Юкатекский майя: язык и особенности структуры

Mayan language spoken in Mexico and Belize

Yucatec Maya ('/j//uː//k//ə//t//ɛ//k// /'/m//aɪ//ə/; referred to by its speakers simply as Maya or as maaya t’aan ) is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including part of northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Francisco, though most Maya Americans are speakers of other Mayan languages from Guatemala and Chiapas.

Mayan words are typically stressed on the earliest syllable with a long vowel. If there is no long vowel, then the last syllable is stressed. Borrowings from other languages such as Spanish or Nahuatl are often stressed as in the original languages.

An important morphophonological process in Yucatec Maya is the dissimilation of identical consonants next to each other by debuccalizing to avoid geminate consonants. If a word ends in one of the glottalized plosives /pʼ tʼ kʼ ɓ/ and is followed by an identical consonant, the final consonant may dispose of its point of articulation and become the glottal stop /ʔ/. This may also happen before another plosive inside a common idiomatic phrase or compound word. Examples: ~ 'Yucatec Maya' (literally, "flat speech"), and náak’ (a prefix meaning 'nearby') + káan 'sky' gives 'palate, roof the mouth' (so literally "nearby sky"). Meanwhile, if the final consonant is one of the other consonants, it debuccalizes to /h/: nak 'to stop sth' + kúuns (a causative suffix) gives nahkúuns 'to support sb/sth' (cf. the homophones nah, possessed form nahil, 'house'; and nah, possessed form nah, 'obligation'), náach’ 'far' + chah (an inchoative suffix) gives náahchah 'to become distant'. This change in the final consonant is often reflected in orthographies, so can appear as maya’ t’àan, maya t'aan, etc.

Phonology acquisition is received idiosyncratically. If a child seems to have severe difficulties with affricates and sibilants, another might have no difficulties with them while having significant problems with sensitivity to semantic content, unlike the former child. There seems to be no incremental development in phonology patterns. Monolingual children learning the language have shown acquisition of aspiration and deobstruentization but difficulty with sibilants and affricates, and other children show the reverse. Also, some children have been observed fronting palatoalveolars, others retract lamino alveolars, and still others retract both.

Like almost all Mayan languages, Yucatec Maya is verb initial. Word order varies between VOS and VSO, with VOS being the most common. Many sentences may appear to be SVO, but this order is due to a topic–comment system similar to that of Japanese. One of the most widely studied areas of Yucatec is the semantics of time in the language. Yucatec, like many other languages of the world (Chinese, Kalaallisut, arguably Guaraní and others) does not have the grammatical category of tense. Temporal information is encoded by a combination of aspect, inherent lexical aspect (aktionsart), and pragmatically governed conversational inferences. Yucatec is unusual in lacking temporal connectives such as 'before' and 'after'. Another aspect of the language is the core argument marking strategy, which is a 'fluid S system' in the typology of Dixon (1994) where intransitive subjects are encoded like agents or patients based upon a number of semantic properties as well as the perfectivity of the event.

The Maya were literate in pre Columbian times, when the language was written using Maya script. The language itself can be traced back to proto Yucatecan, the ancestor of modern Yucatec Maya, Itza, Lacandon and Mopan. Even further back, the language is ultimately related to all other Maya languages through proto Mayan itself. Yucatec Maya is now written in the Latin script. This was introduced during the Spanish Conquest of Yucatán which began in the early 16th century, and the now antiquated conventions of Spanish orthography of that period ("Colonial orthography") were adapted to transcribe Yucatec Maya. This included the use of for the postalveolar fricative sound (which is often written in English as ). In colonial times a "reversed c" was often used to represent (the alveolar ejective affricate). This sound is now represented by in the revised ALMG orthography and in the INALI orthography.

Yucatec Maya English Standardpronunciation Pronunciation ofwestern Yucatán,northern Campeche and Central Quintana Roo Normal translation Literal translation Bix a beel? Bix a beej? How are you? How is your road? Maʼalob, kux teech? Good, and you? Not bad, as for you? Bey xan teen. Same with me. Thus also to me. Tuʼux ka bin? Where are you going? Where do you go? T(áan) in bin xíimbal. I am going for a walk. Bix a kʼaabaʼ? What is your name? How are you named? In kʼaabaʼeʼ Jorge. My name is Jorge. My name, Jorge. Jach kiʼimak in wóol in wilikech. Pleased to meet you. Very happy my heart to see you. Baʼax ka waʼalik? What's up? What (are) you saying?What do you say? Mix baʼal. Mix baʼaj. Nothing. Don't mention it. No thing. Bix a wilik? How does it look? How you see (it)? Jach maʼalob. Very good. Very not bad Koʼox! Let's go! (For two people – you and I) Koʼoneʼex! Let's go! (For a group of people) Baʼax a kʼáat? What do you want? (Tak) sáamal. Aasta sáamaj. See you tomorrow. Until tomorrow. Jach Dios boʼotik. Thank you. God bless you very much. Very much God pays (it). Wakax CowCow

Yucatec language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEXPUJ AM (Xpujil, Campeche), XENKA AM (Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo) and XEPET AM (Peto, Yucatán). The 2006 film Apocalypto, directed by Mel Gibson, was filmed entirely in Yucatec Maya. The script was translated into Maya by Hilario Chi Canul of the Maya community of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who also worked as a language coach on the production. In the video game Civilization V: Gods & Kings, Pacal, leader of the Maya, speaks in Yucatec Maya. In August 2012, the Mozilla Translathon 2012 event brought over 20 Yucatec Mayan speakers together in a localization effort for the Google Endangered Languages Project, the Mozilla browser, and the MediaWiki software used by Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Baktun, the "first ever Mayan telenovela," premiered in August 2013. Jesús Pat Chablé is often credited with being one of the first Maya language rappers and producers. In the 2018 video game Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the inhabitants of the game's Paititi region speak in Yucatec Maya (while immersion mode is on). The modern bible edition, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released in the Maya language in 2019. It's distributed without charge, both printed and online editions. On December 4, 2019, the Congress of Yucatán unanimously approved a measure requiring the teaching of the Maya language in schools in the state. Yucatec Maya is spoken by the fictional underwater kingdom of Talokan and its king Kukulkan in the 2022 film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.