Maya Languages from Classic to Modern

The script recorded on Maya monuments and in the surviving codices encoded a single spoken language, but the Maya were never a single-language people. The Classic-period inscriptions encode a member of the Cholan branch of the Mayan family that is reconstructed, with high confidence, as the ancestor of the modern Chorti’ of highland Guatemala and the Ch’ol of Chiapas, Mexico. The Postclassic and the modern period, by contrast, have seen a proliferation of mutually unintelligible languages across the Maya area, in a linguistic diversity that has been shaped by conquest, migration, and the slow accumulation of changes over two and a half millennia. The modern descendants of the Classic scribes still speak these languages: K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Tz’utujil, Mam, Q’anjob’, Q’eqchi’, Chorti’, Ch’ol, Tojol-ab’al, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chontal, and Yukatek are among the more than thirty living members of the Mayan family.

This pages describes the language of the inscriptions, the modern languages that descend from it, and the historical developments that have shaped the family. The script itself is treated on the page on Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system; the historical and political context is on the page on Maya writing, language, and books; the modern descendants are treated on the page on the living Maya: heritage and modern descendants and on the page on Maya languages today: living tongues.

The Mayan language family

The Mayan language family is one of the best-attested and most thoroughly studied in the Americas. It contains roughly thirty living languages and several extinct ones, spoken today across an area that extends from the Huasteca of northern Veracruz and San Luis Potosí to highland Guatemala, and from the Petén lowlands of northern Guatemala to the highlands of Chiapas. The family is conventionally divided into six major branches, each of which contains one to several living languages:

Huastecan, a single language (Huastec / Wastek and its close relative Chicomuceltec, now extinct), spoken in northern Veracruz and San Luis Potosí. Huastec is the most divergent of the Mayan languages and is sometimes thought to have been spoken continuously in the region since the Formative period.
Yucatecan, including Yukatek (Yucatec Maya, the most widely spoken Mayan language in Mexico), Itzá, Mopán, and Lakantún. These languages are spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, the Petén, and adjacent parts of Belize and Guatemala.
Cholan-Tzeltalan, a major branch that contains both Cholan and Tzeltalan, with Tzeltalan sometimes called “Greater Tzeltalan.” The Cholan branch includes the modern Ch’ol of Chiapas, the Chorti’ of Guatemala, and the extinct Ch’olti’an. The Tzeltalan branch includes Tzeltal and Tzotzil of highland Chiapas.
K’iche’an, a large branch that includes K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Tz’utujil, Sakapultek, Sipakapense, and several other languages of highland Guatemala.
Mamean, including Mam, Awakatek, Teko, and Ixil. These languages are spoken in the western highlands of Guatemala and adjacent parts of Chiapas.
Q’anjob’alan, including Q’anjob’, Akatek, Popti’, and Chuj. These languages are spoken in the Cuchumatanes and adjacent areas of highland Guatemala and Chiapas.

The relationships among the six branches are not all fully resolved. The Cholan-Tzeltalan branch is sometimes grouped with Huastecan to form a “Greater Huastecan” branch, on the basis of shared innovations. The position of the Yukatecan branch is also uncertain: it is sometimes grouped with the Cholan-Tzeltalan branch, sometimes treated as a separate primary branch. The most widely accepted classification is that of Terrence Kaufman (1974) and of Lyle Campbell, in which the six branches are treated as primary.

The language of the inscriptions: Classic Ch’olti’an

For most of the twentieth century, the question of what language the inscriptions were written in was contested. Eric Thompson, in his Maya Hieroglyphic Writing (1950) and subsequent works, argued that the language of the inscriptions was Yukatek, in part because Yukatek was the most familiar living Mayan language to scholars working in the early and mid-twentieth century. The argument was influential, but it was based on a small number of dubious comparisons and on the assumption that the spoken language of the inscriptions would have been the same as the spoken language of the modern Yukatek.

The argument was overturned in 1983, when the linguists John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman published their paper “Lowland Maya Loanwords and the Linguistic Affiliation of the Inscriptions.” The paper showed, on systematic grounds, that the language encoded by the script was not Yukatek but a Cholan tongue, and specifically the ancestor of the modern Chorti’ and Ch’ol. The argument was based on a careful comparison of the spellings of the inscriptions with the phonological systems of the modern Cholan languages, and on the identification of a number of diagnostic Cholan features in the script.

The reconstructed ancestor of Chorti’ and Ch’ol is now conventionally called Classic Ch’olti’an, a name that reflects its relationship to the historical Ch’olti’ language of the colonial period, and to the modern Chorti’ of highland Guatemala. The reconstruction of Classic Ch’olti’an is still being worked out, but its principal features are clear: it had a five-vowel system (a, e, i, o, u), a series of glottalized consonants (p’, t’, k’, ch’, ts’, tz’, k’ahk’), a set of implosive or “explosive” consonants (b’, t’), a vowel-length distinction, and a complex morphology that made use of a number of suffixes and clitics.

The identification of the language of the inscriptions as Classic Ch’olti’an has had a number of important consequences. It has allowed epigraphers to confirm the readings of a number of signs that were previously uncertain, on the basis of their Cholan values. It has also allowed linguists to use the inscriptions as a source of evidence for the phonological history of the Cholan languages, and as a test case for the glottochronology of the family.

Glottochronology and the Cholan-Tzeltalan split

The Mayan languages are well-attested in the historical record, and the family is one of the few in the Americas for which glottochronology — the method of dating the divergence of languages on the basis of their retained basic vocabulary — has produced results that are widely accepted. The most influential application of glottochronology to the Mayan family is the work of Morris Swadesh and of the Stanford Project on the Mathematical Aspects of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing in the 1960s, and of subsequent work by Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman in the 1970s and 1980s.

The dates that have been proposed for the divergence of the major branches of the Mayan family are, of course, approximate. The Cholan-Tzeltalan branch is thought to have diverged from the Yukatecan branch around 2200 BCE, and the Tzeltalan and Cholan branches are thought to have diverged from each other around 1500 BCE. The K’iche’an branch is thought to have diverged from the Mamean branch around 1500 BCE, and the Q’anjob’alan branch is thought to have diverged from the rest of the family around 1000 BCE. The Huastecan branch is thought to have diverged from the rest of the family much earlier, perhaps as early as 2200 BCE.

The dates are not, of course, exact. They depend on a number of assumptions about the rate of lexical replacement, and on the assumed uniformity of that rate across languages. They are, however, consistent with the archaeological record, and they provide a useful framework for the reconstruction of the family’s history. The dates are reviewed in the page on what is the difference between Maya languages.

The relationship between Cholan and modern Ch’ol and Chorti’

The relationship between Classic Ch’olti’an, the modern Ch’ol, and the modern Chorti’ is a topic of ongoing research. The three are clearly related, but the relationship is not a simple one of ancestor and descendant. The modern Ch’ol is spoken in the lowlands of Chiapas, in a region that was part of the Classic-period Cholan-speaking area, but the modern Ch’ol has been in contact with the Tzeltalan and Tzotzil languages of the highlands for centuries, and has been influenced by them. The modern Chorti’ is spoken in the highlands of eastern Guatemala, in a region that was part of the Classic-period Chorti’-speaking area, and is the closest living language to the reconstructed Classic Ch’olti’an.

The Ch’olti’ language, which was the language of the colonial-era manuscripts of the lowland Maya, is thought to have been intermediate between the modern Ch’ol and the modern Chorti’, and is sometimes considered to be a third member of the Cholan branch. The Ch’olti’ language is now extinct, but it is well-attested in colonial dictionaries, including the Calepino de Motul and the Diccionario de Viena of the Franciscan friars of colonial Yucatán. The dictionaries are the principal source for the reconstruction of the historical phonology of the Cholan languages, and are an essential tool for the epigrapher.

The Cholan-Tzeltalan and Greater Tzeltalan branches

The Cholan-Tzeltalan branch of the Mayan family is a large and diverse group of languages, spoken in the lowlands and highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala. The branch contains two main sub-branches: Cholan, which includes the modern Ch’ol, Chorti’, and the extinct Ch’olti’; and Tzeltalan, which includes Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Tojol-ab’al. The two sub-branches are sometimes grouped together as “Greater Tzeltalan,” on the basis of a number of shared innovations.

The languages of the Cholan-Tzeltalan branch are spoken by roughly 1.5 million people, the largest group of Mayan-language speakers in Mexico. The Tzeltalan languages are the second most widely spoken Mayan languages in Mexico, after Yukatek. The Cholan languages are the third. The Cholan-Tzeltalan branch is also the branch of the family that is most directly relevant to the inscriptions, since the language of the inscriptions is a member of the Cholan sub-branch.

The K’iche’an, Mamean, and Q’anjob’alan branches

The K’iche’an, Mamean, and Q’anjob’alan branches are spoken chiefly in the highlands of Guatemala and adjacent parts of Chiapas. The K’iche’an branch is the largest by number of speakers, with roughly 1.1 million speakers of K’iche’ alone, the most widely spoken Mayan language in Guatemala. The Mamean branch is the second largest, with roughly 800,000 speakers of Mam and its close relatives. The Q’anjob’alan branch is the third largest, with roughly 200,000 speakers of Q’anjob’, Akatek, Popti’, and Chuj.

The K’iche’an branch is also the most diverse, with at least seven living languages and several extinct ones. The most important of the K’iche’an languages for the history of the family is K’iche’ itself, which was the language of the K’iche’ kingdom of highland Guatemala in the Postclassic period. The K’iche’ language is the language of the Popol Vuh and the Maya creation myth, and is the most thoroughly documented of the K’iche’an languages.

The Yukatecan branch

The Yukatecan branch of the Mayan family is the branch of the modern Yucatec Maya. The branch contains four living languages: Yukatek (Yucatec Maya, the most widely spoken, with roughly 800,000 speakers in the Yucatán Peninsula), Itzá (spoken in the Petén of Guatemala), Mopán (spoken in Belize and adjacent parts of Guatemala), and Lakantún (spoken in small communities in Chiapas and Guatemala). The four are mutually intelligible to a high degree.

The Yukatecan branch is the branch of the family with the longest colonial documentation. The first dictionaries of a Mayan language were the colonial dictionaries of Yukatek, including the Calepino de Motul and the Diccionario de Viena. The dictionaries are a key source for the reconstruction of the historical phonology of the family, and are essential for the modern epigrapher.

The Huastecan branch

The Huastecan branch of the Mayan family is the most divergent of the six branches, and is sometimes thought to have been spoken continuously in the Huasteca of northern Veracruz and San Luis Potosí since the Formative period. The branch contains two languages: Huastec / Wastek, with roughly 200,000 speakers in the modern Huasteca, and Chicomuceltec, a now-extinct language that was spoken in the Chiapas highlands until the late twentieth century.

The Huastecan branch is geographically separated from the rest of the Mayan family, and the divergence of the branch from the rest of the family is thought to date to the earliest period of Mayan linguistic diversification, perhaps as early as 2200 BCE. The Huastecan branch is the only Mayan branch that is spoken outside of the Maya area as conventionally defined.

The relationship between the script and the languages

The relationship between the script and the languages of the inscriptions is a topic that is still being worked out. The script is known to have been used to write a Cholan language, but it was used at courts that spoke other Mayan languages, including Yukatek, Chontal, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and K’iche’an. The script was therefore not a “Maya” script in the pan-family sense, but a Cholan script that was used (and adapted) by the broader Maya world.

The conventions of inscription are also revealing. The script used at Palenque and the court of Pakal is essentially the same as the script used at Tikal, the heart of the Classic Maya world, and at Copán and the dynasty of the 18-Rabbit, and at Calakmul, Caracol, and the Snake kingdom, even though the languages spoken at these sites are thought to have been quite different. The convention suggests that the script was a kind of lingua franca, used at courts that spoke different languages, and that the scribes who wielded the script were members of a shared scribal tradition.

Sources

Coe, M. D. & Van Stone, M. (2005). Reading the Maya Glyphs (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Houston, S. D. (2004). The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge University Press. — link
Martin, S. & Grube, N. (2008). Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Boot, E. (2009). The Updated Preliminary Classic Maya–English / English–Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings. Wayeb. — link
Knorozov, Y. V. (1952). Ancient writing of Central America. Sovetskaya Etnografiya, 3. — [link](https://www.worldcat.org/title/sovet skaia-etnografiia/oclc/60638864)
Proskouriakoff, T. (1971). Commoners in Classic Maya sculpture. In Memoirs of the Peabody Museum vol. 6. Peabody Museum, Harvard. — link