Yucatec Maya
Language · official in 1 country
Its speakers simply say maaya or maayaʼ tʼàan; the word Yucatec is a linguists' addition that sets the language apart from other Mayan languages. It is spoken across the Yucatán Peninsula and in part of northern Belize, and is one of only three Mayan languages to have developed tone. Mexico's 2003 language rights law counts it among the country's national languages.
The language on record
- Own name
- màaya t'àan
- ISO 639-3
- YUA
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- Yucatecan
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Yucatec Maya is official
Mexico is the record here. The language has regional national-language status under the 2003 law, and Belize, where the 2010 census counted 2,518 speakers, gives it none on record.
Official beside Yucatec Maya
About Yucatec Maya
Why linguists added Yucatec to the name
Native speakers do not qualify the name. They call it Maaya, maayaʼ tʼàan or maasewal tʼaan, "commoner language", and plain maya when they speak Spanish. Yucatec Maya is scholarly usage, coined to keep it apart from Kʼicheʼ, Itzaʼ and the rest of the family. A variant, mayab tʼàan, "flat speech", is recorded in the Hocabá dictionary compiled by Victoria Bricker, and it appears to be unique to that town. The popular reading of Mayab as ma yaʼab, "not many", is false.
Yucatec belongs to the Yucatecan branch with Itza, Mopan and Lacandon. All of them descend from Proto-Yucatecan and, further back, from Proto-Mayan, spoken some 5,000 years ago.
What the missionaries made of Maya
The Maya wrote their language in Maya script before the conquest. Spanish missionaries between about 1540 and 1700 translated Catholic texts, coined words for Catholic ideas and produced a reshaped language, Maya reducido, meant for conversion and government. Maya speakers took it up for their own ends. Maya notaries wrote documents in it, in the Roman alphabet, between 1557 and 1851, and they survive in archives in Mexico, Spain and the United States.
The colonial spelling followed the Spanish of its day, with x for the sh sound and a reversed c for the ejective tsʼ. The ALMG orthography now writes that sound tzʼ and the INALI orthography tsʼ.
How tone and length mark the vowels
Each of the five vowels comes in four shapes, combining length, tone and phonation. Long vowels are written double, as in aa and ee, a convention of the standard orthography first adopted in 1984, and high-tone long vowels are set apart from low-tone ones. Stress falls on the earliest syllable with a long vowel, or on the last syllable where there is none.
Where Yucatec Maya is heard now
Radio stations run by Mexico's Indigenous development commission broadcast in Yucatec from Xpujil, Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Peto. The 2006 film Apocalypto was shot entirely in the language, and Baktun, billed as the first Mayan telenovela, premiered in August 2013. A diaspora community lives in San Francisco.
Common questions
Questions about Yucatec Maya
What do speakers call Yucatec Maya?
Maaya or maayaʼ tʼàan in the language itself, and maya in Spanish. The word Yucatec is used by linguists only.
Is Yucatec Maya a tonal language?
Yes. It distinguishes high-tone and low-tone long vowels, which few Mayan languages do: only Uspantek and one dialect of Tzotzil share the feature.
What legal status does Yucatec Maya have in Mexico?
The General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, passed in March 2003, makes Mexico's Indigenous languages national languages with the same validity as Spanish in their own territory and context. Speakers may use them with government officials.