Yucatec Maya (/ˈjuːkətɛk ˈmaɪə/ YOO-kə-tek MY-ə; referred to by its speakers as mayaʼ or maayaʼ t’aan [màːjaʔˈtʼàːn] ⓘ) is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including part of northern Belize.

[3] According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by American anthropologist Victoria Bricker, there is a variant name mayab tʼàan [majabˈtʼàːn], literally 'flat speech'[4]).

A popular, yet false, alternative etymology of Mayab is ma ya'ab or 'not many, the few', which derives from New Age spiritualist interpretations of the Maya.

[5] The meaning and origins of "Maya" as the name of the language (versus Mayab) and as the ethnic identity (ethnonym) are complex questions — see etymology and social history of the word as ethnic identity and name of the language in Restall (2004)[6] and Restall and Gabbert (2017).

In the Mexican states of Yucatán, some parts of Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Quintana Roo, Yucatec Maya is still the mother tongue of a large segment of the population in the early 21st century.

[9] Recently, scholars in the fields of history and anthropology have raised ethical and political questions about the continued use of the label "Yucatec Maya" to the language that is known and named by native speakers as simply "Maya" (see Castañeda (2021),[10] Castillo Cocom (2021),[11] Hernandez Reyna and Castillo Cocom (2021),[12] Restall (2004),[6] Restall and Gabbert (2017).

[7] These scholars argue, both explicitly and implicitly, that the use of "Yucatec Maya" manifests a continuation and propagation of neocolonial relationships, specifically the scientific imperialism of linguistics and the cultural hegemony of anglophone academia.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, a coalition emerged in the Yucatán peninsula among three important centers, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Mayapan.

The Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast of Yucatán during his expedition for the Spanish Crown in 1502, but he never made landfall.

During the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spaniards to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, as survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean.

The Maya ritually sacrificed most of these men, leaving just two survivors, Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, who somehow rejoined other Spaniards.

[19] In 1519, Aguilar accompanied Hernán Cortés to the Yucatán island of Cozumel, and also took part in the conquest of central Mexico.

[19][page needed] Francisco de Montejo's military incursion of Yucatán took three generations and three wars with extended fighting, which lasted a total of 24 years.

[clarification needed] As the Spanish colonists settled more areas, in the 18th century they developed the lands for large maize plantations and cattle farms.

The sounds are written using an apostrophe after the letter to distinguish them from the plain consonants (tʼàan "speech" vs. táan "forehead").

Glottal constriction is high in the developmental hierarchy, and features like [fricative], [apical], or [fortis] are found to be later acquired.

Another aspect of the language is the core-argument marking strategy, which is a 'fluid S system' in the typology of Dixon (1994)[26] 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 language itself can be traced back to proto-Yucatecan, the ancestor of modern Yucatec Maya, Itza, Lacandon and Mopan.

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).

[citation needed] The modern bible edition, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released[32] in the Maya language in 2019.

On December 4, 2019, the Congress of Yucatán unanimously approved a measure requiring the teaching of the Maya language in schools in the state.

[34] Yucatec Maya is spoken by the fictional underwater kingdom of Talokan[35] and its king Kukulkan in the 2022 film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

[36] In addition to universities and private institutions in Mexico, (Yucatec) Maya is also taught at: Free online dictionary, grammar and texts: