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49-509: According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by American anthropologist Victoria Bricker , there is a variant name mayab tʼàan [majabˈtʼàːn] , literally 'flat speech'). 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

98-420: A bachelor's degree in philosophy and humanities. She attended Harvard University for her graduate education, earning a master's degree in anthropology in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1968. Bricker has spent her career at Tulane University ; she was a visiting lecturer from 1969 to 1970, an assistant professor from 1970 to 1973, an associate professor from 1973 to 1978, and was appointed a full professor in 1978. She

147-467: A final Proto-Mayan *[w] and *[ɓ] into [j] and *[ʔ] respectively. Huastecan is the only branch to have changed Proto-Mayan *[w] into [b] . Wastek also is the only Mayan language to have a phonemic labialized velar phoneme [kʷ] , but this is known to be a postcolonial development. Comparing colonial documents in Wastek to modern Wastek it can be seen that they were originally clusters of [k] and

196-513: A full intervocalic glottal stop and written as a long vowel with an apostrophe in the middle, as in the plural suffix -oʼob . 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." In terms of vowel quality, Yucatec Maya has a straightforward five vowel system: For each of these five vowel qualities,

245-465: A general agreement that the following are the main five subgroups of the family: Huastecan, Yucatecan, Cholan-Tzeltalan, Kanjobalan-Chujean, and Quichean-Mamean. The Proto-Mayan language is reconstructed (Campbell and Kaufman 1985) as having the following sounds: Five vowels: a , e , i , o and u . Each of these occurring as short and long: aa , ee , ii , oo and uu , The following set of sound changes from proto-Mayan to

294-474: 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 2014 INALI orthography uses no accent. Also, Yucatec has contrastive laryngealization ( creaky voice ) on long vowels, sometimes realized by means of

343-567: A length distinction. In other languages it has the reflexes [w] , [j] , [ʔ] , [x] or a zero-reflex. Only Kʼichean–Mamean and some Qʼanjobʼalan languages have retained Proto-Mayan uvular stops [q] and [qʼ] whereas all other branches have changed these into [k] and [kʼ] respectively. In Mamean a chain shift took place changing *[r] into [t] , *[t] into [tʃ] , *[tʃ] into [tʂ] and *[ʃ] into [ʂ] . These retroflex affricates and fricatives later diffused into Qʼanjobʼalan. In polysyllabic words Kaqchikel and Tzʼutujil have changed

392-534: 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

441-704: A rounded vowel followed by a glide. For example, the word for "vulture" which in modern Wastek is pronounced [kʷiːʃ] was written <cuyx> in colonial Wastek and pronounced [kuwiːʃ] . The Yucatecan languages have all shifted Proto-Mayan *[t] into [tʃ] in wordfinal position. Several languages particularly Cholan and Yucatecan have changed short [a] into [ɨ] . All Cholan languages have changed long proto-Mayan vowels [eː] and [oː] into [i] and [u] respectively. Vowel length distinction has been lost in Qʼanjobʼalan-Chujean (except for Mochoʼ and Akateko), Kaqchikel and Cholan. Some languages have reduced

490-628: 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. 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

539-461: 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

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588-468: Is also taught at: Free online dictionary, grammar and texts: Victoria Bricker Victoria Reifler Bricker (born 1940) is an American anthropologist , ethnographer and linguist, widely known for her ground-breaking studies of contemporary and historical Maya culture. Born in Hong Kong , Bricker studied at Stanford University for her undergraduate education, and graduated in 1962 with

637-511: 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

686-426: Is high in the developmental hierarchy, and features like [fricative], [apical], or [fortis] are found to be later acquired. 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

735-643: 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

784-704: Is now a professor emerita there. Bricker's research has focused on various aspects of Maya culture in Guatemala , Chiapas , and Yucatán . In Chiapas, she studied Maya ritual humor , oral history , and revitalization , the latter being a subject of her research in Guatemala and Yucatán. In Yucatán, she has also worked on a Maya-English dictionary, the Maya language , and ethnobotany . Bricker has also studied Precolumbian Maya astronomy , calendars , astrology , divination , and script . Her work included studies of

833-512: Is reflected as [x] in the eastern branches (Kʼichean–Mamean), as [n] in Qʼanjobʼalan, Cholan and Yukatekan, and only conserved as [ŋ] in Chuj and Poptí. In Huastecan *[ŋ] is reflected as [h] . The changes of Proto-Mayan glottal fricative [h] are many and it has different reflexes according to position. In some positions it has added length to the preceding vowel in languages that preserve

882-455: Is the semantics of time in the language. Yucatec, like many other languages of the world ( Chinese , Kalaallisut , arguably 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 unusual in lacking temporal connectives such as 'before' and 'after'. Another aspect of

931-911: The Dresden Codex and Madrid Codex . Her collection of recordings and transcriptions of the Chol , Tzotzil , and Yucatec Maya languages are available at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America , and audio recordings and manuscripts are available at the American Philosophical Society archives. She speaks Spanish , and two Mayan languages : Yucatec and Tzotzil . A member of several scientific societies, Bricker has also served in leadership roles with academic publications and societies. She

980-578: The Mexican states of Yucatán , some parts of Campeche , Tabasco , Chiapas , and Quintana 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. Recently, scholars in the fields of history and anthropology have raised ethical and political questions about

1029-584: The Roman alphabet ) were written by Maya notaries between 1557 and 1851. These works can now be found in the United States, Mexico, and Spain in libraries and archives. 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,

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1078-748: 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. Spanish religious missionaries undertook a project of linguistic and social transformation known as reducción (from Spanish reducir). The missionaries translated Catholic Christian religious texts from Spanish into Yucatec Maya and created neologisms to express Catholic religious concepts. The result of this process of reducción

1127-474: The glottalized plosives /pʼ tʼ kʼ ɓ/ and is followed by an identical consonant, the final consonant may dispose of its point of articulation and become the glottal stop /ʔ/. This may also happen before another plosive inside a common idiomatic phrase or compound word . Examples: [majaɓˈtʼàːn] ~ [majaʔˈtʼàːn] 'Yucatec Maya' (literally, "flat speech"), and náak’- [náːkʼ-] (a prefix meaning 'nearby') + káan [ká̰ːn] 'sky' gives [ˈnáːʔká̰ːn] 'palate, roof

1176-650: The "first ever Mayan telenovela ," premiered in August 2013. Jesús Pat Chablé is often credited with being one of the first Maya-language rappers and producers. 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). The modern bible edition, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

1225-409: The Spanish. Francisco de Montejo 's military incursion of Yucatán took three generations and three wars with extended fighting, which lasted a total of 24 years. 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. The Maya were subjects of

1274-532: 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: Yucatec Maya forms part of the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language family. The Yucatecan branch is divided by linguists into

1323-605: 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

1372-423: 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), Castillo Cocom (2021), Hernandez Reyna and Castillo Cocom (2021), Restall (2004), Restall and Gabbert (2017). These scholars argue, both explicitly and implicitly, that the use of "Yucatec Maya" manifests a continuation and propagation of neocolonial relationships, specifically

1421-413: 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 important morphophonological process in Yucatec Maya is the dissimilation of identical consonants next to each other by debuccalizing to avoid geminate consonants . If a word ends in one of

1470-496: The final consonant is often reflected in orthographies, so [majaʔˈtʼàːn] can appear as maya’ 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. There seems to be no incremental development in phonology patterns. Monolingual children learning

1519-469: The language contrasts four distinct vowel "shapes", i.e. combinations of vowel length , tone , and phonation . In the standard orthography first adopted in 1984, 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?'. Mayan words are typically stressed on

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1568-502: 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. Glottalization was not found to be any more difficult than aspiration. That is significant with the Yucatec Mayan use of ejectives. Glottal constriction

1617-423: The language is the core-argument marking strategy, which is a ' fluid S system' in the typology of Dixon (1994) where intransitive subjects are encoded like agents or patients based upon a number of semantic properties as well as the perfectivity of the event. 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,

1666-471: The modern languages are used as the basis of the classification of the Mayan languages. Each sound change may be shared by a number of languages; a grey background indicates no change. The palatalized plosives [tʲʼ] and [tʲ] are not carried down into any of the modern families. Instead they are reflected differently in different branches allowing a reconstruction of these phonemes as palatalized plosives. In

1715-504: 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] (a causative suffix) gives nahkúuns [nahˈkúːns] 'to support sb/sth' (cf. the homophones nah , possessed form nahil , 'house'; and nah , possessed form nah , 'obligation'), náach’ [náːtʃ] 'far' + -chah [-tʃah] (an inchoative suffix) gives náahchah [ˈnáːhtʃah] 'to become distant'. This change in

1764-427: The name in order to clearly distinguish it from all other Mayan languages (such as Kʼicheʼ and Itzaʼ ). Thus, the use of the term Yucatec Maya to refer to the language is scholarly or scientific nomenclature. Native speakers do not qualify the language as Yucatec , calling it "Maaya", "maayaʼ tʼàan", or "maasewal t'aan" (literally 'commoner language') in their language and simply (el) maya when speaking Spanish. In

1813-687: The production. In the video game Civilization V: Gods & Kings , Pacal, leader of the Maya, speaks in Yucatec Maya. 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 Misplaced Pages and other Wikimedia projects. Baktun ,

1862-408: 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

1911-435: 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

1960-537: 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

2009-432: 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 as Proto-Mayan . 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

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2058-437: 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,

2107-459: The title of a self-published book by a Yucatec scholar, Santiago Pacheco Cruz (1969). 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) and Restall and Gabbert (2017). Linguists have added Yucatec to

2156-532: The town of Hocabá , as indicated by the Hocabá dictionary 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

2205-484: The use of ⟨x⟩ for the postalveolar fricative sound (which is often written in English as ⟨sh⟩ ). In colonial times a "reversed c" ⟨ɔ⟩ was often used to represent /t͡sʼ/ (the alveolar ejective affricate ). This sound is now represented by ⟨tzʼ⟩ in the revised ALMG orthography and ⟨tsʼ⟩ in the INALI orthography. Yucatec-language programming

2254-581: The western branch (Chujean–Qʼanjobʼalan and Cholan) they are reflected as [t] and [tʼ] . In Mamean they are reflected as [ts] and [tsʼ] and in Yukatek and Kʼichean as [tʃʰ] and [tʃʼ] . The Proto-Mayan liquid [r] is reflected as [j] in the western languages (Chujean–Qʼanjobʼalan and Cholan), Huastecan and Yukatek but as [tʃʰ] in Mamean and [r] in Kʼichean and Poqom. Proto-Mayan velar nasal *[ŋ]

2303-470: Was Maya reducido , a semantically transformed version of Yucatec Maya. Missionaries attempted to end Maya religious practices and destroy associated written works. By their translations, they also shaped a language that was used to convert , subjugate, and govern the Maya population of the Yucatán peninsula. But Maya speakers appropriated Maya reducido for their own purposes, resisting colonial domination. The oldest written records in Maya reducido (which used

2352-526: Was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1991 and maintains membership in the American Philosophical Society . Proto-Mayan language Proto-Mayan is the hypothetical common ancestor of the 30 living Mayan languages , as well as the Classic Maya language documented in the Maya inscriptions . While there has been some controversy with Mayan subgrouping, there has been

2401-548: Was released in the Maya language in 2019. 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. Yucatec Maya is spoken by the fictional underwater kingdom of Talokan and its king Kukulkan in the 2022 film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever . In addition to universities and private institutions in Mexico, (Yucatec) Maya

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