Mayan
34 languages
Mayan is a language family of 34 languages; the most are spoken in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras.
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The Mayan family has some thirty languages and about six million speakers in Guatemala, Mexico and Belize. Classic Maya script is the only pre-Columbian writing of the Americas to have been largely deciphered.
The Mayan languages are a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory.
The Mayan language family is one of the best-documented and most studied in the Americas. Contemporary Mayan languages descend from the Proto-Mayan language, which has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method. The proto-Mayan language diversified into at least six different branches: the Huastecan, Quichean, Yucatecan, Qanjobalan, Mamean and Chʼolan–Tzeltalan branches.
The Mayan languages form part of the Mesoamerican language area, an area of linguistic convergence developed throughout millennia of interaction between the peoples of Mesoamerica. All Mayan languages display the basic diagnostic traits of this linguistic area. For example, all use relational nouns instead of adpositions to indicate spatial relationships. They also possess grammatical and typological features that set them apart from other languages of Mesoamerica, such as the use of ergativity in the grammatical treatment of verbs and their subjects and objects, specific inflectional categories on verbs, and a special word class of "positionals" which is typical of all Mayan languages.
From Wikipedia · Mayan languages · CC BY-SA 4.0