ABOUT
“I love that it is an open-source community effort. This is an unbelievably valuable resource and I’m so excited to be a part of it.”
“I love that it is an open-source community effort. This is an unbelievably valuable resource and I’m so excited to be a part of it.”
vision
The Mayan Languages Preservation and Digitization Project has been created to recognize the importance and necessity of providing essential services to Mayan language speakers who, at present, are underrepresented in the United States. This project promotes the preservation of Mayan languages through its continued use in educational and professional settings and encourages increased awareness of these languages as native speakers become more engaged and less marginalized in our larger society, with the long-term goal of increased inclusivity, equity, and diversity.
MasterWord and MasterWord Institute have provided a space for this glossary in an open-source format to offer language professionals a space to share knowledge and provide an authoritative categorical list of terms to use in legal and medical settings. Essential to this mission is the idea that native Mayan language speakers lead in the growth of this project and encourage participation from their respective language communities in an effort that ensures preservation of Mayan languages by Mayan language speakers. We encourage collaboration with speakers whose primary language is Indigenous, Mayan language speakers who are newly arrived in the United States, language professionals who work with Mayan language speakers, and academics with a working knowledge and proficiency of Mayan languages. By establishing a collaborative process in the U.S. and Guatemala, our project will encompass all 20 of Guatemala’s existing Mayan languages that will create an authoritative and comprehensive glossary by and for Mayan language speakers. As we grow the project, we fully expect to add an extensive list of categories to the existing legal and medical terminology, including an expanded categorical list of terms that will promote increased literacy in Mayan language speakers in the fields of technology, finance, education, and recreation.
project overview
The Mayan Languages Preservation and Digitization Project is an open-source language digitization initiative created for and by Mayan Language Professionals in Guatemala and throughout North and Central America. We engage with academic professionals in anthropology, linguistics, cultural and area studies , and computer sciences to provide online services and learning with a goal of preserving Mayan languages and cultures. We are specifically dedicated to collaboration with Mayan language speakers who share our desire to ensure long-term survival of the many vibrant and evolving Indigenous languages in Guatemala and its surrounding regions. We maintain that the soul of a culture exists through and by language and invite all who wish to contribute to the preservation of Mayan languages to share in their love and knowledge of the soul of the Mayan cultures.
We stand with you in the belief that language rights are human rights. The Mayan Languages Preservation Project reaffirms this truth. Together, we’re not just preserving languages, but acknowledging, celebrating, and sharing the invaluable cultural wealth embodied in them. We affirm our activism and vision of equality for all humanity by engaging in the struggle to ensure that speakers of all languages have equal access to speak, to learn, to write, and to express themselves freely in the language of their choice. Although this idea is altruistic to us who are active in language preservation and revitalization, there are more than 500 years of oppression to acknowledge during which our languages were oppressed, denigrated, and explicitly forbidden in daily use. From the time of sustained European presence, Indigenous peoples of the Americas have struggled against extinction of its peoples and languages and cultures. We continue in this struggle to ensure that no one person, family, nor linguistic community suffers further discrimination based on enthnolinguistic identity. We assert that Mayan languages and cultures are not relics of a past civilization. Rather, our languages, cultures, and our communities continue to grow, evolve, and develop resources to take our rightful place as leaders in education and thought.