Mayan languages

Mayan
Geographic distribution	Mesoamerica: Southern Mexico; Guatemala; Belize; western Honduras and El Salvador; small refugee and emigrant populations, especially in the United States and Canada
Native speakers	6.0 million
Linguistic classification	One of the world's primary language families
Proto-language	Proto-Mayan
Subdivisions	Huastecan Core Mayan (all other languages)
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5	myn
Glottolog	maya1287
Location of Mayan speaking populations. See below for a detailed map of the different languages.[image reference needed]

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The Mayan languages^{[notes 1]} form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name,^{[1][notes 2]} and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory.

The Mayan language family is one of the best-documented and most studied in the Americas.^[2] Modern Mayan languages descend from the Proto-Mayan language, thought to have been spoken at least 5,000 years ago; it has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method. The proto-Mayan language diversified into at least six different branches: the Huastecan, Quichean, Yucatecan, Qanjobalan, Mamean and Chʼolan–Tzeltalan branches.

Mayan languages form part of the Mesoamerican language area, an area of linguistic convergence developed throughout millennia of interaction between the peoples of Mesoamerica. All Mayan languages display the basic diagnostic traits of this linguistic area. For example, all use relational nouns instead of prepositions to indicate spatial relationships. They also possess grammatical and typological features that set them apart from other languages of Mesoamerica, such as the use of ergativity in the grammatical treatment of verbs and their subjects and objects, specific inflectional categories on verbs, and a special word class of "positionals" which is typical of all Mayan languages.

During the pre-Columbian era of Mesoamerican history, some Mayan languages were written in the logo-syllabic Maya script. Its use was particularly widespread during the Classic period of Maya civilization (c. 250–900). The surviving corpus of over 5,000 known individual Maya inscriptions on buildings, monuments, pottery and bark-paper codices,^[3] combined with the rich post-Conquest literature in Mayan languages written in the Latin script, provides a basis for the modern understanding of pre-Columbian history unparalleled in the Americas.

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