Volume 133, Issue 4

This paper sketches out a number of sociolinguistic themes regarding Mexican indigenous multilingualism, exploring a global sociolinguistic framework to understand the possibilities of continuity of Mexico’s indigenous languages and their different challenges. In pursuit of an understanding of Mexican indigenous sociolinguistic complexity a series of theoretical and methodological as well as historical and empirical traits, together with our own revitalizing efforts vis-à-vis key institutional contexts, are investigated. For this purpose, case study research findings are highlighted (e.g. Nahuatl), findings which also represent different poles of the language shift-retention continuum (e.g. Kiliwa versus Yucatec Maya).

The aim of this article is to outline the new paths of the Maya language in the Yucatan Peninsula. The author identifies the linguistic and extra linguistic factors that are causing a decline in the domains of use of Maya, despite it being a very widely spoken language in Mexico. This article also reviews different stages in the history of the Maya language, in order to show how it came to be a language in frequent contact with other languages. Changes within the language and in the linguistic awareness of its speakers have led to new efforts in its revitalization and in the creation of new functional domains which may help it gain back status, it may also lead to the creation of new spaces for it to be used along with other world languages. In this process, Maya speakers, NGOs, associations, and institutes of Maya language, along with experts, researchers, and government sectors, have come together to create new paths which aim at promoting and strengthening the Maya language. However, there exist external factors which serve as obstacles to the creation of clear, pertinent, and feasible linguistic policies.

In the Yucatec peninsula, Spanish and Yucatec Maya coexist in a diglossic context where Spanish is considered the high prestige variety, while Yucatec Maya is mainly spoken in informal, private settings. Even though there have been major changes in language policy over the last 25 years in order to protect Mexican indigenous languages, the number of Maya speakers is still declining. This article examines the effects of different economic factors on the vitality of Yucatec Maya, whose monetary, functional and idealistic values are being negotiated on the «linguistic market». From the region’s industrial and infrastructural transformation in the 1960 s on, Yucatec Maya has been increasingly exposed to general tendencies of globalization (e.g. migration). Under the present circumstances, tourism can be seen as a double-edged sword for Yucatán: On the one hand, it is the peninsula’s main source of income, but on the other, it brings with it negative consequences for language use, the Maya speaker’s language (self) awareness and related processes of identity construction.

This article explores the relationship between ethnolinguistic vitality and translation in indigenous languages in Mexico. Based on a more general concept of vitality, the author examines how different institutional translation spaces, as well as translational practices, contribute to the vitality of indigenous languages. The practices under scrutiny are historical as well as contemporary, literary translation as well as oral and translation in linguistic landscapes. The voice of indigenous translators is analysed to complete the hypotheses of translation as a factor to be included in the list of vitality factors.

This contribution aims to share the experience gained with the implementation of a pilot project of language revival in four Otomi communities of the Valle del Mezquital, Hidalgo, Mexico. To account for the diverse and, at the same time, complex mosaic of various social, cultural, and political factors, examples are presented resulting from ethnographic findings. Examining ideological factors that affect the formation of speeches, decision making and implementation of actions, the author proposes a common approach for the revitalization of endangered languages. This approach combines academic and the speaker’s community’s personal interests in recovering their ancestral knowledge, and linguistic practices that have been displaced mainly by the increasing use of Spanish. In the light of the author’s experience, some aspects require a more thorough investigation to conceive and establish more effective and relevant language planning.

This contribution offers some complements and extensions to Wolfgang Schweickard’s article Sviluppo storico e situazione attuale della «Romanische Philologie» in Germania (ZrP 132, 2016, 922–937).

The Italian word pugnale ‘dagger’ has been borrowed by several Balkan languages and Ottoman-Turkish, but some of these loans show a peculiar phonetic feature, namely the change of the vowel u to i in the first syllable. Two scholars, Gustav Meyer and Henrik Barić, tried to explain this feature by opposing arguments: according to Meyer the change originated in Turkish, whilst according to Barić in Albanian. This paper aims to reanalyze the whole question and demonstrate that Barić’s view is much likelier both for phonetic reasons and on the basis of documentary and lexicographical data.