Mam

 

Mam is a Mayan language spoken by about half a million people in Guatemala, mainly in the departments of Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango and San Marcos. It is also spoken in the Mexican state of Chiapas along the border with Guatemala.

 

There are three main varieties of Mam: Northern Mam, which is spoken in Huehuetenango; Southern Mam, which is spoken in Quetzaltenango, and Central Mam, which is spoken in San Marcos. Each of these has many sub-dialects and there is considerable variation in the language from village to village, however Mam speakers are able to understand one another reasonably well.

           

Classification

Mam is closely related to the Tektitek language, and the two languages together form the Mamean sub-branch of the Mayan language family. Along with the Ixilan languages, Awakatek and Ixil, these make up the Greater Mamean sub-branch, one of the two branches of the Eastern Mayan languages (the other being the Greater Quichean sub-branch, which consists of 10 Mayan languages, including Kʼicheʼ).

 

Dialects

Because contact between members of different Mam communities is somewhat limited, the language varies considerably even from village to village. Nevertheless, mutual intelligibility, though difficult, is possible through practice.

 

 

Mam varieties within Guatemala are divided into four dialect groups:

Northern Mam in southern Huehuetenango Department. Northern Mam is the least conservative group according to Terrence Kaufman.

Southern Mam in Quetzaltenango Department, San Marcos Department, and Retalhuleu Department.

Central Mam in San Marcos Department.

Western Mam in northwestern San Marcos Department. The Tektitek language may be mutually intelligible with Western Mam dialects.

In addition to these, the dialects of Chiapas, Mexico may form a fifth dialect group, characterized by significant grammatical as well as lexical differences from the Guatemalan varieties.

 

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

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 Qʼeqchiʼ

    This Mayan language is spoken in Guatemala by about 500,000 people and Belize Q'eqchi' speakers are found mainly in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Petén, Izabal, Baja Verapaz, and El Quiché of Guatemala, and in the Toledo district of Belize.

    Q’eqchi’ is a Mayan language of the Eastern Mayan K’ichean (formerly spelled Quichean) branch. The formal classification is: Proto-Maya/ Eastern Mayan/ K’ichean-Mamean/ Q’eqchi’ (Campbell and Kaufman 1985). They are the predominant Maya group in the central highlands and northern lowlands of Guatemala.

    Before the beginning of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala in the 1520s, Qʼeqchiʼ settlements were concentrated in what are now the departments of Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz. Over the course of the succeeding centuries a series of land displacements, resettlements, persecutions and migrations resulted in a wider dispersal of Qʼeqchiʼ communities into other regions of Guatemala (Izabal, Petén, El Quiché), southern Belize (Toledo District), and smaller numbers in southern Mexico (Chiapas, Campeche). While most notably present in northern Alta Verapaz and southern Petén, contemporary Qʼeqchiʼ language-speakers are the most widely spread geographically of all Maya peoples in Guatemala.

 

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

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 K’iche’

Also known as Qatzijobʼal lit. 'our language' among its speakers, or Quiché, is a Mayan language of Guatemala, spoken by the Kʼicheʼ people of the central highlands. With over a million speakers (some 7% of Guatemala's population), Kʼicheʼ is the second most widely-spoken language in the country, after Spanish. It is also the most widely-spoken indigenous American language in Mesoamerica.

The Central dialect is the most commonly used in media and education. Despite a low literacy rate, Kʼicheʼ is increasingly taught in schools and used on the radio. The most famous work in the Classical Kʼicheʼ language is the Popol Vuh (Popol Wuʼuj in modern spelling).

Mayan K'iche' is one of the most common indigenous languages in Latin America, spoken by about 1 million Maya K’iche’ in the western Highlands of Guatemala, the heartland of Maya Culture. Also known as “Quiché”, it is a Mayan language, the origin of this language is believed to be over 4,000 years ago, the status of this language is actually that K’iche’ is spoken by 2.3 million people, as a first or second language. 300,000 of them are monolingual speakers of the language (Ethnologue). It is the second most widely spoken language in Guatemala after Spanish. It has played an important role in the Mayan cultural revitalization movement. Although it has no official status in Guatemala, and although the first-language literacy rate is only about 1%, K’iche’ is being increasingly taught in schools and used on the radio.

K’iche’ from an ancestral Proto-Mayan language that was spoken by the people who inhabited what are today Guatemala, Honduras, and the Yucatán peninsula. The language underwent a spelling change as a result of the 1987 Guatemalan Government Decree which regularized Mayan orthographies that were previously based on Spanish traditions. K’iche’ has a long literary tradition, e.g., Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Mayas, representing an account of Maya history and mythology, beginning with the creation of the world and written in Classical K’iche’. The K’iche’ culture reached its pinnacle at the time of the Spanish conquest.

Currently, the following software platforms can be found in K’iche’: Microsoft Office, Skype, Xbox, Facebook, and more!

 

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

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 Nahuatl

Spoken in central and western Mexico. Nahuatl, the most important of the Uto-Aztecan languages, was the language of the Aztec and Toltec civilizations of Mexico. A large body of literature in Nahuatl, produced by the Aztecs, survives from the 16th century, recorded in an orthography that was introduced by Spanish priests and based on that of Spanish.

After the conquest, when Spanish colonists and missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet, Nahuatl also became a literary language. Many chronicles, grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents and codices were written in it during the 16th and 17th centuries. This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl. It is among the most studied and best-documented languages of the Americas.

Today, Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along the coastline. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are not mutually intelligible. Huasteca Nahuatl, with over one million speakers, is the most-spoken variety. All varieties have been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish. No modern Nahuan languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery. Under Mexico's General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, promulgated in 2003, Nahuatl and the other 63 indigenous languages of Mexico are recognized as lenguas nacionales ('national languages') in the regions where they are spoken. They are given the same status as Spanish within their respective regions.

Nahuan languages exhibit a complex morphology, or system of word formation, characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination. This means that morphemes – words or fragments of words that each contain their own separate meaning – are often strung together to make longer complex words.

Through a very long period of development alongside other indigenous Mesoamerican languages, they have absorbed many influences, coming to form part of the Mesoamerican language area. Many words from Nahuatl were absorbed into Spanish and, from there, were diffused into hundreds of other languages in the region. Most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexico, which the Spanish heard mentioned for the first time by their Nahuatl names. English has also absorbed words of Nahuatl origin, including avocado, chayote, chili, chipotle, chocolate, atlatl, coyote, peyote, axolotl and tomato.The phonology of Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, was notable for its use of a tl sound produced as a single consonant and for the use of the glottal stop. The glottal stop has been lost in some modern dialects—replaced by h—and retained in others. The tl sound, however, serves to distinguish the three major modern dialects: central and northern Aztec dialects retain the tl sound, as can be seen in their name, Nahuatl. Eastern Aztec dialects, around Veracruz, Mexico, have replaced the tl by t and are called Nahuat. Western dialects, spoken primarily in the Mexican states of Michoacán and México, replace the tl with l and are called Nahual.

Nahuatl used a set of 15 consonants and four long and short vowels. Its grammar was basically agglutinative, making much use of prefixes and suffixes, reduplication (doubling) of syllables, and compound words.

 

At Trápaga Asociados – Interpretation & Translation Agency, we work with all Mayan languages, and also Nahuatl.

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Sacapulteco

 

Sacapulteco or Sacapultek is a Mayan language spoken in the town of Sacapulas, in the department of El Quiché in central Guatemala. In 2019 there were about 6,530 speakers of Sakapultek, which is also known as Sakapulteko, Sacapulas K'iche', Sacapulteco or Qač'ab'a:l.

 

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

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Tzʼutujil

 

Is a Mayan language spoken by the Tzʼutujil people in the region to the south of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Tzʼutujil is closely related to its larger neighbors, Kaqchikel and Kʼicheʼ. The 2002 census found 60,000 people speak Tzʼutujil as their mother tongue. The two Tzʼutijil dialects are Eastern and Western.

The majority of the Tzʼutujil people have Spanish as their second language, although many of the older people, or those in more remote locations do not. Many children also do not learn Spanish until they go to school around the age of five although more importance is now being placed upon it due to the influx of tourism into the region. As of 2012, the Community Library Rijaʼtzuul Naʼooj in San Juan La Laguna features story telling for children in Tzʼutujil; bilingual children's books are also available. Spanish is used in written communication.

In the charts below each of the Tzʼutujil phonemes is represented by the character or set of characters that denote it in the standard orthography developed by the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG) and sanctioned by the Guatemalan government. Where different, the corresponding symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet appears in brackets.

    Stress is always on the final syllable of native words, except for the adjectival vowel suffix in certain environments.

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

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Akateko

 

            Is a Mayan language spoken by the Akateko people primarily in the Huehuetenango Department, Guatemala in and around the municipalities of Concepción Huista, Nentón, San Miguel Acatán, San Rafael La Independencia and San Sebastián Coatán. A number of speakers also live in Chiapas, Mexico. It is a living language with 58,600 speakers in 1998, of which 48,500 lived in Guatemala and the remaining in Mexico.

 

        Akateko is closely related to the two Mayan languages, Qʼanjobʼal and Jakaltek. The three languages together form the Qʼanjobʼal-Jakaltek sub-branch, which together with the Mochoʼ language form the Qʼanjobʼalan sub-branch, which again, together with the Chujean languages, Chuj and Tojolabʼal, form the branch Qʼanjobalan–Chujean. It is believed that Qʼanjobʼal–Jakaltek split into Akateko, Qʼanjobʼal and Jakaltek some 500 to 1,500 years ago.

 

        Akateko was regarded as a dialect of the Qʼanjobʼal language until the 1970s, when linguists realized that it has a distinct grammar from that of Qʼanjobʼal. That it has been thought a dialect of Qʼanjobʼal is reflected in the many names Akateko has had through time. One of its primary names before it was named Akateko was Ti Western Qʼanjobʼal, but it has also been called Conob and various names including Qʼanjobʼal and the municipality where it is spoken.

 

        An interesting aspect of Akateko grammar, which is also present in most other Qʼanjobalan languages, is the use of directional morphemes, which appear as enclitics. These morphemes make it possible for the speaker to talk about movement and direction in space without pointing or using other gestures. Consider the stative verb to be, which can appear as existing inwards, existing towards there, away from the speaker and listener and existing from the inside out, using different enclitics. 

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

Please contact us with any job or project inquiries.

https://asociadostrapaga.com/home/

 +502 55717516