OSEA Maya Pedagogy & Assessment of Available Teaching Materials

Summary Description of Maya Immersion Programs (dates, costs, credits, homestays)

Course Details & Resources: Funding, Course Materials, Teaching Staff

Learn the Correct and Incorrect Uses of names Maya and Mayan

Learn about OSEA Maya Pedagogy and Assessment of Available Learning Materials

Past Participants: Experience, Comments, Achievements

Download Current Flyers / Summary Description

Survey and Assessment of Available Maya Language Pedagogical Materials

A brief survey of the available pedagogical materials for Maya in English with secondary reference of resources in Spanish is presented below. These materials are discussed in the following order: dictionaries, textbooks, grammars, audio-visual, and, orthography.

Dictionaries
As may be expected for a LCTL, there are few dictionaries. Those books that are easily available in print or online/electronic formats via presses and booksellers are not full dictionaries; rather, these are glossary word lists (organized alphabetically or by common conversational topics) with a “one-to-one” English or Spanish word translations that do not provide information on the full range of meanings, uses, and contexts (e.g., Bastarrachea Manzano et al. 1975; Bevington 1995; Gonzales 2010; Litzinger and Love 1997; Máas Collí 2000; Martinez Huichim 2014; Montgomery 2003; Russo and Chigüela, 2018.). Of these, Martinez Huichim (2014) and Montgomery (2003) are the most comprehensive for English-Maya and Spanish-Maya respectively. Further these do not have derived or associated forms, etymologies, pronunciation guides, and examples of sentences (see Rhodes et al 2018 for analysis of dictionaries). Those texts that are full dictionaries in this sense are restricted to either colonial dictionaries, which often suffer the same critique, or specialist research dictionaries created for use by linguists (Bricker et al 1996; Barrera Vazquez 1980). They are often unwieldy volumes in size and weight. Digital versions make these significantly more useable for the classroom, but mostly for intermediate to advanced learners. There are several dictionaries that are restricted to verbs and their morphology (Ayres and Pfeiler 1997; Bricker and Po’ot Yah 1981; Blair 1964; Shigeto 2009; Briceño Chel 2006); unfortunately these are not designed in a pedagogical manner such as the famous “501 verbs in Language X,” to teach the full range of verb paradigms. Although designed as research tools for linguists and other scholars, they nonetheless do not provide the full range of conjugational forms and thus do not provide clarity on Maya aspect grammar. Rather they are organized in a way that reproduces the ambiguous or muddied understandings that the proposed pedagogical framework seeks to address.

For English speaking learners, there is only one comprehensive textbook, which includes audio, that has been the primary text for nearly sixty years (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965). This manuscript is written in the International Phonetic Alphabet developed for Maya by linguists and was never really publicly available to non-specialist readers in the sense that it was never published by an academic or popular press; rather this typewritten manuscript circulated in microfilm and printed photocopy versions for free via the Inter-Library Loan system of US higher education system. It was and still is and obscure resource that only the true-blood Maya scholar is aware. In 1993 a version of the same text but written in contemporary orthography began to be sold at a steep price via the Institute for the Study of the America website (The Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University), an organization hosts a Maya language summer program (https://isa.unc.edu/maya-resources/ ).

The Blair and Vermont-Salas (1965) textbook clearly has many exceptional qualities, which have sustained its use for decades. Its value is also attested to it being published online in a new format by John Lucy with support from the US Department of Education Title VI funds, that includes all the text and audio (Blair and Vermont-Salas 2019). Even though the text as a whole is written in a pedagogical style whose efficacy has mostly endured in the majority of exercises and learning activities, the great weakness is the 1960s explanation of Maya grammar. There are times where the language is too opaque, either due to the linguistic or pedagogical theory of the day; as well the grammar from one lesson often seems to collide if not contradict that of subsequent lessons. At the time of writing the textbook, one can assume that the audience of learners primarily consisted if not of linguists then only other academic researchers. The pedagogical strategy seeks to only explain the very minimal corresponding to each lesson, thus pre-empting an encompassing and comprehensive framework to serve as a solid foundation for ever-increasing knowledge. Crucially absent is a coherent framework of the Maya aspect system and sentence syntax.

The present author (of this article) used the Spoken Maya Lessons as a self-guided learner of Maya in the 1980s and 1990s and then as the textbook to teach Maya. These courses used complementary grammatical materials developed by the author to explain, clarity, and go beyond the grammar of the Blair and Vermont-Salas textbook. These supplementary materials have developed into a separate textbook (Author n.d.). This article presents one dimension of the pedagogical framework of this new textbook.

Textbooks in Spanish are written for two audiences. The first is comprised of children or non-literate adult Maya speakers who are taking courses within the Mexican educational system. The second is an audience of academic researchers and scholars. Thus, these textbooks have an additional problem for the English speaking learner or even for Mexicans who are not from the Yucatán Peninsula: The textbooks, written by speakers, presuppose that the learner is a heritage speaker of Maya or at least that they are immersed with Maya culture. On this basis, these textbooks in a certain sense do not manifest an LCTL pedagogy. Furthermore, both of these also suffer the basic problem noted above: If discussed at all there is a reduction of Maya grammar to the categories and processes of Spanish grammar or a lack of coherent explanation (see next section).

Grammars

Grammars of Maya began to be written in Spanish during the colonial period (see Tozzer 1921; Rhodes 2016; Smailus 1989). Grammars in the 20th century no doubt used these earlier texts as foundations as the analyses used the linguistic theory of the day to describe Maya. Beside this key point, is the fact that the existing grammars in English are written either in the colonial orthography modified in the 19th and 20th centuries (Andrade 1955, n.d.; Bolles and Bolles 2001) or the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA; e.g., Blair 1964; Bricker and Po’ot Yah 1981; Bricker et al. 1996). These are written for the specialist versed in linguistic understandings of language processes. They are not written for the teacher of the language to learn grammar so as to be able to teach it within the contexts of their classroom. These texts are not even written in a “let’s learn Maya grammar” pedagogical style. The field of study definitely lacks a “Maya Grammar for Dummies” textbook. Nonetheless, learning grammar is necessary at least for the teacher of a language. In the case of Maya with its specific attributes of being agglutinating, having an aspect system as well as split ergativity, and not having a copula, grammar is essential for the long term learner to advance to intermediate and advanced levels.

The pedagogical framework of Maya grammar specifically builds on the work of Bricker and Po’ot Yah (1981) and Bricker et al. (1998). Also of significant use is verb dictionary created by Shigeto (2009). Other sources that used to check information but were otherwise too difficult to use, either because of the orthography or due to the linguistic terminology are Bolles and Andrade (1955), respectively. The study of the verb morphology and conjugation by Ayres and Pfeiler (1997) is worth noting: It offers a framework approaching that presented here. However, the author did not use this work in the development of the pedagogical grammar of this article. The simple reason is that the author could not make use of the text due to a convergence of reasons: the density of the linguistic terminology became all the more difficult for being written in Spanish. Furthermore, the explanation of the grammatical aspect system is presented in fragments and pieces, that is literally word by word without a comprehensive view of the entire organizational framing of verb paradigms. At the very least, this article contributes such a panoramic view of Maya aspect grammar.

Audio-visual Resources

LCTLs can be sorted into two groups. There are those that are not commonly taught but nonetheless are widely known via popular media, films, online video services, music, and so on. Thus many learners have extensive experience hearing or watching the language being spoken and have some sense, perhaps exaggeratedly stereotypical, of the language. The other group of LCTLs are those that have relatively very minimal presence in the global communications networks. The presence of Maya on this world stage of languages was inaugurated by Mel Gibson’s Hollywood film, Apocalypto. While the governmental initiatives to promote Maya targeted children and intellectuals, this film stimulated everyday Maya speakers to have a greater awareness and interest in their language: I suspect that this is expressed in a dramatic growth of Maya language videos on the internet that show everyday life, cultural celebrations, and new music genres (e.g., Maya rap) in the Peninsula.

Among this surge of social media online are a variety of “learn Maya videos” that are created by an array of persons and organizations with a similar range of value for the learner. One example is the Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology (OSEA) Youtube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy-un3otzqi28C-fRn6musgUFw1d3jDIH ) has a series of playlists for learning Maya, but these are designed for use within the OSEA classroom and thus would be very challenging to use without the associated textbook and instructor. Other video channels offer lessons that seem more useful for a heritage learner, while others are more impressionistic and might be categorized under the theme of “wow, listen how cool Maya sounds/Learn how to say hello!”

To complete this review, I mention the NativLang YouTube Channel created by the linguist Jürgen Bohnemeyer. Note that while these videos are quite accessible to popular audiences, the channel is devoted to teaching linguistics, not how to speak Maya. Nonetheless, there are two videos about Maya grammar, one of which directly states the underlying presupposition and understanding of Maya grammar that motivates the proposed pedagogical framework: “Maya Before, Maya After: How a Tenseless Language Talks Past and Future” (Bohnemeyer 2019b, see also 2019b).

Orthography

There have been numerous attempts to create a single and universally accepted orthography and rules of spelling (for details see AnderBois 2018; Brody 2006; Guerretaz 2019; Lehmann 2018; Rhodes 2016). The most recent proposed set of conventions is the 2014 Normas (Briceño Chel and Can Tec 2014). However, there is no consistent conformity to this proposal and one can find an array of writing conventions still in use. Further, without a definitive, authoritative dictionary for Maya- Spanish and Spanish-Maya, much less the absence of any Maya to Maya dictionary, spelling is quite fluid and varied. This article follows the orthography and spelling of the Hocaba Maya dictionary (Bricker et al 1998) as the default setting. The Hocaba uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as developed for writing Maya.

References Cited

Aissen, Judith, Nora C. England, and Roberto Zavala Maldonado, eds., 2017. The Mayan Languages. London: Routledge.
AnderBois, Scott.  2018. “U chíikulil k’áatchi’: la forma, función y estandarización de la puntuación.” Cuadernos de Lingüística de El Colegio de México 5(1): 388–426.
Andrade, Manuel. 1955. A Grammar of Modern Yucatec. Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Middle American Cultural Anthropology, Series 7, No. 41. Chicago: University of Chicago Library.
Andrade, Manuel, n.d. A Grammar of Modern Yucatec. Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Middle American Cultural Anthropology, Series 7, No. 41. Chicago: University of Chicago Library. Accessed March 21, 2020.https://www.christianlehmann.eu/ling/sprachen/maya/andrade/index.html
Ayres, Glenn and Barbara Pfeiler. 1997. Los verbos mayas: La conjugación en el maya yucateco moderno. Merida, Yucatán: Ediciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.
Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo. 1980. Diccionario Maya Cordemex. México, City: Ediciones Cordemex.
Bastarrachea Manzano, Juan Ramón, Ermilo Yah Pech, and Fidencio Briceño Chel. 1975. Diccionario basico espanol– maya–espanol.  Mérida, Yucatán, México: Maldonado Editores.
Bevington, Gary, 1995. Maya for Travelers and Students: A Guide to Language and Culture in Yucatán. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Beyyette, Bethany J. and Lisa LeCount, eds. 2017. “The Only True People”: Linking Mayan Identities Past and Present. Boulder: University of Colorado Press.
Blair, Robert, W. 1964. Yucatec Maya Noun and Verb Morpho-Syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University.
Blair, Robert and Refugio Vermont-Salas. 1965. Spoken Maya Lessons, Volume 1: Lessons 1-12.
Blair, Robert and Refugio Vermont-Salas. 2019. Spoken Maya Lessons, Volumes 1 and 2 (Lessons 1-18). Accessed July 16, 2020, https://lucy.lib.uchicago.edu/
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen. 2019a. “The complicated linguistics behind how the Maya talk about the past.” NativLang YouTube Channel, July 19, 2019. Accessed May 10, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaNeA3sKBSI&list=RDLVttq0S4cuIHA&index=2  
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen. 2019b. “Maya Before, Maya After: How a Tenseless Language Talks Past and Future.” NativLang YouTube Channel, June 28, 2019. Accessed May 10, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttq0S4cuIHA
Bolles, David and Alejandra Bolles. 2001. A Grammar of the Yucatecan Mayan Language. Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos.
Briceño Chel, Fidencio 2006. Los verbos del maya yucateco actual lnvestigaci6n, clasificaci6n y sistemas conjugacionales. Mexico City: lnstituto Nacional de Lenguas lndígenas.
Briceño Chel, Fidencio 2002. “Lengua e identidad entre los mayas de la peninsula de Yucatán.” Los investigadores de la cultura maya 10, no. 2: 370-379.
Briceño Chel, Fidencio and Can Tec, G. R. 2014. U Nu’ukbesajil u Ts’íibta’al Maayat’aan/Normas de Escritura para la Lengua Maya. México, D.F.: INALI. http://site.inali.gob.mx/pdf/norma_maya.pdf.
Bricker, Victoria R. 2019. A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan: 1557-2000. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Bricker, Victoria R. and Eleuterio Po’ot Yah. 1981. Yucatec Maya Verbs: A Grammatical Introduction. Latin American Studies Curriculum Aids Center for Latin American Studies: New Orleans: Tulane University.
Bricker, Victoria R., Eleuterio Po’ot Yah and Ofelia Dzul de Po’ot. 1998. A Dictionary of the Maya Language as Spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press
Brody, Michal 2004. The Fixed Word, The Moving Tongue: Variation In Written Yucatec Maya And The Meandering Evolution Toward Unified Norms. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
Campbell, Lyle. 2017. “Mayan History and Comparison.” In J. Aissen, N. C. England, and R. Z. Maldonado, eds., pp. 43-61. The Mayan Languages. London: Routledge.
Campbell, Lyle. 1990. "Philological studies and Mayan languages". pp. 87-105.In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.) Historical Linguistics And Philology. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin.
Campbell, L. et al. 2017. “The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ElCat).” http://endangeredlanguages.com/userquery/download/.
Campbell, Lyle and Terrence Kaufman. 1985. “Mayan Linguistics: Where Are We Now?” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol 14:187-98.
Canché Teh, F., B. Pfeiler, and C. Carrillo Carreón. 2010. “La Familia Extensa Como Promotora de La Vitalidad del Maya Yucateco.” In Etnia, Lengua y Territorio: El Sureste Ante La Globalización. R. L. Santillán, ed., pp. 237–50. México City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Castañeda, Quetzil E. 2022. “ ‘Spiritually Seeking the Maya’: Toward a Decolonial Approach to New Age Maya Spiritualities.” Ciencias Sociales y Religión/Ciências Sociais e Religião, Campinas, v.23. https://doi.org/10.20396/csr.v23i00.15166
Castañeda, Quetzil E. 2005. “We Are Not Indigenous!”: An Introduction to the Maya Identity of Yucatán. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 9(1): 36-63.
Castillo Cocom Juan A. 2005. “ ‘It Was Simply Their Word’: Yucatec Maya PRInces in YucaPAN and the Politics of Respect.” Critique of Anthropology, vol 25(2) 131–155.
Castillo Cocom Juan A. 2007. “Maya Scenarios: Indian Stories In and Out of Contexts.” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers No. 96, 2007: 13-36.
Dahl, Osten. 1985. Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
England, Nora C. 2013. “Marking aspect and mood and inferring time in Mam (Mayan).” Berkeley Linguistics Society 33: 119–40.
England, Nora C. 1996. “The role of language standardization in revitalization.” In E. Fischer and R.M. Brown, eds., pp. 178-194. Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press.
England, Nora C. 2003. “Mayan language revival and revitalization politics: linguists and linguistic ideologies.” American Anthropologist, 105(4). 733–43.
Fischer, Edward F. 1999. 2001. Cultural Logics and Global Economies: Maya Identity in Thought and Practice. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Fischer, Edward F. 1999.  “Cultural Logic Cultural Logic and Maya Identity: Rethinking Constructivism and Essentialism.” Current Anthropology 40: 473 – 500.
Fischer, Edward F. and R. McKenna Brown. 1996. Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Gómez Navarrete, Javier Abelardo. 2009. Diccionario introductorio: español – maya maya -español. Chetumal, Quintana Roo: Universidad de Quintana Roo.
Gonzales, Jessy. 2020. English Yukatan Maya: A Topical Dictionary. Amazon.com: Independently published manuscript.
Guerrettaz, A. M. 2019. “Yucatec Maya Language Planning and the Struggle of the Linguistic Standardization Process.” In International Journal of the Sociology of Language 260: 61–83.
Guerrettaz, A.M. 2013. Yucatec Maya Teacher Education and the Struggle for a Standard Language. PhD dissertation, Indiana University.
Hernández Reyna, Miriam and Juan A. Castillo Cocom, 2021. “Ser o no ser indígena”: Oscilaciones identitarias dentro de la interculturalidad de Estado en México. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 26 (1). https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12532
Hostellter, Uelli. 2005. “Rethinking Maya Identity in Yucatan, 1500–1940.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 9(1): 188-198.
INALI. 2008. Catálogo de las Lenguas Indígenas Nacionales. México, D.F.: INALI. www.inali.gob.mx/pdf/CLIN_completo.pdf.
Law, Danny. 2013. “Mayan Historical Linguistics in a New Age.” Language and Linguistics Compass 7/3: 141–156, 10.1111/lnc3.12012
Lehmann, Christian. 2018. “Variación y normalización de la lengua maya.” Cuadernos de Lingüística de El Colegio de México 5(1), ene–jun 2018, pp. 331–387.
Litzinger, William J. and Robert D. Bruce. 1997. Maya t'an / Spoken Maya: Introduction to Grammar, Common Phrases, Special Vocabularies, English—Maya—Glossary. México City: Ediciones Euroamericana Klaus Thiele.
MacKenzie, C. James. 2010. “Of Networks and Hierarchies: Pan-Mayanism and Ethnic Ambivalence in Guatemala.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 5:1, 27-52, DOI: 10.1080/ 17442220903506891
Máas Collí, Hilaria. 2010. Curso de lengua maya para investigadores: Nivel avanzado. Merida, Yucatan, México: Unidad de Ciencias Sociales del CIR Dr. Hideyo Noguchi y Ediciones de la Universidad Aut6noma de Yucatán.
Máas Collí, Hilaria. 2000. Manual de vocabulario maya—español. Mérida: Ediciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.
Máas Collí, Hilaria. 2010. Curso de lengua maya para investigadores: Nivel avanzado. Mérida: Ediciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.
Martinez Huichim, Ana Patricia. 2014. Diccionario Maya: Español–Maya–Maya–Español. Segunda edición. Mérida: Editorial Dante, S.A. de C.V.
Matthieu, Nicolle and Adriana Olvera. 2019. Maaya t'aan yéetel boonilo'ob: Vocabulario maya con ilustraciones (Spanish Edition). Amazon.com: Independently published.
Mattiace, S. L., and P. Fortuny Loret de Mola. “Yucatec Maya Organizations in San Francisco, California: Ethnic Identity Formation across Migrant Generations.” Latin American Research Review 50, no. 2 2015: 201–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43670296.
McClaran Stefflre, M. 1972. “Lexical and syntactic structures in Yucatec Maya.” PhD diss., Cambridge: Harvard University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (0278838).
Ordorica, M., C. Rodríguez, B. Velázquez, and I. Maldonado. 2009. “El índice de reemplazo etnolingüístico entre la población indígena de México.” Desacatos 29 (ene./abr.): 123–40.
Montgomery, John. Maya-English English-Maya (Yucatec) Dictionary & Phrasebook. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc.
Pfeiler, Barbara. 1999. “Situación sociolingüística de Yucatán.” In José Lugo Hup and Maria Teresa Arizaga, eds,  269–99. Atlas de procesos territoriales de Yucatán, México City: PROESA.
Pfeiler, Barbara, and Charles Andrew Hofling. 2006. “Apuntes sobre la variacion dialectal en el maya yucateco.” Península 1: 27–44.
Pfeiler, Barbara Blaha and S. Skopeteas. 2022. “Sources of convergence in indigenous languages: Lexical variation in Yucatec Maya.” PloS one 17(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268448

Restall, Matthew. 2005. “Maya Ethnogenesis.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 9(1): 64-89.
Restall, Matthew and Wolfgang Gabbert. 2017. “Maya Ethnogenesis and Group Identity in Yucatán, 1500-1900.” In Bethany J. Beyyette and Lisa LeCount, eds., pp. 91-131. “The Only True People”: Linking Maya Identities Past and Present. Boulder: University of Colorado Press.
Rhodes, Catherine R., 2016. Making Maya Linguistics, Making Maya Linguists: The Production Of Maya Scientific Expertise And Models Of Personhood In The Yucatan Today. Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2548. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2548
Rhodes, Catherine, Irma Yolanda Pomol Cahum, and Miguel Óscar Chan. 2018. Dzul“Exploración lexicográfica de seis diccionarios del maya yucateco.” Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, año 36, número 68, diciembre de 2018, pp. 9–57. doi: 10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2018.68.861
Robertson, John S. 1992. The History of Tense/Aspect/Mood/Voice in the Mayan Verbal Complex. Austin: University of Texas Press
Russo, Mateo and Sandra Chigüela. 2018. Yucatec Maya Phrasebook: Ideal for Traveling in La Península de Yucatán, México. Guatemala: B'ajlom ii Nkotz'i'j Publications.
Shigeto, Yoshida. 2009. Diccionario de la conjugación de verbos en el maya yucateco actual. Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University.
Smailus, Ortwin. 1989. Gramática del Maya Yucateco Colonial. Hamburg: Wayasbah.
Statistical Institute of Belize. 2010. Belize Population and Housing Census 2010: Country Report. Belmopan: The Statistical Institute of Belize.
Tozzer, Alfred M. 1921. A Maya Grammar. Boston: Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology.