objectives

Yucatec Maya (also known as Yucateco, or as Maya T'aan by it's speakers) is spoken by about 700,000 people living in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico (Bricker et al. 1998). It is a thriving indigenous language and heavily documented on paper. There is still a need, though, for recordings of this language as it is used in a variety of settings. The goal of this project is to make audio documentation of Yucatec Maya available to anyone who is interested.

These recordings are available on the AILLA database (Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America). In each recording, the speaker tells a story or legend about Maya people and life.

about the recordings

• recording equipment
  • solid state recorder (Marantz PMD 660)
  • dynamic microphone (ElectroVoice n/d767a)
• setting
  • speakers were recorder in the town they live in
  • most recordings were made in an outdoor setting
• format
  • recordings were originally made at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz as wav files (uncompressed recording using 16-bit linear Pulse Code Modulation)
  • mp3 files are available on AILLA
  • AILLA will mail a CD with wav files if requested

participants

All participants are native speakers of Yucatec Maya who also use Spanish on a daily basis.

• Andrés Bonilla Mian

• Enrique Ayil Chi

• Fidencio Briceño Chel

• Moises Humberto Bonilla

• Yax Kin

acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the help of many people, both in the U.S. and Mexico. I would especially like to thank Santiago Dominquez, David Mora-Marín, Elliott Moreton, Sharon Mújica, and John Tuxill. Thanks also to Heidi Johnson and everyone else at AILLA for hosting and maintaining the database. This project was funded in part by the Jacob's Research Fund provided by the Whatcom Museum.

references

Blair, Robert W. and Refugio Vermont Salas. 1965. Spoken Yucatec Maya. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University/University of North Carolina, Program in Latin American Studies.

Bricker, Victoria, Eleuterio Po'ot Yah, and Ofelia Dzul de Po'ot. 1998. Dictionary of the Maya Language as Spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

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