Back from CamLing

I'm just back from a linguistics conference in Cambridge, CamLing 2007, where I presented a talk on number borrowing in Berber. If you missed it, you can view the slides at my homepage.

The conference was interesting, and I won't go into too much detail on it, but one thing I was surprised and saddened to learn (from Mary Ochoa) was that Yucatec Maya, one of the largest Maya languages, is extremely threatened. It has nearly a million speakers, but, except in the remotest villages, practically all Yucatec children are being spoken to exclusively in Spanish by their parents. Some parents even tell their children not to speak Yucatec or they'll punish them. Like Navajo, another Native American language that was flourishing until lately, it seems to be headed for a massive, rapid decline over the next fifty years.

Maya and Amnesty International

I went to the AI site just now, without a linguistic thought in my head, and what do I find?

Watemaal: Li risinkileb’ laj nat’ol na’ajej moko a’an ta li xb’ehil re xtuqub’alkil ru li ch’a’ajkilal chi rix li ch’och’

I applaud this, although I should point out that putting an international press release in Mayan (dunno which Mayan language - Chol?) is somewhat self-defeating...

Incidentally, if you haven't already seen it, check out the site Language Hat just found. I particularly liked the San Zi Jing.