Editing Yucatec Maya language (section)

== History ==
[[File:Conflicto Limitrofe Yucatan Campeche Quintana Roo.PNG|thumb|Yucatán Peninsula]]
Yucatec Maya forms part of the Yucatecan branch of the [[Mayan languages|Mayan language]] family. The Yucatecan branch is divided by linguists into the subgroups Mopan-itza and Yucatec-Lacandon. These are made up by four languages: 
*[[Itzaʼ language|Itza]]
*[[Mopan language|Mopan]]
*Yucatec Maya
*[[Lacandon language|Lacandon]]

All the languages in the Mayan language family are thought to originate from an ancestral language that was spoken some 5,000 years ago, known as [[Proto-Mayan language|Proto-Mayan]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://aboutworldlanguages.com/mayan-language-family|title=Mayan Language Family {{!}} About World Languages|website=aboutworldlanguages.com|access-date=2016-08-02}}</ref>

The Maya had been in a stable decline when Spanish [[conquistador]]s arrived in 1517 AD. From 200 to 800 AD the Maya were thriving and making great technological advances. They created a system for recording numerals and hieroglyphs that was more complex and efficient than what had come before. They migrated northward and eastward to the Yucatán peninsula from [[Palenque]], [[Jaina Island|Jaina]], and [[Bonampak]]. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a coalition emerged in the Yucatán peninsula among three important centers, [[Uxmal]], [[Chichen Itza]], and [[Mayapan]]. The society grew and the people were able to practice intellectual and artistic achievement during a period of peace. When war broke out, such progress was stalled. By the 15th century, the city of [[Toltec|Tula]] had collapsed and was abandoned.

The Genoese explorer [[Christopher Columbus]] traded with Maya merchants off the coast of [[Yucatán]] during his [[Voyages of Christopher Columbus|expedition]] for the Spanish Crown in 1502, but he never made landfall. During the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spaniards to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, as survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. The Maya ritually sacrificed most of these men, leaving just two survivors, [[Gerónimo de Aguilar]] and [[Gonzalo Guerrero]], who somehow rejoined other Spaniards.<ref name=":0"/>

In 1519, Aguilar accompanied [[Hernán Cortés]] to the Yucatán island of [[Cozumel]], and also took part in the conquest of central Mexico. Guerrero became a Mexican legend as father of the first [[Mestizo]]: by Aguilar's account, Guerrero "went native". He married native women, wore traditional native apparel, and fought against the Spanish.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=The Maya World Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550–1850|last=Restall|first=Matthew|year=1999|isbn=0-8047-3658-8|location=Stanford, California| publisher=Stanford University Press}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2020}}

[[Francisco de Montejo]]'s military incursion of Yucatán took three generations and three wars with extended fighting, which lasted a total of 24 years.{{clarify|reason=24 years is not three generations; or does it refer to years of active fighting only?|date=May 2022}}

As the Spanish colonists settled more areas, in the 18th century they developed the lands for large maize [[plantation]]s and cattle farms. The elite lived in [[hacienda]]s and exported natural resources as commodities.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://isa.unc.edu/language-programs/yucatec-maya-institute/about-the-yucatan/yucatan-history/|title=Yucatan History|website=Institute for the Study of the Americas|language=en-US|access-date=2016-08-02}}</ref> The Maya were subjects of the [[Spanish Empire]] from 1542 to 1821.
[[File:Mayan languages tree en.svg|thumb|Language tree]]
During the colonization of the Yucatán peninsula, the Spanish believed that in order to evangelize and govern the Maya, they needed to reform Yucatec Maya. They wanted to shape it to serve their ends of religious conversion and social control.<ref name="hanks">{{Cite journal|last=Hanks|first=William F.|date=2012-01-01|title=BIRTH OF A LANGUAGE: The Formation and Spread of Colonial Yucatec Maya|jstor=24394197|journal=Journal of Anthropological Research|volume=68|issue=4|pages=449–471|doi=10.3998/jar.0521004.0068.401|s2cid=163746525}}</ref>

Spanish religious [[Missionary|missionaries]] undertook a project of linguistic and social transformation known as ''reducción'' (from Spanish ''reducir).'' <!--  a term not widely recognized by historians.  What does this mean? Most historians don't use it? Why?--> The missionaries translated [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] Christian religious texts from Spanish into Yucatec Maya and created [[neologism]]s to express Catholic religious concepts. The result of this process of ''reducción'' was ''Maya reducido'', a semantically transformed version of Yucatec Maya.<ref name="hanks"/> Missionaries attempted to end Maya religious practices and destroy associated written works. By their translations, they also shaped a language that was used to [[religious conversion|convert]], subjugate, and govern the Maya population of the Yucatán peninsula. But Maya speakers appropriated ''Maya reducido'' for their own purposes, resisting colonial domination. The oldest written records in Maya reducido (which used the [[Roman alphabet]]) were written by Maya notaries between 1557 and 1851. These works can now be found in the United States, Mexico, and Spain in libraries and archives.<ref name=":0" />