWiki software used by Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.^[28]

Jesús Pat Chablé is often credited with being one of the first Maya-language rappers and producers.^[31]

In the 2018 video game Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the inhabitants of the game's Paititi region speak in Yucatec Maya (while immersion mode is on).^{[citation needed]}

The modern bible edition, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released^[32] in the Maya language in 2019.^[33] It's distributed without charge, both printed and online editions.

On December 4, 2019, the Congress of Yucatán unanimously approved a measure requiring the teaching of the Maya language in schools in the state.^[34]

Yucatec Maya is spoken by the fictional underwater kingdom of

Sources

• Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo (2001). Diccionario maya : maya-español, español-maya (4 ed.). México: Porrúa.
  OCLC 48778496
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• Blair, Robert W.; Refugio Vermont Salas; Norman A. McQuown (rev.) (1995) [1966]. Spoken Yucatec Maya (Book I + Audio, Lessons I-VI; Book II + Audio, Lessons VII-XII). Program in Latin American Studies. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University—University of North Carolina.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Bolles, David (1997). "Combined Dictionary–Concordance of the Yucatecan Mayan Language". Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI) (revised 2003). Retrieved 2007-02-01.
• Bolles, David; Alejandra Bolles (2004). "A Grammar of the Yucatecan Mayan Language". Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI) (revised online edition, 1996 Lee, New Hampshire). The Foundation Research Department. Retrieved 2007-02-01.
• Bricker, Victoria; Eleuterio Poʼot Yah; Ofelia Dzul de Poʼot (1998). A Dictionary of the Maya Language as Spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán. Salt Lake City:
  ISBN 0-87480-569-4
  .
• Brody, Michal (2004). The fixed word, the moving tongue: variation in written Yucatec Maya and the meandering evolution toward unified norms (Thesis) (PhD thesis, UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Digital Repository ed.). Austin:
  OCLC 74908453
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• OCLC 26605966
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• Curl, John (2005). Ancient American Poets - The Songs of Dzitbalche. Tempe:
  ISBN 1-931010-21-8
  .
• McQuown, Norman A. (1968). "Classical Yucatec (Maya)". In Norman A. McQuown (Volume ed.) (ed.). Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5: Linguistics.
  OCLC 277126
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• OCLC 3152525
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Further reading

• Chamberlain, Robert S. (1948). The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1517-1550. Washington: Carnegie Institute.
• Clendinnen, Inga (2003). Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Clendinnen, Inga (1980). "Landscape and World View: The Survival of Yucatec Maya Culture Under Spanish Conquest". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 22 (3). Cambridge University Press: 374–393.
  S2CID 145575895
  .
• de Landa, Diego (1978). Gates, William (ed.). Yucatan: Before and After the Conquest. Translated by Gates, William. New York: Dover.
• de Las Casas, Bartolomé (1992). In Defense of the Indians. Translated by Poole, Stafford. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
• Díaz del Castillo, Bernal (2008). Carrasco, David (ed.). The History of the Conquest of New Spain. Translated by Carrasco, David. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
• Farriss, Nancy M. (1993). "Sacred Power in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Sixteenth Century Yucatan". In Bray, Warwick (ed.). The Meeting of Two Worlds: Europe and the Americas 1492–1650. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Farriss, Nancy M. (1984). Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Garcia Bernal, Manuela Cristina (1972). La Sociedad de Yucatán, 1700–1750. Seville: Escuela Estudios Hispano-Americanos.
• Gibson, Charles (1964). The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Hanks, William F. (1986). "Authenticity and Ambivalence in the Text: A Colonial Maya Case". American Ethnologist. 13 (4). Blackwell: 721–744.
  doi:10.1525/ae.1986.13.4.02a00080
  .
• Hunt, Martha Espejo-Ponce (1974). Colonial Yucatan: Town and Region in the Seventeenth Century (PhD Dissertation). Los Angeles: University of California.
• Jones, Grant D. (1989). Maya Resistance to Colonial Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
• Lockhart, James, ed. (1993). We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. Vol. 1. Translated by Lockhart, James. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.
• Lockhart, James (1992). The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Restall, Matthew (2009). The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Restall, Matthew (2003a). "A History of the New Philology and the New Philology in History". Latin American Research Review. 38 (1). Austin: University of Texas Press: 113–134.
  S2CID 145366292
  .
• Restall, Matthew (2003b). Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquistadors. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Restall, Matthew (1998a). "Intercultural and Indigenous Testaments". In Kellogg, Susan; Restall, Matthew (eds.). Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
• Restall, Matthew (1998b). Maya Conquistador. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Restall, Matthew (1997). The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550–1850. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Restall, Matthew; Sousa, Lisa; Terraciano, Kevin, eds. (2005). Mesoamerican Voices: Native Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Restall, Matthew; Chuchiak, John F. IV (2002). "A Reevaluation of the Authenticity of Fray Diego de Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán". Ethnohistory: Journal of the American Society for Ethnohistory. 49 (3): 651–670.
  S2CID 162762326
  .
• Ricard, Robert (1966). The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572. Translated by Simpson, Lesley Byrd. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Scholes, France V.; Roys, Ralph L. (1968). The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel: A Contribution to the History and Ethnography of the Yucatan Peninsula (2nd ed.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Scholes, France V.; Roys, Ralph L. (1938). Fray Diego de Landa and the Problem of Idolatry in the Yucatan. Cooperation in Research. Vol. 501. Washington: Carnegie Institution.
• Sharer, Robert J.; Traxler, Loa P. (2006). The Ancient Maya (6th ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Thompson, J. Eric S. (1950). Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Introduction. Washington: Carnegie Institution.
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Vogt, Evon Z. (1993). "The Maintenance of Maya Distinctiveness". In Kizca, John E. (ed.). The Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience, and Acculturation. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.

External links

Yucatec Maya language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Yucatec Maya Collection of William Blunk-Fernández and Michael Carrasco at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains six audio recordings totaling 1.5 hours of spoken Yucatec Maya.
• Mesospace Collection of Juergen Bohnemeyer at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains 19 video recordings. Content restricted, but may be available for researcher use.
• Mayan Languages Collection of Victoria Bricker at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains 714 archival files, including audio recordings and transcriptions, from the languages Chʼol, Tzotzil, and Yucatec Maya. The recordings include "(1) histories of the Caste War of Yucatan of 1847–1901 and local manifestations of the Mexican Revolution of 1917–1921; (2) legends; (3) astronomical lore; (4) medical lore; (5) autobiographies; (6) conversations; (7) and songs (both traditional and original) from a number of different towns in the peninsula."
• Yucatec Maya Collection of Melissa Frazier at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains 60 audio recordings of narratives, collected "to establish a collection of spoken Yucatec Maya that will be helpful to anyone who studies the language."
• Yucatec Maya DoReCo corpus compiled by Stavros Skopeteas. Audio recordings of narrative texts, with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level and translations.

Language courses

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
• Indiana University (Minority Languages & Culture Program)
• University of Wisconsin–Madison
• The University of North Carolina
• INALCO, Paris, France

Free online dictionary, grammar and texts:

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