Language contact from a historical perspective

The language contact of Yucatec Maya and Spanish can be dated back even before the conquest of Yucatan beginning in 1527. One of the first indications of language contact can be found in the account of Bernal Díaz del Castillo. He reports the capture of natives taken to la Habana, where they learned Spanish to serve as first interpreters in the subsequent expedition of Juan de Grijalva in 1518 (Lentz 2009:140). However, it was not until the establishment of colonial rule after the conquest that the two languages came into contact with each other at a community level. Nonetheless, the contact was still limited during the colonial period. As the colonial authorities barely made an attempt to teach Spanish to the indigenous people, only a small proportion of the population had knowledge of Spanish language. Farris considers it a policy of convenience in part, since all those locally born could communicate with them without problem in Yucatec Maya (1984:111f.). In this sense, as she puts it: “More than a lingua franca, Maya was the primary language of all the colony’s native-born inhabitants of every caste” (1984:112). Mark Lentz even holds that the colonial period was characterized by the spread of Maya as the predominant language of Yucatan rather than its decline, pointing out that a surprising number of non-Mayas were in need of interpreters for legal processes in Spanish (2009). Especially in rural areas of the colony, many of the non-Maya population learned no

Spanish at all (Farriss 1984:112).132

The spread of Yucatec Maya among the non-Maya population was related to the function of the language during the colonial period. Although Spanish was introduced as the language of authority and control (Gabbert 2004:21), Yucatec Maya continued to serve as the main language in public life at the community level. In the religious domain, Yucatec Maya was the medium in which much prayer and religious practice took place. Considering the indigenous language as the vehicle for evangelization, the missionaries were not only committed to learning the language but also to producing the grammars, dictionaries and other descriptions of it (Hanks 2010:7, 10f.). On the other hand, the importance of the literal language for the community’s public administration is attested by an extensive body of notarial documents written in Yucatec Maya with Latin alphabets. These documents were produced by native notaries who were integral to the local political structure133 (Restall 1997). Focusing on this genre, Matthew Restall speaks of the “profound nativist implications of Maya literacy”. Although the format of indigenous notarial records was largely Spanish, the Maya partly made use of them to defend the integrity and territory of the local community against colonial encroachment (1997:250). Perhaps also for this reason, while the political autonomy of the indigenous communities was severely undercut in the late-colonial period, Maya notarial activity continued into the mid-19th century after the end of colonial rule (Restall 1997:250).134

In sum, it can be stated that Yucatec Maya maintained its significance as the main language used in important domains of public life during the colonial period. Language contact through the conquest did not lead to the decline of the native language. On the contrary, Yucatec Maya

132 _{In this context, it is important to point to the rural-urban distinction in language competence. While a greater}

number of Maya in the city could speak and write Spanish compared with their rural counterparts, many of the non-Maya population in the rural areas of the colony only spoke Yucatec Maya (Lentz 2009:152).

133 _{The political control of the community was in the hands of the cabilido, the town council constituted by the}

local Maya elites. See Restall (1997:51-83) for more information on the governing body of the indigenous local community during the colonial period.

134 _{Restall even observes an upsurge in extant native documentation in the second half of the century (1720–1820),}

which is also related to the greater competition for land resulting from the expanding hacienda. The last Maya-language notarial document found so far is dated to 1851 (1997:246-250).

was also learned by the peninsula’s non-Maya population, in many cases even as the first language. Despite the destruction of written Maya records by the colonizers, the Maya soon acquired the alphabet to keep records in their own language in accordance with Spanish legal practice. An extended body of extant notarial documents in Yucatec Maya suggests the continued importance of the literal language for the community’s public administration as well as indigenous people’s strategic use of the learned practices to protect their interests.

After independence, Yucatec Maya remained the lingua franca, also being spoken and even acquired as the first language by many of the non-Maya population, especially in rural areas and small towns of the peninsula (Gabbert 2004:77f.).135 A significant decline in importance of the language in public life is only dated back to the 1940s by Gabbert (2004:107) and Pfeiler (2014:207), which is attributed to social developments after the Mexican Revolution, including lessening isolation of the region, official Hispanicization policies and the expansion of education in rural areas. These factors will be discussed later in the section, although first this section provides a general overview of the current sociolinguistic situation of Yucatec Maya, with a special reference to the state of Yucatan.