Aztec and Mayan Are Totally Different Languages. Sort of

Server Costs Fundraiser 2024

Help our mission to provide free history education to the world! Please donate and contribute to covering our server costs in 2024. With your support, millions of people learn about history entirely for free every month.
$3889 / $18000

Video

John Horgan
by NativLang
published on 09 October 2017

Ancient Mexico was a hotbed of language mixing. Aztecs and Maya spoke completely unrelated languages, but a Mesoamerican linguistic mindmeld tied them together in surprising ways. Here's the grammar.

I'll start with the things that stood out to me about Chontal Maya and Classical Aztec pronunciation, nouns, verbs, prepositions, alignment and basic sentence structure. Stick with me through that, and you'll earn a reward big enough to satisfy the grammatical cravings of almost any language nerd.

After you understand their differences, step back to see their strange sameness. Mesoamerica is a Sprachbund, an area where languages shared the same space for so long that they ended up developing many of the same features. Not just basic things like borrowing the word for "chocolate", I'm talking entire linguistic structures here. I'll consider a few of these features and close with what I find so intriguing about this language area.

Remove Ads
Advertisement

The video and its description text are provided by Youtube. This website claims no authorship of this content; we are republishing it for educational purposes.

Cite This Work

APA Style

NativLang. (2017, October 09). Aztec and Mayan Are Totally Different Languages. Sort of. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/video/1290/aztec-and-mayan-are-totally-different-languages-so/

Chicago Style

NativLang. "Aztec and Mayan Are Totally Different Languages. Sort of." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified October 09, 2017. https://www.worldhistory.org/video/1290/aztec-and-mayan-are-totally-different-languages-so/.

MLA Style

NativLang. "Aztec and Mayan Are Totally Different Languages. Sort of." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 09 Oct 2017. Web. 26 Jul 2024.

Membership