The Yucatec Maya language has a highly complex deictic system with interesting typological differences that in addition to demonstratives and locative adverbs also includes ostensive evidentials and modal adverbs. Given that deictic words are among the first that children produce, the aim of this study is to identify the early acquisition that…

Young urban migrants can be valuable actors in projects that aim to document and revitalize their Indigenous languages, especially when these efforts involve new technologies. Based on data from a Huastec (Tének) language documentation project in Mexico, this article describes the digital interactions of young migrants in the documentation and…

Relatively little research has focused on the experiences of students and families of Yucatec-Maya origin in the U.S., and even less has focused on Yucatec-Maya youth and resilience, a normative process of positive adaptation despite exposure to adversity. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities, which centers on Indigeneity across multi-national…

One highly significant yet under-investigated source of variation within the Latinx Education scholarship are Indigenous immigrants from Latin America. This study investigates how Maya and other Indigenous recent immigrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico, respectively, understand indigeneity. Using a Critical Latinx Indigeneities analytic, along…

The Peace Accords of 1996 sought to bring significant changes for Indigenous people of Guatemala by promoting new educational opportunities centering on the recognition that culture and language are critical components of education. Bilingual intercultural programs have been created and attention to the detrimental effects of language loss and…

Indicators of academic achievement for bilingual students can be inaccurate due to linguistic heterogeneity. For indigenous populations, language shift (the gradual replacement of one language by another) is a factor that can increase this heterogeneity and poses an additional challenge for valid testing. We investigated whether and how indigenous…

This study describes the grammar of the Ch'orti' Maya language as it appears in a collection of oral literature. I collected the stories that form the basis of this study in and around Jocotan, Guatemala, during 2004 and 2005. I worked with bilingual story-tellers to make audio recordings of the original Ch'orti'-language tales, produce textual…

Indigenous education in Guatemala is currently undergoing a massive overhaul in the depth and breadth of its reach in Maya areas. Although much can be said about the re-evaluation and incorporation of indigenous culture, language and worldview into the schools' curricula, it is still failing to reach the country's adult population. As a result of…

In this paper we present our study of the use of Mayan and Spanish in nine groups of pupils in bilingual elementary schools in the Mayan area of the Yucatan State, Mexico. Michael Cole's, as well as Guillermo Bonfil's, perspectives were used for the data analysis, in the sense of considering language as a cultural artifact, and an element of…

Studies the link between the theory of the neurophysiology of color perception and Berlin and Kay's ideas on color linguistics and color perception. Two interpretations of studies of color terminology are shown, one supporting and one disproving the Whorf Thesis. (NCR)

The primary goal of the present study is an exposition of the structure of Mam, a Mayan language of the Mamean group. Mam is the most widely spoken of the four Mamean languages, and has been roughly estimated to have a quarter million speakers located in the departments of Huehuetenango and San Marcos in Guatemala and in the state of Chiapas in…

Using oral survey methods, this study examined potential language maintenance or loss of Mayan languages among the Guatemalan-Maya communities of Southeast Florida. Among dislocated immigrants and their children, the language of the dominant socio-economic forces often displaces other languages (Fishman, 1967). A Guatemalan community in Los…

A survey of the status of language usage in Mexico begins with an overview of language distribution among the population, mono- and multilingualism, changes in patterns of usage between the 1970 and 1980 censuses, and linguistic issues related to assimilation of the Indian population and the role and philosophy of the Instituto Nacional…