The journey of a language and its speakers: Mam of the Chiapas-Guatemala border
Telma Can Pixabaj
CIMSUR-UNAM (Chiapas, Mexico)
The aim of this talk is to share some findings about the state of the Mayan language Mam spoken by a community along the Chiapas-Guatemala border. This variety of Mam is considered at high risk of loss due to different reasons and problems, like the lack of intergenerational transmission, limited contexts of use, simplification of the grammar, etc. In order to understand the current situation of the language, it is important to take into account the sociopolitical context that its speakers had to face in their movement between the two countries (Guatemala and Mexico) over the years, which have had a fundamental impact on present state of the language.
