Yucatec Maya

Where it’s spoken

Yucatec Maya (Maaya t’aan) is the principal Mayan language of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula — Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche states — and is also spoken in northern Belize and Petén, Guatemala. With around 770,000 speakers, it is the largest of the more than 30 Mayan languages. It is among Mexico’s recognized national languages.

What it sounds like

Yucatec Maya has five vowels with phonemic length, distinguishing short, long, and glottalized vowels — plus a tone contrast on long vowels in some analyses. The consonant system features ejective (glottalized) stops: p’, t’, k’, tz’, ch’. The glottal stop is a full consonant phoneme.

How it’s written

Modern Yucatec Maya uses the Latin alphabet. The current orthography was standardized by Mexico’s National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), with glottal stops written as apostrophes and long vowels as doubled letters. Earlier orthographies from colonial-era missionaries differed in conventions.

History

The Classic Maya civilization (250–900 CE) produced extensive hieroglyphic inscriptions and codices in a Mayan language closely related to or ancestral to Yucatec. After Spanish conquest, the Latin script replaced glyphs. Modern Yucatec retains many continuities with its classical literary forebears.