Mopan

Mopan is a member of the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language family. It is spoken in the Cayo, Stann Ceek and Toledo districs in southern Belize, particularly in San Antonio in Toledo. It is also spoken in the Petén Department of northern Guatemala, particularly in the towns of San Luis, Poptún, Melchor de Mencos, and Dolores. In 2014 there were about 10,600 speakers of Mopan in Belize, and there were about 2,010 in Guatemala in 2019. It is officially recognized in Guatemala.

Mopan is also known as Mopán Maya, Mopane or Maya Mopán.

Mopan is written with the Latin alphabet, and several different spelling systems have been used since colonial times (from the 17th century). The system shown below is the one used by the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG), or Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages.

Word order

The word order in Mopan is verb-object-subject (VOS), although subject-verb-object (SVO) is also common.

 

Noun classifiers

Mopan has two noun classifiers that are used to indicate gender. However, use of these classifiers is not typical of grammatical gender. The two classifiers are ix (feminine) and aj (masculine), for example, aj much, meaning "toad (masculine)". Use of these gender markers is atypical in several respects:

They are not used for most nouns.

Gender is marked only in the noun and does not require agreement elsewhere in the sentence.

Gender marking can sometimes be omitted.

Although the gender markers normally match the natural gender of the referent when denoting people, this is not always the case for non-human referents. For example, "parrot" (ix tʼutʼ) is typically feminine regardless of the sex of the animal.

 

At Trápaga Asociados – Interpretation & Translation Agency, we work with all Mayan languages including Mopan.

Please contact us with any job or project inquiries.

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