Fifteen hundred years ago the Classic Maya civilization flourished in the lowland forests of Mexico and Guatemala. They developed the most sophisticated writing system to appear in the New World and recorded their history on stone monuments. Today their descendants, the Yukatekan and Ch'olan Maya, continue to live in much the same territory. This research centers on the Yukatekan branch of the family, which includes Itzaj, Mopan, Lakantun, and Yukateko Maya, with the aim of creating a comparative etymological dictionary. Dr. Hofling has compiled substantial digital databases for each member of the family, but additional information is essential. Fieldwork will focus on Mopan and Itzaj Maya, both endangered languages spoken in northern Guatemala. Itzaj is chosen because it is the most critically endangered languages of the family, with only a couple of dozen elders who still speak it. Mopan is chosen because it is the least documented and most divergent member of the Yukatekan branch of the Mayan language family. This project is designed to expand our knowledge of the vocabularies of these languages based on three seasons of fieldwork in Guatemala. The results will be expanded databases and dictionaries of Itzaj and Mopan, produced in a tri-lingual Maya-Spanish-English format, as well as an etymological dictionary showing the history of words in each of the Yukatekan languages over the past millenium. The dictionary will be an important tool for tracing the linguistic and cultural history of Yukatekan speakers and provide critical information for the decipherment of the Mayan hieroglyphic script.
Mayans in Mexico and Guatemala have been engaged in efforts to document and revitalize their languages and cultures for more than a decade. They are deeply interested in preserving their languages and learning more about their cultural heritage. Similarly, Latin American immigrants to the United States want to learn about and preserve their cultural patrimony. The products of this research should be of interest and use to these audiences in addition to professional anthropological and linguistic audiences. In addition to its importance as a description of linguistic history, it will provide a link between the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Classic Maya and the languages spoken by their descendants today.
