Lacandon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jach-t'aan

Spoken in

Mexico ( Chiapas )
speaker about 560 speakers
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in National language in MexicoMexicoMexico 
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

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

Lacandon ( Jach-t'aan , "true language") is the language of the indigenous people of the Lacandons in the Selva Lacandona in the Mexican state of Chiapas .

classification

Lacandon ( SIL code lac) is one of the Mayan languages and is most closely related to Mayathan , the Mayan language of Yucatán , as it developed from the language of Yucatec Maya refugees. It is therefore referred to by some as a variant of Mayathan. Two other closely related languages ​​are the Itzá language in Guatemalan Peten and the Mopan language in Belize .

The Lacandon is divided into a northern and a southern variant, corresponding to the two sub-ethnicities of the Lacandons. Mutual understanding is possible, but sometimes the variant of the other Lacandon group is looked down on.

As in the Mayathan of Yucatán, the preferred sentence order is subject-verb-object (SVO), but in contrast to this the language is not tonal .

distribution

Lacandon is currently still spoken by the majority of the Lacandons in the Selva Lacandona. The 2010 census found only 20 Lacandon speakers, including no speakers under the age of 20. However, this information is definitely wrong, since the video recordings of a language documentation project alone show more people who speak this language. According to the Mexican INALI ( Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas ), SIL International gives 560 speakers within an ethnic population of 1000 Lacandons for the year 2000 . With the exception of the older ones, almost all Lacandons also speak fluent Spanish. Lacandon is not taught in schools.

documentation

In the course of the Christianization of the southern Lacandons since the 1940s, the southern variant of Lacandon was documented. A dictionary and other materials have since been produced. In 1978 a translation of the New Testament was published.

Since the northern Lacandons were never Christianized and, until a few years ago, had always lived shielded from Spaniards and Mexicans, it can be assumed that their language has retained far more original features and ancient Mayan words than southern Lacandon or the other Mayan languages . It is precisely for this reason that this language is poorly documented. Therefore there is a special scientific interest in Lacandon from Najá. Since 2002 there has been a project at the University of Victoria (Canada), financed by the Volkswagen Foundation , to document as much of the traditional culture and language as possible in the form of video recordings.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ INEGI 2010: Censo de Población y Vievienda 2010 , accessed April 7, 2011
  2. ↑ a b Ethnologue.com: Lacandon
  3. ↑ A QUET U T'ΛNO 'A RIC'BENO'. El Nuevo Testamento en el lacandón de Lacanjá. La Liga Bíblica, primera edición 1978. A QUET U T'ΛNO 'A RIC'BENO'. La Liga Bíblica, versión electrónica 2009 (Gospelgo.com) (PDF; 4.1 MB).
  4. ↑ Lacandon Cultural Heritage Project (University of Victoria, Canada)
  5. ↑ Documentation of threatened languages: Lacandon

Web links