[2] Its spoken form, the Chʼoltiʼ, from the Manche Chʼol region, is known from a manuscript written between 1685 and 1695,[3] first studied by Daniel Garrison Brinton.

The division between Proto-Yucatecan (in the north, the Yucatán Peninsula) and Proto-Cholan (in the south, the Chiapas highlands and the Petén Basin) had already occurred in the Classic, when most of the Mayan inscriptions existing were written.

Both variants are attested in hieroglyphic inscriptions at Maya sites of the time, and both are commonly known as the "classical Mayan language".

They propose that it originated in the western and south-central basin of the Petén, and that it was used in inscriptions and perhaps also spoken by elites and priests.

However, Mora-Marín has argued that the traits shared by the Classic Lowland Maya and Chʼoltian languages are retentions rather than innovations, and that the diversification of Chʼolan is indeed Post-Classical.

It is now thought that the codices and other Classic texts were written by scribes, usually members of the Maya priesthood, in a literary form of the Chʼoltiʼ language.

The script's corpus of graphemes features a core of syllabic signs which reflect the phonology of the Classic Maya language spoken in the region and at that time, which were also combined or complemented by a larger number of logograms.

For example, in one common pattern many verb and noun roots are given by logographs, while their grammatical affixes were written syllabically, much like the Japanese writing system.

However, the first alphabet was developed by Fray Francisco Morán in his Vocabulario en lengua choltí, whose most notable difference is the transcription of /k’/ as ⟨ꜫ⟩ and /t͡ʃ’/ as ⟨ꜫh⟩.

The most widespread phonological process attested in Maya glyphs is the elimination of the underlying vowels in a trisyllabic word.

In addition, the language employs counter words when quantifying nouns and uses a vigesimal number system.

Numbers greater than 20 are recorded in classical Mayan inscriptions, as part of the so-called "lunar series", for example, when describing the number of days that a "lunar month" specifically has (for example, "20 + 9"; "20 + 10") or the count or order of dynasties to be counted.

[13][14] Independent pronouns stand alone in an utterance, usually to draw focus to one of the sentence's arguments; historically they were constructed from a demonstrative particle *haʔ plus a dependent pronoun of the Absolutive Series, but many of the attested forms display further unpredictable phonological developments.

Dependent pronouns are affixed to their grammatical head (whether noun, adjective, or verb), and come in two separate sets.