Mesoamerican languages in the context of K'iche' people

Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, many from a single inscription. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs, the Zapotec script, and the Isthmian script, all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved, partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.

After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, Spanish colonial authorities and Catholic Church missionaries aimed to purge indigenous culture, religion and traditional institutions, which included the destruction of texts of Mesoamerican and pre-Columbian origin. However, some Mesoamerican texts were spared, particularly from the Yucatán of southern Mexico, recording the languages of the area. These surviving texts give anthropologists and historians valuable insight into the origins of Mesoamerican languages, culture, religion, and government. Languages recorded in Mesoamerican writing include Classical Maya, Classical Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec, and various other languages, particularly of the Oto-Manguean and Uto-Aztecan families.

Benjamin Atwood Lee Whorf (/hwɔːrf/; April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer best known for proposing the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. He believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. Whorf saw this idea, named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, as having implications similar to those of Einstein's principle of physical relativity. However, the concept originated from 19th-century philosophy and thinkers like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Wilhelm Wundt.

Whorf initially pursued chemical engineering but developed an interest in linguistics, particularly Biblical Hebrew and indigenous Mesoamerican languages. His groundbreaking work on the Nahuatl language earned him recognition, and he received a grant to study it further in Mexico. He presented influential papers on Nahuatl upon his return. Whorf later studied linguistics with Edward Sapir at Yale University while working as a fire prevention engineer.

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (French pronunciation: [kɔ̃stɑ̃tin(ə) samɥɛl ʁafinɛsk(ə)ʃmalts]) (October 22, 1783 – September 18, 1840) was a French polymath of the early 19th century. Born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, he was self-educated in France.

As a young man, Rafinesque-Schmaltz traveled to the United States, eventually settling in Ohio in 1815. There, he made significant contributions to botany, zoology, and the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America. Beyond his previous extensive work in Europe, he also contributed to the study of ancient Mesoamerican linguistics.

The Chʼortiʼ people (alternatively, Chʼortiʼ Maya or Chorti) are one of the Indigenous Maya peoples, who primarily reside in communities and towns of northeastern Guatemala, northwestern Honduras, and northern El Salvador. Their indigenous language, also known as Chʼortiʼ, is a survival of Classic Maya language, the language of the inscriptions in Copan, . It is the first language of approximately 15,000 people, although the majority of present-day Chʼortiʼ speakers are bilingual in Spanish as well.

Kʼicheʼ (pronounced [kʼiˈtʃeʔ]; previous Spanish spelling: Quiché) are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼ language is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization, and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period (c. 950–1539 AD).

The meaning of the word Kʼicheʼ in the Kʼicheʼ language is "many trees". The Nahuatl translation, Cuauhtēmallān "Place of the Many Trees (People)", is the origin of the word Guatemala. Quiché Department is also named after them. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, an activist for Indigenous rights who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, is perhaps the best-known Kʼicheʼ person.

Relational nouns, or relator nouns, are a word class in many languages. They are characterized as functioning syntactically as nouns although they convey the meaning for which other languages use adpositions (prepositions and postpositions). In Mesoamerican languages, the use of relational nouns constitutes an areal feature of the Mesoamerican linguistic area, including the Mayan languages, Mixe–Zoquean languages, and Oto-Manguean languages.

Relational nouns are also widespread in Southeast Asia (e.g. Vietnamese, Thai), East Asia (e.g. Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Lhasa Tibetan), Central Asia (e.g. the Turkic languages), Armenian, the Munda languages of South Asia (e.g. Sora), and in the Micronesian languages.

The Mesoamerican language area is a sprachbund containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethnolinguistic traits found in the languages of Mesoamerica, which belong to a number of language families, such as Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, Totonacan, Oto-Manguean and Mixe–Zoque languages as well as some language isolates and unclassified languages known to the region.