Yucatec Maya ( / ˈ j uː k ə t ɛ k ˈ m aɪ ə / YOO -kə-tek MY -ə ; referred to by its speakers as mayaʼ or maayaʼ t’aan [màːjaʔˈtʼàːn] ) is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula , including part of northern Belize . There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Francisco , though most Maya Americans are speakers of other Mayan languages from Guatemala and Chiapas .
75-827: February 29, 2024 (Cancún–Playa del Carmen) The Tren Maya ( Yucatec Maya : Tsíimin K'áak' , sometimes also Mayan Train or Maya Train ) is a 1,554 km-long (966 mi) intercity railway in Mexico that traverses the Yucatán Peninsula . Construction began in June 2020 and the Campeche–Cancún section began operation on December 15, 2023, with the rest of the line to open later. The railway begins in Cancún International Airport and travels southwest towards Palenque, Chiapas , via two routes that encircle
150-514: A capacity of 47 passengers, they only have a capacity of 18. These 7 buses, built by BYD Auto , arrived at the airport in March 2024. Environmental and indigenous rights activists objected to construction of new tracks through the jungle. On the 26th anniversary of its armed uprising, January 1, 2020, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation expressed its opposition to the project and declared that
225-509: A full intervocalic glottal stop and written as a long vowel with an apostrophe in the middle, as in the plural suffix -oʼob . Some sources describe the plain consonants as aspirated, but Victoria Bricker states "[s]tops that are not glottalized are articulated with lung air without aspiration as in English spill, skill, still." In terms of vowel quality, Yucatec Maya has a straightforward five vowel system: For each of these five vowel qualities,
300-596: A hacienda 8 km (5.0 mi) away. They said that by 2025 the station will relocate to La Plancha Park in Mérida. Construction began in June 2020. The construction companies are Mota-Engil México SAPI and China Communications Construction Company LTD for stretch one (Palenque-Escárcega), Operadora CICSA and FCC Construcción for stretch two (Escárcega-Calkiní), Construcciones Urales and GAMI Ingeniería e Instalaciones for stretch three (Calkiní-Izamal), and Grupo ICA for stretch four (Izamal–Cancún). In September 2020 Fonatur rejected
375-474: A high pitch and fall in phrase-final position but rise elsewhere, sometimes without much vowel length. It is indicated in writing by an acute accent (íi ée áa óo úu). Low-tone vowels begin on a low pitch and are sustained in length; they are sometimes indicated in writing by a grave accent (ìi èe àa òo ùu), though the 2014 INALI orthography uses no accent. Also, Yucatec has contrastive laryngealization ( creaky voice ) on long vowels, sometimes realized by means of
450-457: A proposal of investment firm BlackRock for the 125 km (78 mi) fifth stretch of the project, including improvements to the Tulum–Cancún highway. In February 2021 Fonatur awarded a contract to Acciona and Grupo México for 60.3 km (37.5 mi) of electrified double rail tracks for section five between Playa del Carmen and Tulum. 75% of the 121 km (75 mi) section five
525-483: A region that has historically been neglected by the state. The Tren Maya project was announced in September 2018 by Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador , following earlier proposals to build a shorter 900-kilometre (560 mi) line. Previous presidential administrations had also proposed their own passenger rail projects, but were unsuccessful in attaining funding. It would use existing right of way from
600-534: A temporary delay in construction in January 2021 until Fonatur and SEMARNAT report on an environmental impact assessment . On March 3, 2021, an injunction was filed by 80 people from Campeche who fear eviction from their homes. The First District Court in Campeche granted them the provisional suspension. Yucatán's fourth district court also ordered a stop to construction. The brought the total number of injunctions filed in
675-574: A total of 24 years. As the Spanish colonists settled more areas, in the 18th century they developed the lands for large maize plantations and cattle farms. The elite lived in haciendas and exported natural resources as commodities. The Maya were subjects of the Spanish Empire from 1542 to 1821. During the colonization of the Yucatán peninsula, the Spanish believed that in order to evangelize and govern
750-498: Is a variant name mayab tʼàan [majabˈtʼàːn] , literally 'flat speech' ). A popular, yet false, alternative etymology of Mayab is ma ya'ab or 'not many, the few', which derives from New Age spiritualist interpretations of the Maya. The use of "Mayab" as the name of the language seems to be unique to the town of Hocabá , as indicated by the Hocabá dictionary and is not employed elsewhere in
825-502: Is carried by the CDI 's radio stations XEXPUJ-AM ( Xpujil, Campeche ), XENKA-AM ( Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo ) and XEPET-AM ( Peto, Yucatán ). The 2006 film Apocalypto , directed by Mel Gibson , was filmed entirely in Yucatec Maya. The script was translated into Maya by Hilario Chi Canul of the Maya community of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who also worked as a language coach on
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#1732858662942900-474: Is destined for the Mayan Train. In December 2020 president López Obrador announced that the armed forces would operate three sections of the route, and that profits would be used to strengthen finances for pensioners and retirees of the armed forces. In March 2021 Fonatur general director Rogelio Jiménez Pons said that the military would own the entire route, not just the three sections, and would receive all of
975-593: Is elevated and built as viaduct to protect the ground water. As of January 2021 plans call for diesel-electric trains running at up to 160 km/h (100 mph). In May 2021 Fonatur contracted with a consortium headed by Alstom to supply rolling stock and related equipment. The rolling stock will be manufactured at Alstom's factory in Ciudad Sahagún . The contract also includes European Train Control System signalling and control equipment. López Obrador has said
1050-427: Is high in the developmental hierarchy, and features like [fricative], [apical], or [fortis] are found to be later acquired. Like almost all Mayan languages, Yucatec Maya is verb-initial. Word order varies between VOS and VSO, with VOS being the most common. Many sentences may appear to be SVO, but this order is due to a topic–comment system similar to that of Japanese. One of the most widely studied areas of Yucatec
1125-454: Is still the mother tongue of a large segment of the population in the early 21st century. It has approximately 800,000 speakers in this region. There were an additional 2,518 speakers of Yucatec Maya in Belize as of the 2010 national census. Recently, scholars in the fields of history and anthropology have raised ethical and political questions about the continued use of the label "Yucatec Maya" to
1200-455: Is the semantics of time in the language. Yucatec, like many other languages of the world ( Chinese , Kalaallisut , arguably Guaraní and others) does not have the grammatical category of tense . Temporal information is encoded by a combination of aspect , inherent lexical aspect ( aktionsart ), and pragmatically governed conversational inferences. Yucatec is unusual in lacking temporal connectives such as 'before' and 'after'. Another aspect of
1275-686: The Chichén Itzá railway station opened in February 2024 and the Valladolid railway station was expected to open further on. The rolling stock of the Tren Maya was designed by the French company Alstom , and its 219 cars were being built in Ciudad Sahagún . Of these trains, 32 of them will be electro-diesel multiple units , 10 will be standard diesel multiple units . Regular passenger service will be provided by
1350-515: The Ferrosur as well as new tracks constructed through the jungle. The project was derided by political opposition groups as a stunt for López Obrador, who had also cancelled a major airport project in Mexico City favored by his predecessor. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation announced that it would oppose the project. On November 15, 2019, President López Obrador declared that a referendum on
1425-574: The Roman alphabet ) were written by Maya notaries between 1557 and 1851. These works can now be found in the United States, Mexico, and Spain in libraries and archives. A characteristic feature of Yucatec Maya, like other Mayan languages, is the use of ejective consonants : /pʼ/, /tʼ/, /kʼ/ . Often referred to as glottalized consonants, they are produced at the same place of oral articulation as their non-ejective stop counterparts: /p/, /t/, /k/ . However,
1500-473: The Xiinbal train, named for a Mayan term meaning “to walk”, as the regular passenger service. They will have business class seats, standard seating, and a buffet car . This service will be offered to frequent local passengers, but also to occasional passengers and tourists. The Janal trains (from a Mayan term meaning "to eat") will add a dining car to the previous services, which will have aquatic landscapes on
1575-474: The glottalized plosives /pʼ tʼ kʼ ɓ/ and is followed by an identical consonant, the final consonant may dispose of its point of articulation and become the glottal stop /ʔ/. This may also happen before another plosive inside a common idiomatic phrase or compound word . Examples: [majaɓˈtʼàːn] ~ [majaʔˈtʼàːn] 'Yucatec Maya' (literally, "flat speech"), and náak’- [náːkʼ-] (a prefix meaning 'nearby') + káan [ká̰ːn] 'sky' gives [ˈnáːʔká̰ːn] 'palate, roof
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#17328586629421650-628: The "first ever Mayan telenovela ," premiered in August 2013. Jesús Pat Chablé is often credited with being one of the first Maya-language rappers and producers. In the 2018 video game Shadow of the Tomb Raider , the inhabitants of the game's Paititi region speak in Yucatec Maya (while immersion mode is on). The modern bible edition, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
1725-517: The 90 percent cost overrun on the Toluca–Mexico City commuter rail project. In October 2021 Fonatur revised the construction estimate to 200 billion pesos. In October 2020 the estimated total cost of the project, including 30 years of operating and maintenance but not including electrification, was about 321 billion pesos. The Secretariat of Tourism will receive a 647.1% increase in its budget for 2021 (MXN $ 38,613.4 million), of which 94%
1800-649: The Jaguar has identified twelve wildlife corridors that could be constructed to mitigate the situation for the jaguars that live in the area. The Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental environmental group has accused Fonatur of deforestation along the route, not accounted for in the environmental impact assessment and without acquiring the necessary permits. In November 2021 the Interior Department exempted Tren Maya and other infrastructure projects from environmental review. Original plans called for electric locomotives on
1875-479: The Maya, they needed to reform Yucatec Maya. They wanted to shape it to serve their ends of religious conversion and social control. Spanish religious missionaries undertook a project of linguistic and social transformation known as reducción (from Spanish reducir). The missionaries translated Catholic Christian religious texts from Spanish into Yucatec Maya and created neologisms to express Catholic religious concepts. The result of this process of reducción
1950-574: The Mayan Train would be held on December 15, 2019, in Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo. The weekend of December 15–16, 2019, 92.3% of the people who participated in the consultation voted in favor, while 7.4% voted against the proposal. 100,940 people voted, 2.36% of the 3,536,000 registered voters in the 84 municipalities affected. The Mexican Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized
2025-467: The Yucatan Peninsula to 16 in March 2021, increasing to at least 25 by January 2022. Most of the injunctions have been filed by indigenous collectives who consider the project to be an environmental disaster. Court rulings are not binding on Tren Maya because it has been declared a national security project. The injunctions have had little effect, and construction continues. López Obrador has criticized
2100-534: The Yucatan Peninsula. However, "Yucateco" amongst Mexicans, especially non-academics, has always primarily referenced the state of Yucatan (located in the northwestern corner of the Peninsula with the same name) and, in particular, the ethnic-national identity and culture of this state. Thus, Maya linguists from Quintana Roo, for example Jaime Chi and Edber Dzidz Yam, have identified that the term actually introduces confusion, given that in common understanding among Mexicans
2175-423: The Yucatán island of Cozumel , and also took part in the conquest of central Mexico. Guerrero became a Mexican legend as father of the first Mestizo : by Aguilar's account, Guerrero "went native". He married native women, wore traditional native apparel, and fought against the Spanish. Francisco de Montejo 's military incursion of Yucatán took three generations and three wars with extended fighting, which lasted
2250-434: The Yucatán peninsula from Palenque , Jaina , and Bonampak . In the 12th and 13th centuries, a coalition emerged in the Yucatán peninsula among three important centers, Uxmal , Chichen Itza , and Mayapan . The society grew and the people were able to practice intellectual and artistic achievement during a period of peace. When war broke out, such progress was stalled. By the 15th century, the city of Tula had collapsed and
2325-593: The ancestor of modern Yucatec Maya, Itza , Lacandon and Mopan . Even further back, the language is ultimately related to all other Maya languages through proto-Mayan itself. Yucatec Maya is now written in the Latin script . This was introduced during the Spanish Conquest of Yucatán which began in the early 16th century, and the now-antiquated conventions of Spanish orthography of that period ("Colonial orthography") were adapted to transcribe Yucatec Maya. This included
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2400-631: The authorities. The route of the track was modified several times to take into account the demands of environmentalists. Before starting work, the Ministry of the Environment carried out an inventory of flora and fauna, and relocated animals to protected areas. The Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda), however, denounces a project which, in its entirety, has destroyed "2,500 hectares of tropical rainforest" and directly affected twenty protected natural areas. Residents of 130 localities directly affected by
2475-553: The consultation provided only positive information to voters prior to voting. Groups close to the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) plan to seek injunctions against the train project and other construction in the region. The CNI is looking at three-pronged action: social awareness campaigns, media campaigns, and legal actions. On January 28, 2020, a judge in Campeche issued a temporary injunction against construction of
2550-562: The cultural hegemony of anglophone academia. The term "Yucatec Maya" was invented in the early-mid 20th century by linguists so as to not confuse themselves with the use of word "Maya" (the actual name of the language) when this was used to reference the ancestral language ( proto-language ) of all the Mayan languages ; this ancestral language is now no longer called "Proto-Maya", but is instead called Proto-Mayan . The designation "Yucatec Maya" has been understood by generations of US scholars to refer to
2625-413: The earliest syllable with a long vowel. If there is no long vowel, then the last syllable is stressed. Borrowings from other languages such as Spanish or Nahuatl are often stressed as in the original languages. An important morphophonological process in Yucatec Maya is the dissimilation of identical consonants next to each other by debuccalizing to avoid geminate consonants . If a word ends in one of
2700-497: The final consonant is often reflected in orthographies, so [majaʔˈtʼàːn] can appear as maya’ t’àan , maya t'aan , etc. Phonology acquisition is received idiosyncratically. If a child seems to have severe difficulties with affricates and sibilants, another might have no difficulties with them while having significant problems with sensitivity to semantic content, unlike the former child. There seems to be no incremental development in phonology patterns. Monolingual children learning
2775-419: The financial resources to travel to the voting locations, and that the majority of voters were municipal employees. The government rejected the criticisms, stating the consultation met international standards. In June 2022 Interior Secretary Adán Augusto López Hernández announced a planned extension to Progreso and Umán in Yucatán. Funding for the project will come primarily from a tourism tax levied in
2850-516: The implications of the Maya Train, opposition to the project "is above all a media campaign, driven by a few collectives, but it is by no means a social movement. They have no popular support." The vast majority of the population of the states concerned seem to support the Mayan Train. As of January 2021, workers and archeologists had uncovered more than 8,000 ancient artifacts and structures during construction. The National Alliance for Conservation of
2925-470: The language contrasts four distinct vowel "shapes", i.e. combinations of vowel length , tone , and phonation . In the standard orthography first adopted in 1984, vowel length is indicated by digraphs (e.g. "aa" for IPA [aː] ). In fast-paced speech, the glottalized long vowels may be pronounced the same as the plain long high vowels, so in such contexts ka’an [ká̰ːn] 'sky' sounds the same as káan [káːn] 'when?'. Mayan words are typically stressed on
3000-496: The language have shown acquisition of aspiration and deobstruentization but difficulty with sibilants and affricates, and other children show the reverse. Also, some children have been observed fronting palatoalveolars, others retract lamino-alveolars, and still others retract both. Glottalization was not found to be any more difficult than aspiration. That is significant with the Yucatec Mayan use of ejectives. Glottal constriction
3075-424: The language is the core-argument marking strategy, which is a ' fluid S system' in the typology of Dixon (1994) where intransitive subjects are encoded like agents or patients based upon a number of semantic properties as well as the perfectivity of the event. The Maya were literate in pre-Columbian times, when the language was written using Maya script . The language itself can be traced back to proto-Yucatecan,
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3150-425: The language that is known and named by native speakers as simply "Maya" (see Castañeda (2021), Castillo Cocom (2021), Hernandez Reyna and Castillo Cocom (2021), Restall (2004), Restall and Gabbert (2017). These scholars argue, both explicitly and implicitly, that the use of "Yucatec Maya" manifests a continuation and propagation of neocolonial relationships, specifically the scientific imperialism of linguistics and
3225-541: The languages in the Mayan language family are thought to originate from an ancestral language that was spoken some 5,000 years ago, known as Proto-Mayan . The Maya had been in a stable decline when Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1517 AD. From 200 to 800 AD the Maya were thriving and making great technological advances. They created a system for recording numerals and hieroglyphs that was more complex and efficient than what had come before. They migrated northward and eastward to
3300-530: The line, including eight ex- China Railway DF-4D locomotives owned by Chinese contractors, some Vossloh G2000 BB locomotives, and "older locomotives imported secondhand from Europe". The Conexión Intermodal Tren Maya is a future set of 3 electric shuttle bus connections in Cancun , Puerto Morelos , and Playa del Carmen that will link to the Tren Maya. Two lines will connect Puerto Morelos and Playa del Carmen stations with different tourist attractions of
3375-504: The mouth' (so literally "nearby-sky"). Meanwhile, if the final consonant is one of the other consonants, it debuccalizes to /h/: nak [nak] 'to stop sth' + -kúuns [-kúːns] (a causative suffix) gives nahkúuns [nahˈkúːns] 'to support sb/sth' (cf. the homophones nah , possessed form nahil , 'house'; and nah , possessed form nah , 'obligation'), náach’ [náːtʃ] 'far' + -chah [-tʃah] (an inchoative suffix) gives náahchah [ˈnáːhtʃah] 'to become distant'. This change in
3450-437: The name Maya refers to the peoples and language living throughout the Peninsula while the phrase "Yucatec Maya" would seem to denote a dialect of the Maya language that is spoken in the state of Yucatan, Mexico, in contrast to other regional dialects of Maya such as spoken in the states of Quintana Roo, or Campeche and in northern Belize. Thus, the above scholars argue, to continue to use the phrase "Yucatec Maya" to refer to either
3525-455: The name of the language (versus Mayab) and as the ethnic identity (ethnonym) are complex questions — see etymology and social history of the word as ethnic identity and name of the language in Restall (2004) and Restall and Gabbert (2017). Linguists have added Yucatec to the name in order to clearly distinguish it from all other Mayan languages (such as Kʼicheʼ and Itzaʼ ). Thus, the use of
3600-440: The outside, and an interior inspired by the work of Luis Barragán . “The restaurant offers two layout options and various seating configurations to allow optimal use of space in a beautiful setting.” The P'atal trains (from a Mayan term meaning "to stay") will have reclining seats and sleeping cabins, designated especially for long-distance journeys. In addition, several locomotives have been imported to Mexico to help construct
3675-468: The peninsula. The project aims to connect tourist destinations in the Caribbean with lesser-known sites inland, including historic Mayan sites from which it derives its name. By linking the main towns in the region, with 42 trains carrying up to three million passengers a year, the line is intended to redistribute tourist flows that are currently concentrated on the coast, and to encourage the development of
3750-482: The people or the language instead of the proper name, that is, Maya, used by the speakers of this language would be an injustice. On the new politics of using Maya and not Mayan as an ethnic label see: Yucatec Maya forms part of the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language family. The Yucatecan branch is divided by linguists into the subgroups Mopan-itza and Yucatec-Lacandon. These are made up by four languages: All
3825-656: The production. In the video game Civilization V: Gods & Kings , Pacal, leader of the Maya, speaks in Yucatec Maya. In August 2012, the Mozilla Translathon 2012 event brought over 20 Yucatec Mayan speakers together in a localization effort for the Google Endangered Languages Project , the Mozilla browser, and the MediaWiki software used by Misplaced Pages and other Wikimedia projects. Baktun ,
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#17328586629423900-433: The profits. According to the government, "the use of Sedena [Mexico's Ministry of Defense] guarantees good administration and prevents the risk of privatization", in a country known for corruption. Pons stated in September 2021 that the cost of a single trip for locals, for the section that goes from Cancún Airport to Playa del Carmen , will be around 50 pesos. Tourists will be expected to pay between 800 and 1000 pesos for
3975-815: The project is anticipated to open in the late 2020s, but tourism officials in the region have proposed accelerating work for a 2023 opening. The route consists of seven sections. Section I runs 228 km (142 mi) from Palenque to Escárcega ; section II 235 km (146 mi) from Escárcega to Calkiní ; section III 172 km (107 mi) from Calkiní to Izamal ; section IV 257 km (160 mi) from Izamal to Cancún Airport; section V 121 km (75 mi) from Cancún Airport to Tulum ; section VI 254 km (158 mi) from Tulum to Bacalar ; and section VII 287 km (178 mi) from Bacalar to Escárcega. Business leaders in Mérida, Yucatán expressed their support on January 31, 2020, for building four kilometers of
4050-509: The project will be completed prior to the end of his term in 2024. A market survey conducted by Fonatur, PricewaterhouseCoopers and other consultants in 2019 found that a majority of 21 construction companies consider this too fast, an unreasonable time to construct so much new rail, and others have expressed fear of a disaster caused by substandard work, such as the May 2021 Mexico City Metro overpass collapse . In January 2022, to speed up construction,
4125-554: The railroad route will benefit from "388 worksites and social actions", including the rehabilitation of pavements and roads, public spaces, electrical, sanitary and productive infrastructures, and housing. For 150 mph (241 km/h) or more in the US, see High-speed rail in the United States Yucatec Maya According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by American anthropologist Victoria Bricker , there
4200-405: The railway because it was approved in a "simulated consultation." In a visit to the city of Campeche , President López Obrador defended the train and pointed out that not only had the train received its greatest support in the state of Campeche, but also that more than half the route would run through the state—worth MXN $ 60 billion of the $ 130 billion the government plans to invest in total. He said
4275-507: The railway underground as it passes through the city of Mérida. In this way, the train will not threaten the city's historic center. They are also optimistic that the tourist train, in combination with improvements in energy, airports, and seaports, will make the region economically competitive with the North and the Bajío . Fonatur later announced that the train would initially not stop in Mérida, but near
4350-558: The region or in Mexico, by either Spanish or Maya speakers. As used in Hocabá, "Mayab" is not the recognized name of the language, but instead a "nickname" derived from a common nickname for the region, the Mayab ("Mayab, the land of pheasant and deer"), the use of which emerged in the colonial period. This use may also derive from the title of a self-published book by a Yucatec scholar, Santiago Pacheco Cruz (1969). The meaning and origins of "Maya" as
4425-621: The region, as well as funds diverted from other programs, including the Mexican Grand Prix . The project, led by the National Fund for Tourism Development [ es ] (Fonatur), in December 2018 was estimated to cost 150 billion pesos (US$ 7.4 billion) and attract 8,000 daily riders. An alternative study by a public policy think tank in 2019 estimated the cost of the project would be 480 billion pesos (US$ 25.3 billion), supported by
4500-585: The region, while a third will connect the Cancún Airport railway station with the 4 terminals of Cancun International Airport . Work on the Cancun Airport shuttle began in July 2023, and it was hoped that it would begin operations on 29 February. The Cancun shuttle bus will use 7 electric buses, which have a top speed of 69 kilometres per hour (43 mph). Although it was originally announced that they will have
4575-408: The release of the lingual closure is preceded by a raising of the closed glottis to increase the air pressure in the space between the glottis and the point of closure, resulting in a release with a characteristic popping sound. The sounds are written using an apostrophe after the letter to distinguish them from the plain consonants ( tʼàan "speech" vs. táan "forehead"). The apostrophes indicating
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#17328586629424650-444: The route was changed to no longer enter Playa del Carmen. As of June 2021, 10% of the project had been completed. This had increased to 25% by February 2022, and 67% by June 2023. Operations officially began on December 15, 2023. Operations on the line were suspended from December 28 to December 31, in preparation for the extension of service to Palenque . Service resumed on January 1, from Cancún Airport to Palenque. In addition,
4725-532: The saliency in opposition to the train as a partisan attempt to halt his administration's infrastructure projects. A group of celebrities, including comedian Eugenio Derbez , singers Rubén Albarrán and Natalia Lafourcade , and actress Kate del Castillo , as part of the Sélvame del Tren ("Save me from the Train", a play on words between Sálvame meaning Save Me, and Selva meaning jungle) campaign, has expressed opposition to
4800-418: The same trip. When explaining the difference in price, he stated that tourists will have additional services available, such as restaurants. On December 16, 2018, president López Obrador conducted a Mayan ritual to commemorate the start of construction on the Mayan Train project. The railway will also accommodate local passenger traffic and freight shipments in addition to tourist functions. The first phase of
4875-688: The section from Escárcega to Cancún should be open for tourist, passenger, and freight traffic in 2023, but that the route will not pass through the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve . In November 2020 the Regional Indigenous Council of Xpujil delivered a petition with 268,000 signatures to the Campeche Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources asking that the project be suspended because of environmental concerns. Residents of Chocholá , Mérida, and Izamal , in Yucatán obtained
4950-537: The sounds were not common in written Maya until the 20th century but are now becoming more common. The Mayan b is also glottalized, an implosive /ɓ/ , and is sometimes written bʼ , but that is becoming less common. Yucatec Maya is one of only three Mayan languages to have developed tone , the others being Uspantek and one dialect of Tzotzil . Yucatec distinguishes short vowels and long vowels, indicated by single versus double letters (ii ee aa oo uu), and between high- and low-tone long vowels. High-tone vowels begin on
5025-468: The term Yucatec Maya to refer to the language is scholarly or scientific nomenclature. Native speakers do not qualify the language as Yucatec , calling it "Maaya", "maayaʼ tʼàan", or "maasewal t'aan" (literally 'commoner language') in their language and simply (el) maya when speaking Spanish. In the Mexican states of Yucatán , some parts of Campeche , Tabasco , Chiapas , and Quintana Roo , Yucatec Maya
5100-424: The train's impact on wildlife and the environment above ground and in caves. Urbina Bravo is also involved in a legal battle to halt construction. Segment number 5 of the Maya Train network has been the most contested by environmental associations. Stretching over 110 kilometers, its completion involved the deforestation of a continuous 60-meter-wide strip – that's 2.2 million trees "felled or displaced", according to
5175-402: The train. In July 2022 residents of Chemax barricaded surrounding roads, bringing construction to a halt. They say the government has violated its agreement by clearing the jungle and failing to provide promised infrastructure. However, according to Etienne von Bertrab, a specialist in political ecology at University College London (UCL) and co-founder of an interdisciplinary study group on
5250-529: The trains. In June 2020 the government announced a switch to diesel to reduce costs, then in August 2020 they announced that half the route, from Mérida to Chetumal via Cancún, would be electrified. In March 2022, Greenpeace organizers tied themselves to heavy machinery as a protest against construction in Quintana Roo that involves cutting down the jungle without environmental studies having been made. Cave diver Jose Urbina Bravo conducts expeditions to study
5325-480: The use of ⟨x⟩ for the postalveolar fricative sound (which is often written in English as ⟨sh⟩ ). In colonial times a "reversed c" ⟨ɔ⟩ was often used to represent /t͡sʼ/ (the alveolar ejective affricate ). This sound is now represented by ⟨tzʼ⟩ in the revised ALMG orthography and ⟨tsʼ⟩ in the INALI orthography. Yucatec-language programming
5400-494: The vote. They pointed out that voters were provided with only the positive effects of the project (improved attention to water supplies, health, education, employment, housing, environmental protection, and culture) but were not informed of the negative effects. The Human Rights Commission also criticized the translations of the material used, the short period of time for the election, and low turnout, particularly among indigenous women. They noted that many potential voters did not have
5475-471: Was Maya reducido , a semantically transformed version of Yucatec Maya. Missionaries attempted to end Maya religious practices and destroy associated written works. By their translations, they also shaped a language that was used to convert , subjugate, and govern the Maya population of the Yucatán peninsula. But Maya speakers appropriated Maya reducido for their own purposes, resisting colonial domination. The oldest written records in Maya reducido (which used
5550-644: Was abandoned. The Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast of Yucatán during his expedition for the Spanish Crown in 1502, but he never made landfall. During the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spaniards to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, as survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. The Maya ritually sacrificed most of these men, leaving just two survivors, Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero , who somehow rejoined other Spaniards. In 1519, Aguilar accompanied Hernán Cortés to
5625-548: Was released in the Maya language in 2019. It's distributed without charge, both printed and online editions . On December 4, 2019, the Congress of Yucatán unanimously approved a measure requiring the teaching of the Maya language in schools in the state. Yucatec Maya is spoken by the fictional underwater kingdom of Talokan and its king Kukulkan in the 2022 film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever . In addition to universities and private institutions in Mexico, (Yucatec) Maya
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