Itzá language

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Itzaj

Spoken in

Guatemala , formerly Belize
speaker 12 speakers to 1100 speakers
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2 ( B ) myn (all Maya) ( T ) -

The Itzá language or Itzaj is the language of the Itzá indigenous people on Lake Petén-Itzá in the Guatemalan Department of Peten .

classification

Itzá belongs to the Maya languages and is closely related to Mayathan in Yucatán, Mexico and Lacandon in Chiapas , but most closely related to the Mopan language in Belize .

The relationship between the Itzá and Mayathan of Yucatan can be compared to that between Spanish and Italian. This means that an understanding takes some effort.

distribution

In the past, Itzá-Maya was the language of much of the population in Peten and parts of Belize. Today it is extinct in Belize and is only spoken by a few, mostly elderly people in Peten.

In the 2002 census of Guatemala, 1,094 people said Itza was their mother tongue; 1983 people referred to themselves as Itza . SIL International gives only 12 fully competent speakers for 1986 and for 1991, referring to Hofling (1991), a total of 60 mostly older, no longer fully competent speakers, living in San José (Ixtutz) on the north bank of the Petén-Itzá- Lake . In 1991 Hofling spoke of "maybe several dozen" speakers, sixty years old and older, who could hardly speak their traditional language. Although they complained about the loss of language, they would have come to terms with it. Hofling found that prayers and chants were only held in Spanish. Since 1991, however, there have also been local efforts to pass on knowledge of the language to the children. So Julian Tesucun Q'ixchan began to teach the language at the primary school in San José (Ixtutz).

Under the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico Castañeda in the 1930s, the governor of Peten banned the indigenous languages, so that speaking of Itzá in schools was punished with beatings . The village of San José (Ixtutz) is the last place where the Itzá language can still be heard. While the language has not been passed on to children in other villages since the 1930s, this process did not begin until later in the more isolated San José.

literature

  • Charles Andrew Hofling: Itzá Maya texts with a grammatical overview. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 1991. 321 pages. ISBN 0-87480-359-4
  • Charles Andrew Hofling, Félix Fernando Tesucún: Tojt'an: diccionario maya itzaj - castellano. Guatemala, Cholsamaj, 2000.
  • Charles Andrew Hofling: Itzaj Maya Grammar. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2000. ISBN 0-87480-666-6
  • Charles Andrew Hofling, Félix Fernando Tesucún: Itzaj Maya-Spanish-English Dictionary. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 1997. ISBN 0-87480-550-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ native-languages.org: Itza Maya (Itzaj)
  2. ↑ XI Censo Nacional de Población y VI de Habitación (Censo 2002) - Idioma o lengua en que aprendió a hablar . Instituto Nacional de Estadística. 2002. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved on December 22, 2009.
  3. ↑ XI Censo Nacional de Población y VI de Habitación (Censo 2002) - Pertenencia de grupo étnico . Instituto Nacional de Estadística. 2002. Archived from the original on February 22, 2011. Retrieved on December 22, 2009.
  4. ^ Ethnologue.com: Itza '- A language of Guatemala , A. Hofling 1991.
  5. ↑ Hofling (1991), pp. 3 and 5.
  6. ^ A b James D. Nations: The Maya Tropical Forest: People, Parks, and Ancient Cities . University of Texas Press, Austin 2010.
  7. ^ Charles Andrew Hofling: Gramática Maya Itzá, Prefacio. FAMSI 2005: Documentación Maya Itzá ( Memento of July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

Web links