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The distinction between related languages and dialects is notoriously vague in Mesoamerica. The dominant Mesoamerican socio-cultural pattern through millennia has been centered around the town or city as the highest level community rather than the nation, realm or people.
In Central America the Mayan languages are among those used today. Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight more. The Mayan language family is one of the best documented ...
The language is now called mexicano by many of its native speakers, a term dating to the early colonial period and usually pronounced the Spanish way, with or rather than . [33] [36] Many Nahuatl speakers refer to their language with a cognate derived from mācēhualli, the Nahuatl word for 'commoner'. [33]
Classical Nahuatl was a lingua franca in Central Mexico before the Spanish conquest due to Aztec hegemony, [44] and its role was not only preserved but expanded in the initial stage of colonial rule, encouraged by the Spaniards as a literary language and tool to convert diverse Mesoamerican peoples.
The similarities noted between many of the languages of Mesoamerica have led linguistic scholars to propose the constitution of a sprachbund, from as early as 1959. [1] The proposal was not consolidated until 1986, however, when Lyle Campbell, Terrence Kaufman and Thomas Smith-Stark employed a rigid linguistic analysis to demonstrate that the similarities between a number of languages were ...
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 ...
Puebla, with 601,680 indigenous language speakers, accounting for 11.7% of the state's population. Yucatán, with 537,516 indigenous language speakers, accounting for 30.3% of the state's population. These five states accounted for 61.1% of all indigenous language speakers in Mexico.
On the question of geographic point of origin, 20th-century linguists agreed that the Yutonahua language family originated in the Southwestern United States. [5] [6] The Uto-Aztecan family has been accepted by linguists as a linguistic family since the beginning of the same century, and six subgroups are generally accepted as valid: Numic, Takic, Pimic, Taracahita, Corachol, and Aztecan.