Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
The languages of Mesoamerica were also among the first to evolve independent traditions of writing. The oldest texts date to approximately 1000 BCE (namely Olmec and Zapotec), though most texts in the indigenous scripts (such as Maya) date to c. 600–900 CE. Following the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, and continuing up until the 19th century, most Mesoamerican languages were written in Latin script.
The languages of Mesoamerica belong to 6 major families – Mayan, Oto-Mangue, Mixe–Zoque, Totonacan, Uto-Aztecan and Chibchan languages (only on the southern border of the area) – as well as a few smaller families and isolates – Purépecha, Huave, Tequistlatec, Xincan and Lencan. Among these Oto-Manguean and Mayan families account for the largest numbers of speakers by far – each having speakers numbering more than a million. Many Mesoamerican languages today are either endangered or already extinct, but others, including the Mayan languages, Nahuatl, Mixtec and Zapotec, have several hundred thousand speakers and remain viable.
Language vs. dialect The distinction between related languages and dialects is notoriously vague in Mesoamerica. The dominant Mesoamerican socio-cultural pattern through millennia has been centered around the town or city as the highest level community rather than the nation, realm or people. This has meant that within Mesoamerica each city-state or town community, called in Nahuatl an , has had its own language standard which, in the typical case, has evolved separately from closely related but geographically remote languages. Even geographically close communities with closely related, mutually intelligible languages have not necessarily seen themselves as being ethnically related, or their language as being a unifying factor between them. The relative endogamy of the town community has also resulted in a large linguistic diversification between communities despite geographical and linguistic proximity, often resulting in a low intelligibility between varieties of the same language spoken in adjacent communities. The exception to this rule is when a common “lingua franca” has evolved to facilitate communication between different linguistic groups. This has been the case for Classical Nahuatl and Classical Maya, both of which, at different times in history, have been used as a common language between different ethnic groups. Further complicating matters are the semi-nomadic lifestyle of many Mesoamerican peoples, and political systems which often have used relocation of entire communities as a political tool. Dialect or variant “chaining” is common, where any adjacent two or three towns in a sequence are similar enough in speech to understand each other fairly well, but those separated more widely have trouble understanding each other, and there are no clear breaks naturally separating the continuum into coherent sub-regions.Suárez, 1983 pp. 13–20
All of these factors together have made it exceedingly difficult to distinguish between what constitutes a language or a dialect in Mesoamerica. Linguistic isoglosses do not coincide often or strongly enough to prove very useful when trying to decide, and sociological factors often further cloud the picture. The significance of measurements of intelligibility (which is itself difficult to measure) depends very much on analysts' purposes and theoretical commitments.Suaréz 1983 p. 16 In Spanish the word has often been used generically about indigenous languages in order to describe them as inherently inferior to the European languages. In recent years this has caused an aversion to the term “dialect” among Spanish-speaking linguists and others, and the term has often been applied instead.SIL international description of the use of the word "dialecto" in popular speech
Many Mesoamerican linguistic groupings have not had different names in common usage for their different languages and some linguistic groups known by a single name show a sufficiently significant variation to warrant division into a number of languages which are quite low in mutual intelligibility. This is the case for example for the Mixtecan, Zapotecan and Nahuan linguistic groups, which all contain distinct languages that are nonetheless referred to by a single name. Sometimes a single name has even been used to describe completely unrelated linguistic groups, as is the case with the terms "Popoluca" or "Chichimeca". This shortage of language names has meant that the convention within Mesoamerican linguistics when writing about a specific linguistic variety is to always mention the name of the broad linguistic group as well as the name of the community, or geographic location in which it is spoken, for example Isthmus-Mecayapan Nahuatl, Zoogocho Zapotec or Usila Chinantec. Some language groups however have been more adequately named. This is the case of the Mayan languages, with an internal diversity that is arguably comparable to that found between the Nahuatl dialects, but many of whose linguistic varieties have separate names, such as Kʼicheʼ, Tzotzil or Huastec.Suárez 1983 p. 20
Geographical overview
Mesoamerica can be divided into smaller linguistic subareas wherein linguistic diffusion has been especially intense, or where certain families have extended to become predominant.
One such subarea would be the Maya area, roughly covering the Yucatán Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, Chiapas and Tabasco, where Mayan languages have been highly predominant. The fringes of the area have been home to Xincan (in the southeast) and Mixe-Zoque (along the Pacific coast) speakers, in addition to Nawat (also along the Pacific coast) and the Oto-Manguean Chiapanec language (in the southwest) following postclassic migrations.
Another linguistic area is Oaxaca, which is dominated by speakers of Oto-Manguean languages, mainly Mixtec and Zapotec, both of which are extremely internally diverse. Non-Oto-Manguean languages include Mixe, Tequistlatecan, Huave, and the Nahuan Pochutec language. Huave was the original language of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but lost territory to Zapotec. Oaxaca is the most linguistically diverse area of Mesoamerica and its contain at least 100 mutually unintelligible linguistic variants.Suárez 1983 p. 16
The subarea commonly called Central Mexico, covering valleys and mountainous areas surrounding the Valley of Mexico, originally was mainly host to Oto-Pamean languages; however, beginning in the late classic these languages were largely gradually displaced by Nahuatl, which was henceforth the predominant indigenous language of the area. Otomi, Matlatzinca, and Mazahua retained significant presences.
The Western area was inhabited mostly by speakers of Purépecha in Michoacán, Huichol and Cora in Nayarit, and Western Peripheral Nahuatl in Jalisco and Colima. A host of small undocumented languages were spoken in Colima and southern Jalisco, such as Jalisco Otomi and Jalisco Zapotec.
The Northern Rim area has been inhabited by semi-nomadic Chichimec speakers of Uto-Aztecan languages (probably related to the Tepiman and Corachol groups) as well as Pame (Oto-Mangue), and other undocumented languages that are now extinct, such as Jalisco Otomi.
The Gulf area is traditionally the home of speakers of Totonacan languages in the northern and central area and Mixe–Zoque languages in the southern area. However, the northern gulf area became home to the speakers of Huastec in the preclassic period, and the southern area began speaking Isthmus Nahuatl in the post-classic period.
The areas of Central America (excluding the Maya areas) that formed part of Mesoamerica during the preclassic were dominated by Lencan speakers. Based on toponymy, it is possible that Xincan languages were originally spoken in western El Salvador, but were replaced by Nawat after postclassic migrations. The migrations of Subtiaba and Mangue speakers, possibly also during the postclassic period, expanded the realm of Mesoamerican cultural influence to include the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and the Nicoya Peninsula, which were previously part of the Isthmo-Colombian area and probably inhabited by Misumalpan and Chibchan speakers.
The Guerrero subarea has been home to the Oto-Manguean Tlapanec and the unclassified Cuitlatec, and later Nahuatl, as well as a handful of undocumented languages along the Costa Grande.
Linguistic prehistory The linguistic history of Mesoamerican languages can roughly be divided into pre-Columbian, colonial and modern periods.
Pre-Columbian period
The first human presence in Mesoamerica is documented around 8000 BCE, during a period referred to as the Paleo-Indian. Linguistic data, however, including language reconstruction derived from the comparative method, do not reach further back than approximately 5000 years (towards the end of the Archaic period). Throughout the history of Mesoamerica, an unknown number of languages and language families became extinct and left behind no evidence of their existence. What is known about the pre-Columbian history of the Mesoamerican languages is what can be surmised from linguistic, archeological and ethnohistorical evidence. Often, hypotheses concerning the linguistic prehistory of Mesoamerica rely on very little evidence.
Archaic period (–2000 BCE) Three large language families are thought to have had their most recent common homelands within Mesoamerica. The time frames and locations in which the common ancestors of these families, referred to by linguists as proto-languages, were spoken are reconstructed by methods of historical linguistics. The three earliest known families of Mesoamerica are the Mixe–Zoquean languages, the Oto-Manguean languages and the Mayan languages. Proto-Oto-Manguean is thought to have been spoken in the Tehuacán valley between 5000 and 3000 BCE,Campbell (1997:159) although it may only have been one center of Oto-manguean culture, another possible Oto-Manguean homeland being Oaxaca. Proto-Mayan was spoken in the Cuchumatanes highlands of Guatemala around 3000 BCE.Campbell (1997), p. 165. The earliest proposal (Sapper 1912) which identified the Chiapas-Guatemalan highlands as the likely "cradle" of Mayan languages was published by the German antiquarian and scholar Karl Sapper; see attribution in Fernández de Miranda (1968), p. 75. Proto-Mixe–Zoquean was spoken on the gulf coast and on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and on the Guatemalan Pacific coast around 2000 BCE, in a much larger area than its current extension.Wichmann, 1995 Totonacan languages, Purépecha, Huave and the Tequistlatecan languages can also be assumed to have been present in Mesoamerica at this point although it is unknown.
Preclassic period (2000 BCE – 200 CE)