Mam language
| Mam | |
|---|---|
| Qyol Mam | |
| Native to | Guatemala, Mexico |
| Region |
Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Retalhuleu; Chiapas, Mexico |
| Ethnicity | Mam |
|
Native speakers
|
(540,000 cited 1991–2000) |
|
Mayan
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | mamm1241 |
Mam is a Mayan language with half a million speakers in the Guatemalan departments of Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Retalhuleu, and 10,000 in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There are also thousands more in California and Washington, D.C., in the United States.
Mam is closely related to the Tektitek language, and the two languages together form the Mamean sub-branch, which together with the Ixilean languages, Awakatek and Ixil, form the Greater Mamean sub-branch. Together, Greater Mamean and the Greater Quichean languages (consisting of 10 Mayan languages, including K'iche'), form the Quichean–Mamean branch.
Nora C. England (1983) recognizes three major groups of Mam dialects.
Because of Spanish colonial policy, which enforced a harsh penalty upon the written use of indigenous languages, the language can vary widely from village to village. Because of the lack of a standardized written dialect throughout the colonial era, different villages developed regional accents which evolved into full differentiated dialects, even though the villages may only be a few miles apart from each other. Furthermore, the Mam people have continually occupied their present-day territory, long before the Spanish Conquest, possibly as early as 500 A.D. according to linguist Terrence Kaufman (England 1983:6). This would explain the great dialectal diversity among the Mamean languages. Kaufman also suggests that the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes of Huehuetenango, which currently occupied mostly by speakers of Mamean languages.
Nevertheless, mutual intelligibility, though difficult, is possible through practice (England 1983).
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