The Diversity of Guatemalan Languages

In Guatemala Spanish (castellano) is the official language. Beyond castellano there are 23 other independent languages in use: 21 Mayan groups have kept their ancestral languages alive as well as Xinca, an Aztecan language, and Garífuna, an Arawakan language spoken on the Caribbean coast. The most widely spoken indigenous languages are K’iché, Kaqchikel, Mam and Q’eqchí. They are spoken by more than 300,000 Guatemalans and have the status of being a territorial language. All the others are classified as communal languages and are generally just spoken by a few thousands of habitants. Itzá and Xinka are spoken only by a few hundred persons and are considered as endangered languages.

The various Mayan languages are to some extent completely different in phonetic, grammatical and structural base. For example, a Mam-indigena from the highland and a Mopán-indigena from the Petén can just communicate in Spanish. However, K’iché and Kaqchikel are alike. Numerous dialects add to the respective Mayan language. There are for instance 10 different variants of Kaqchikel.

During the colonial period and after independency the ruling classes did not have a lot of interest in developing and advocate the diversity of indigenous languages. Since the end of the civil war in December 1996, the Mayan languages experienced somehow a little renaissance. In the convention about the rights of indigenous peoples within the peace treaty the multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual character of the Guatemalan culture has been emphasized.