| Yucatec Maya | |
|---|---|
| mayaʼ tʼaan maayaʼ tʼaan | |
| Pronunciation | [màːjaʔˈtʼàːn] |
| Native to | Mexico,Belize |
| Region | Yucatán,Quintana Roo,Campeche |
| Ethnicity | Yucatec Mayas |
Native speakers | 800,000 including 775,000 in Mexico (2020 census)[1] |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Mexico[2] |
| Regulated by | INALI |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | yua |
| Glottolog | yuca1254 |
| ELP | Yucatec |
 Location of Yucatec Mayan speaking areas on theYucatan Peninsula | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Yucatec Maya (/ˈjuːkətɛkˈmaɪə/YOO-kə-tekMY-ə;Spanish:yucateco[ʝukaˈteko]), referred to by its speakers asmayaʼ ormaayaʼ t’aan[citation needed] (pronounced[màːjaʔˈtʼàːn]ⓘ), is aMayan language spoken in theYucatán Peninsula, including part of northernBelize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers inSan Francisco, though mostMaya Americans are speakers of other Mayan languages fromGuatemala andChiapas.[3]
According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by American anthropologistVictoria Bricker, there is a variant namemayab tʼàan[majabˈtʼàːn], literally 'flat speech'[4]). A popular, yet false, alternative etymology of Mayab isma ya'ab or 'not many, the few', which derives fromNew Age spiritualist interpretations of the Maya. The use of "Mayab" as the name of the language seems to be unique to the town ofHocabá, 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]
Linguists have addedYucatec to the name in order to clearly distinguish it from all other Mayan languages (such asKʼicheʼ andItzaʼ). Thus, the use of the term Yucatec Maya to refer to the language is scholarly or scientific nomenclature.[8] Native speakers do not qualify the language asYucatec, calling it "Maaya", "maayaʼ tʼàan", or "maasewal t'aan" (literally 'commoner language') in their language and simply(el) maya when speaking Spanish.
In theMexican states ofYucatán, some parts ofCampeche,Tabasco,Chiapas, andQuintana Roo, Yucatec Maya is still the mother tongue of a large segment of the population in the early 21st century. It has approximately 800,000 speakers in this region. There were an additional 2,518 speakers of Yucatec Maya in Belize as of the 2010 national census.[9]
Yucatec Maya forms part of the Yucatecan branch of theMayan language family. The Yucatecan branch is divided by linguists into the subgroups Mopan-itza and Yucatec-Lacandon. These are made up by four languages:
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 asProto-Mayan.[10]
The Maya had been in a stable decline when Spanishconquistadors 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 fromPalenque,Jaina, andBonampak. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a coalition emerged in the Yucatán peninsula among three important centers,Uxmal,Chichen Itza, andMayapan. 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 ofTula had collapsed and was abandoned.
The Genoese explorerChristopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast ofYucatán during hisexpedition 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 andGonzalo Guerrero, who somehow rejoined other Spaniards.[11]
In 1519, Aguilar accompaniedHernán Cortés to the Yucatán island ofCozumel, and also took part in the conquest of central Mexico. Guerrero became a Mexican legend as father of the firstMestizo: by Aguilar's account, Guerrero "went native". He married native women, wore traditional native apparel, and fought against the Spanish.[11][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 maizeplantations and cattle farms. The elite lived inhaciendas and exported natural resources as commodities.[12] The Maya were subjects of theSpanish 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.[13]
In the early colonial missionary period in Yucatán (ca. 1540–1700), Spanishmissionaries undertook a project of societal transformation known asreducción (from Spanishreducir, meaning in this context to "put in order" or "civilize").[14] Missionaries translatedCatholic texts from Spanish into Yucatec Maya and createdneologisms to express Catholic religious concepts. The result of this process ofreducción wasMaya reducido, a semantically transformed version of Yucatec Maya.[13] Missionaries attempted to end Maya religious practices and destroy associated written works. By their translations, they also shaped a language that was used toconvert, subjugate, and govern the Maya population of the Yucatán peninsula. But Maya speakers appropriatedMaya reducido for their own purposes, resisting colonial domination. The oldest written records inMaya reducido (which used theRoman alphabet) were written by Maya notaries between 1557 and 1851. These works can now be found in libraries and archives in the United States, Mexico, and Spain.[11]
A characteristic feature of Yucatec Maya, like other Mayan languages, is the use ofejective consonants:/pʼ/,/tʼ/,/kʼ/. Often referred to asglottalized 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 characteristicpopping sound. The sounds are written using anapostrophe 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 Mayanb is also glottalized, an implosive/ɓ/, and is sometimes writtenbʼ, but that is becoming less common.
Yucatec Maya is one of only three Mayan languages to have developedtone, the others beingUspantek and one dialect ofTzotzil. 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), though the 2014INALI orthography uses no accent.
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.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m⟨m⟩ | n⟨n⟩ | ||||
| Plosive | plain | p⟨p⟩ | t⟨t⟩ | k⟨k⟩ | ʔ⟨ʼ⟩ | |
| ejective | pʼ⟨pʼ⟩ | tʼ⟨tʼ⟩ | kʼ⟨kʼ⟩ | |||
| Implosive | ɓ⟨b⟩ | |||||
| Affricate | plain | ts⟨ts⟩ | tʃ⟨ch⟩ | |||
| ejective | tsʼ⟨tsʼ⟩ | tʃʼ⟨chʼ⟩ | ||||
| Fricative | s⟨s⟩ | ʃ⟨x⟩ | h⟨j⟩ | |||
| Approximant | w ~v⟨w⟩[a] | l⟨l⟩ | j⟨y⟩ | |||
| Flap | ɾ⟨r⟩ | |||||
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."[15]
In terms of vowel quality, Yucatec Maya has a straightforward five vowel system:
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u |
| Mid | e | o |
| Open | a | |
For each of these five vowel qualities, the language contrasts four distinct vowel "shapes", i.e. combinations ofvowel length,tone, andphonation. In the standard orthography first adopted in 1984,[16] vowel length is indicated by digraphs (e.g. "aa" for IPA[aː]).
| Short, neutral tone | Long, low tone | Long, high tone | Creaky voiced ('glottalized, rearticulated'), long, high tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| pik 'eight thousand'[pik] | miis 'cat'[mìːs] | míis[míːs] 'broom; to sweep' | niʼichʼ[nḭ́ːtʃʼ] 'to get bitten' |
In fast-paced speech, the glottalized long vowels may be pronounced the same as the plain long high vowels, so in such contextska’an[ká̰ːn] 'sky' sounds the same askáan[káːn] 'when?'.
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.
An importantmorphophonological process in Yucatec Maya is thedissimilation of identical consonants next to each other bydebuccalizing to avoidgeminate consonants. If a word ends in one of theglottalized plosives /pʼ tʼ kʼ ɓ/ and is followed by an identical consonant, the final consonant may dispose of itspoint of articulation and become the glottal stop /ʔ/. This may also happen before another plosive inside a common idiomatic phrase orcompound word. Examples:[majaɓˈtʼàːn] ~[majaʔˈtʼàːn] 'Yucatec Maya' (literally, "flat speech"), andnáak’-[náːkʼ-] (a prefix meaning 'nearby') +káan[ká̰ːn] 'sky' gives[ˈnáːʔká̰ːn] 'palate, roof the mouth' (so literally "nearby-sky").
Meanwhile, if the final consonant is one of the other consonants, it debuccalizes to /h/:nak[nak] 'to stop sth' +-kúuns[-kúːns] (acausative suffix) givesnahkúuns[nahˈkúːns] 'to support sb/sth' (cf. thehomophonesnah, possessed formnahil, 'house'; andnah, possessed formnah, 'obligation'),náach’[náːtʃ] 'far' +-chah[-tʃah] (aninchoative suffix) givesnáahchah[ˈnáːhtʃah] 'to become distant'.
This change in the final consonant is often reflected in orthographies, so[majaʔˈtʼàːn] can appear asmaya’ t’àan,maya t'aan, etc.
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.[17]
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.[17]
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.[18]
Like almost all Mayan languages, Yucatec Maya is verb-initial. Word order varies betweenVOS and VSO, with VOS being the most common. Many sentences may appear to be SVO, but this order is due to atopic–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 (Chinese,Kalaallisut, arguablyGuaraní and others) does not have the grammatical category oftense. Temporal information is encoded by a combination ofaspect, inherent lexical aspect (aktionsart), and pragmatically governed conversational inferences. Yucatec is unusual in lacking temporal connectives 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)[19] where intransitive subjects are encoded like agents or patients based upon a number of semantic properties as well as the perfectivity of the event.
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin het-ik (tan-in) | I am opening something | |
| Past | Simple | Tin het-ah (t-in) | I opened something |
| Recent | Tzʼin het-ah (tzʼon-in) | I have just opened something | |
| Distant | In het-m-ah | I opened something a long time ago | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn het-ik-e (he-in) | I shall open something |
| Possible | Kin het-ik (ki-in) | I may open something | |
| Going-to future | Bin in het-e | I am going to open something | |
| Imperative | Het-e | Open it! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin het-el (tan-in) / Het-el-in-kah (het-l-in-kah) | I am performing the act of opening | |
| Past | Simple | Het-en / Tʼ-het-en | I opened |
| Recent | Tzʼin het-el | I have just opened | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn het-el-e (he-in) | I shall open |
| Going-to future | Ben-het-ăk-en | I am going to open | |
| Imperative | Het-en | Open! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tun het-s-el (tan-u) | It is being opened | |
| Past | Het-s-ah-b-i / Het-s-ah-n-i | It was opened | |
| Future | Hu het-s-el-e (he-u) / Bin het-s-ăk-i | It will be opened | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin kim-s-ik (tan-in) | I am killing something | |
| Past | Simple | Tin kim-s-ah (t-in) | I killed something |
| Recent | Tzʼin kim-s-ah (tzʼon-in) | I have just [killed] something | |
| Distant | In kim-s-m-ah | I killed something a long time ago | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn kim-s-ik-e (he-in) | I shall kill something |
| Possible | Kin kim-s-ik (ki-in) | I may kill something | |
| Going-to future | Bin in kim-s-e | I am going to kill something | |
| Imperative | Kim-s-e | Kill it! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin kim-il (tan-in) / Kim-il-in-kah | I am dying | |
| Past | Simple | Kim-i / Tʼ-kim-i | He died |
| Recent | Tzʼu kim-i | He has just died | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn kim-il-e (he-in) | I shall die |
| Going-to future | Bin-kim-ăk-en | I am going to die | |
| Imperative | Kim-en | Die! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin kim-s-il (tan-in) | I am being killed | |
| Past | Kim-s-ah-b-i / Kim-s-ah-n-i | He was killed | |
| Future | Hēn kim-s-il-e (he-in) / Bin kim-s-ăk-en | I shall be killed | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin kux-t-al (tan-in) | I am living | |
| Past | Kux-t-al-ah-en / Kux-l-ah-en | I lived | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn kux-t-al-e (he-in) | I shall be living |
| Going-to future | Bin kux-tal-ăk-en | I am going to live | |
| Imperative | Kux-t-en / Kux-t-al-en | Live! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin tzʼon-ik (tan-in) | I am shooting something | |
| Past | Simple | Tin tzʼon-ah (t-in) | I shot something |
| Recent | Tzʼin tzʼon-ah (tzʼok-in) | I have just shot something | |
| Distant | In tzʼon-m-ah | I shot something a long time ago | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn tzʼon-ik-e (he-in) | I shall shoot something |
| Possible | Kin tzʼon-ik (ki-in) | I may shoot something | |
| Going-to future | Bin in tzʼon-e | I am going to shoot something | |
| Imperative | Tzʼon-e | Shoot it! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin tzʼon (tan-in) | I am shooting | |
| Past | Simple | Tzʼon-n-ah-en | I shot |
| Recent | Tzʼin tzʼon (tzʼok-in) | I have just shot | |
| Distant | Tzʼon-n-ah-ah-en | I shot a long time ago | |
| Future | Simple | Hēn tzʼon-e (he-in) | I shall shoot |
| Going-to future | Bin-tzʼon-ăk-en | I am going to shoot | |
| Imperative | Tzʼon-en | Shoot! | |
| Phase | Example | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Tin tzʼon-ol (tan-in) | I am being shot | |
| Past | Tzʼon-ah-b-en / Tzʼon-ah-n-en | I was shot | |
| Future | Hēn tzʼon-ol-e (he-in) | I shall be shot | |
The Maya were literate inpre-Columbian times, when the language was written usingMaya script. The language itself can be traced back to proto-Yucatecan, the ancestor of modern Yucatec Maya,Itza,Lacandon andMopan. Even further back, the language is ultimately related to all other Maya languages throughproto-Mayan itself.
Yucatec Maya is now written in theLatin script. This was introduced during theSpanish Conquest of Yucatán which began in the early 16th century, and the now-antiquated conventions ofSpanish orthography of that period ("Colonial orthography") were adapted to transcribe Yucatec Maya. This included the use of⟨x⟩ for thepostalveolar fricative sound (which is often written in English as⟨sh⟩).
In colonial times a "reversed c"⟨ɔ⟩ was often used to represent/t͡sʼ/ (thealveolar ejective affricate). This sound is now represented by⟨tzʼ⟩ in the revisedALMG orthography and⟨tsʼ⟩ in theINALI orthography.
| Yucatec Maya | English | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard pronunciation | Pronunciation of western Yucatán, northern Campeche and Central Quintana Roo | Normal translation | Literal translation |
| Bix a beel? | Bix a beej? | How are you? | How is your road? |
| Maʼalob, kux teech? | Good, and you? | Not bad, as for you? | |
| Bey xan teen. | Same with me. | Thus also to me. | |
| Tuʼux ka bin? | Where are you going? | Where do you go? | |
| T(áan) in bin xíimbal. | I am going for a walk. | ||
| Bix a kʼaabaʼ? | What is your name? | How are you named? | |
| In kʼaabaʼeʼ Jorge. | My name is Jorge. | My name, Jorge. | |
| Jach kiʼimak in wóol in wilikech. | Pleased to meet you. | Very happy my heart to see you. | |
| Baʼax ka waʼalik? | What's up? | What (are) you saying? What do you say? | |
| Mix baʼal. | Mix baʼaj. | Nothing. Don't mention it. | No thing. |
| Bix a wilik? | How does it look? | How you see (it)? | |
| Jach maʼalob. | Very good. | Very not-bad | |
| Koʼox! | Let's go! (For two people – you and I) | ||
| Koʼoneʼex! | Let's go! (For a group of people) | ||
| Baʼax a kʼáat? | What do you want? | ||
| (Tak) sáamal. | Aasta sáamaj. | See you tomorrow. | Until tomorrow. |
| Jach Dios boʼotik. | Thank you. God bless you very much. | Very much God pays (it). | |
| Wakax | Cow | Cow | |
Yucatec-language programming is carried by theCDI's radio stationsXEXPUJ-AM (Xpujil, Campeche),XENKA-AM (Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo) andXEPET-AM (Peto, Yucatán).
The 2006 filmApocalypto, directed byMel Gibson, was filmed entirely in Yucatec Maya. The script was translated into Maya byHilario Chi Canul of the Maya community of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who also worked as a language coach on the production.
In the video gameCivilization 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 theGoogle Endangered Languages Project, theMozilla browser, and theMediaWiki software used byWikipedia and otherWikimedia projects.[21]
Baktun, the "first ever Mayantelenovela," premiered in August 2013.[22][23]
Jesús Pat Chablé is often credited with being one of the first Maya-language rappers and producers.[24]
In the 2018 video gameShadow of the Tomb Raider, the inhabitants of the game's Paititi region speak in Yucatec Maya (while immersion mode is on).[citation needed]
The modernbible edition, theNew World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released[25] in the Maya language in 2019.[26] It's distributed without charge, bothprinted and online editions.
On December 4, 2019, the Congress ofYucatán unanimously approved a measure requiring the teaching of the Maya language in schools in the state.[27]
Yucatec Maya is spoken by the fictional underwater kingdom ofTalokan[28] and itsking Kukulkan in the 2022 filmBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever.[29]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)In addition to universities and private institutions in Mexico, (Yucatec) Maya is also taught at:
Free online dictionary, grammar and texts:
| Official language | |
|---|---|
| Indigenous languages | |
| Non-official languages | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
