Language
Mayan language had many dialects - Qhuche, Cakchiquel, Kekchi, and Mam -
is still spoken by about 300,000 persons, of whom two-thirds are pure
Maya, the remainder being whites and of mixed blood are still spoken
today, although the majority of Indians also speak Spanish.
Mayan languages constitute a language
family spoken in Mesoamerica from southeastern Mexico to northern
Central America and as far south as Honduras. Their hypotheticized
common ancestor, known as Proto-Mayan, existed at least 5000 years ago
and has been partially reconstructed. Although Spanish is the official
language across most present-day countries of the region, Mayan
languages are still spoken as a primary or secondary language by more
than 6 million indigenous Maya. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized
twenty-one Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes another eight
not spoken in Guatemala.
During the pre-Columbian era of Mesoamerican history, at least two
regional variants of Mayan languages were reflected in the Maya
hieroglyphic script. With a surviving corpus of over
10,000 known individual Maya inscriptions on buildings, monuments,
pottery and bark-paper codices, the Mayan languages recorded in the
hieroglyphic script provide a basis for the modern understanding of
pre-Columbian history that is unparalleled in the Americas.
