Aztec and Mayan are totally different languages. Sort of.

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.

My last video looked at the role of Aztec (Nahuatl) and Maya (Chontal) in the conquest of Mexico. This time, we learn the grammar of these languages.

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.

This is a bit of a change from recent videos. Let's see if you enjoy digging into more of the grammar behind my linguistic tales.

~ CREDITS ~

Voice, art and animation by Josh from NativLang.
Some of the music, too (outro, piano, and a couple softsynth instrumentals).

The Show Must Be Go, Path of the Goblin King v2, Big Mojo, Our Story Begins, Arid Foothills

Sources for claims and credits for images, fonts, sfx:

[PeachMoo]

My parents come from Yucatan, so I grew up listening to them speak Yucatec Maya. Now that I'm older, I do feel very proud of being able to understand it.

[rubenaugustoritto]

I am from the Yucatan Peninsula, damn your mayan pronunciation is good enough!

[Biblaridion]

Wow. A video about classical Nahuatl, my favorite language of all time, comes out on my birthday. Thank you, Nativlang, for making this possible.

[Fahrenheit]

U tak'in - his money

Are you messing with us?

[CalvinKrause]

Learned more in 10 minutes than I would have reading a whole book probably haha. You're a great teacher :)

[SouthMexUSA]

I live in northern Chiapas, México and speak Lacandón Maya. Not far away in Tabasco is the Chontal speaking area, but in twenty years I have never heard that language spoken. I understand that it is almost extinct, with only elders in places like Nacajuca still knowing it.

[DomenBremecXCVI]

I adore you so much. At times I have no idea what you're talking about, because I'm not as hard core fan f languages as you are, but the work gone into these videos... Amazing!

[Zwerggoldhamster]

I knew my wikipedia accident a week ago, where I ended up studying ergative languages at 3 in the morning instead of preparing for class, was worth it! :D

[snekwolfire]

I noticed "u tak'in" meant "his money". That's a funny coincidence!

[quentinle]

This language sharing reminds me of my own native language, Vietnamese. It's technically part of the Austroasiatic family, making it distantly related to Khmer, but superficially it looks far more similar to Chinese, an unrelated language. If I didn't know better, I would have just assumed Viet was part of the Sino-Tibetan language family.

A 1, 000 years of Chinese rule has caused Vietnamese to not only have a huge vocabulary of Chinese origin (something like 70% of Viet words are borrowed), but even the structure has been thoroughly sinicized. Vietnamese is monosyllabic and tonal. These are characteristics not seen Khmer, but is seen in the Han language.

Just a random observation I thought was interesting. You should really look into it.

[ponchopalmera]

Amazing video, I'm an historian in Mexico and you bet I'm gonna make my students to watch this. Languaje is a living part of our history. Thanks a lo

[hugoestrada]

I am so glad that you make this video, people that is not from latin america usually confuses aztecs with mayans, so thank you!

[blakedawson]

Fun Fact: Yucatec Maya is actually one of three Mayan languages that is tonal. So you have Míis and Miis meaning "cat" and "to sweep." I have only studied Yucatec Maya, so I don't know about the other languages, but YM uses classifiers like a lot of Asian languages.

[ErosAnteros]

Hey! So I come from a region in Australia where the local indigenous language (Yagara/Turrubul) is extinct. I've been trying to learn a bit from scant treatises about it.
Have you ever thought about doing a video on Pama-Ngungun languages?

[WumbologistPhD]

I work as a landscaper on Long Island, NY and have worked with a number or Guatemalan immigrants and have picked up a few Kaqchikel words from them.
Utz - good
saqesh - good morning

[IvanM]

So, I just discovered your channel but I'm two years late. I'm from Argentina and so I'm quite far away from Mexico and Mesoamerican culture but I immensely appreciate the effort put into this piece of work. As a Latin American, it's always great to for me to see people dra attention to pre-Colombian languages and cultures. Thank you so much!

[fermiLiquidDrinker]

Tbh both these languages are actually beautifully simple. The way words are built is just brilliant

[christiandinkel]

The pronunciation of "Sprachbund" was on point man!

[Jamy]

My great grandparents grew up speaking Nahuatl from Puebla and I've always been interested in it. Now I'm trying to learn ki'che'. I'd also love to learn some Nahuatl or Mixteco. This video I great. Thanks for all the explanations

[gagaoolala]

This is awesome. This is the first time I've ever seen a grammar taster-session like this, and I absolutely adored it. Could you do this again sometime? I like your usual stuff but this more in-depth stuff is so much fun too!