Гватемала және Мексикадағы Мам тілі

Mayan language spoken in Guatemala and Mexico

Mam is a Mayan language spoken by about half a million Mam people in the Guatemalan departments of Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Retalhuleu, and the Mexican states of Campeche and Chiapas. Thousands more make up a Mam diaspora throughout the United States and Mexico, with notable populations living in Oakland, California and Washington, D. C. The most extensive Mam grammar is Nora C. England's A grammar of Mam, a Mayan language (1983), which is based on the San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán dialect of Huehuetenango Department.

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).

Mam is spoken in 64 communities in four Guatemalan departments and numerous communities in Campeche and Chiapas, Mexico. Primary stress falls on the long vowel in a word if there is one, e. g. aq'ú:ntl 'work'. Words without a long vowel assign primary stress to the vowel preceding the last glottal stop, e. g. puʔláʔ 'dipper'. Words without a long vowel or a glottal stop assign stress to the vowel preceding the last consonant in the root, e. g. xpicháqʼ 'raccoon'. Stress is not assigned to suffixes or enclitics that do not have long vowels or a glottal stop.

Most roots take the morphological shape CVC. The only possible root final consonant cluster is nC. Syllables can have up to four consonants in a cluster in any position. Most consonant clusters are the result of vowel dropping and morpheme addition.