Though languages of the Mesoamerican linguistic area share a number of structural similarities, they also have numerous traits that are markedly different from one another.

In phonology, very few of the languages—only Cuitlatec, Tequistlatec, and a few Otomanguean languages—have voiced stops (b, d, g; see voice), and none have voiced fricatives (such as v, z, Ʒ [as in English genre or rouge]). A voiceless lateral approximant (i.e., a speech sound usually classified as a consonant that is formed by the passage of air between two articulators—for example the lips or tongue—that are close but not touching), usually represented as ł but offically in the International Phonetic Alphabet represented as l̥ (pronounced like a whispered “l” or like blowing through an “l”), is found in Tequistlatecan and Totonacan. Nahuatl and Totonac have a voiceless lateral affricate (tl), and Tequistlatec has a glottalized lateral affricate (tl’), the glottalized counterpart of l in this language (see glottal stop).

Uvular stops (q) in contrast with velar stops (k) are found in Totonacan and several Mayan languages (those of the K’ichean-Mamean and Q’anjob’alan branches). Glottalized consonants (ejectives) are found in Mayan, Tequistlatecan, Otomí, Mazatec, and Xinkan, as well as in Coahuilteco, Lencan, and Jicaquean. Aspirated stops (that is, stops pronounced with an accompanying forceful expulsion of air) are very rare but are found in Tarascan (Purépecha) and a few Otomanguean languages (for example, Mazatec and Otomí); Jicaquean also has them. Prenasalized stops are encountered in some Otomanguean languages (for example, in Mazatec, Mixtec, and Otomí).

Contrastive nasalized vowels (vowels pronounced with air going simultaneously through the nose [nasal cavity] and the mouth [oral cavity]) occur in several branches of Otomanguean. Contrastive tones are found widely among Otomanguean languages and also in Huave, Cuitlatec, and a few Mayan languages (Yucatec Maya, Uspanteko, and the San Bartolo dialect of Tzotzil); several other languages of Middle America have contrastive tones, for example some Uto-Aztecan languages (Northern Tepehuan, Cora, Huichol) and several Chibchan languages (for example, Barí, Boruca, Bribri, Cabécar, Chimila, Guaymí, Paya, Tunebo, etc.). Contrastive (unpredictable) stress (such as the stress difference in the English noun contest [pronounced CONtest] versus the verb contest [pronounced conTEST]), on the other hand, is very rare, found only in Cuitlatec, Tarascan, and Tequistlatecan. Several languages devoice (pronounce without vibrating the vocal cords) a final l, w, and y—and also r in those languages that have r (K’ichean, Aztecan [Nahuan], Totonacan, Xinkan, Tarascan, and some Mixe-Zoquean languages). Several also voice consonants after nasals (Huave, Mixe-Zoquean, Tarascan, and Xinkan), as for example in Copainalá Zoque ndik ‘my house’ from n- ‘my’ + tik ‘house.’ Retroflex fricatives are found in several Mayan languages of the Mamean and Q’anjob’alan branches, some Xinkan languages (Chiquimulilla and Guazacapán), some Mixean languages, and some Otomanguean languages (Chocho, Mazatec, Popoloca, and some Zapotec languages). Some of these also have retroflex affricates. (To pronounce a retroflex consonant, the tongue is retracted toward the hard palate—for example, as in the retracted pronunciation of sh in English shrimp or of the t in true, in the speech of many people.)

Most Mesoamerican languages are morphologically complex, which means that verbs and often also nouns take a number of prefixes and suffixes. Grammatical case markers on nouns—the word elements that indicate the role of a noun or pronoun in a phrase, clause, or sentence— are absent from nearly all Mesoamerican languages, with rare exceptions. These languages also lack grammatical gender, with the exception of a few Otomanguean languages. (Grammatical gender refers to the classes of nouns and pronouns in languages, often distinguished as masculine versus feminine, like he versus she in English. These sometimes partially overlap with natural gender—as in Spanish perro ‘male dog’ [the -o ending indicates masculine] versus perra ‘female dog’ [the -a ending indicates feminine]—but often are totally arbitrary, as in Spanish masculine palo ‘stick’ versus feminine piedra ‘stone’).

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Languages & Alphabets

Most Mesoamerican languages lack plural marking (such as the -s in English) for nouns, or it is limited to only human referents. Most lack or have very limited tense marking (for example, present, past, future); grammatical aspect (the manner of the action or state, for example, whether it is completed, ongoing, or habitual) is more important than tense and is typically marked on the verbs.

In all Mesoamerican and the other Middle American languages, terms referring to body parts and to kinship are inalienably possessed, meaning that they do not normally occur without an indication of the possessor (the equivalent of ‘my-head’ or ‘the boy’s head,’ but not ‘a head’ or ‘the head’).

Numeral classifiers are found in Tarascan, Totonacan, Nahuatl, and several branches of Mayan. (In the following examples, a convention is employed whereby a single word in the language corresponds to multiple words in the English gloss. The words of the gloss are written together without a space but separated by a period, as in “flat.class” for the classifier that means ‘flat class.’ In Tzeltal (Mayan) osh lehch te’ [three flat.class tree] means ‘three plants,’ osh tehk te’ [three plant.class tree] means ‘three trees,’ and osh k’as si’ [three broken.class firewood] means ‘three chunks of firewood.’) In these languages, typically counted nouns cannot occur without an appropriate numeral classifier.

A few languages—including Yucatec and Mam (Mayan), Nahuan (Aztecan), and Totonac—have noun incorporation, where the object can become part of the verb, as for example in Nahuatl ni-tlashkal-chiwa [I-tortilla-make] ‘I make tortillas’ (compare ni-k-chiwa tlashkalli [I-it-make tortilla] ‘I make the tortillas’). Body-part incorporation is more widespread, found in Mixe-Zoquean, Nahua, Tarascan, Tlapanec, Totonacan, and some others. A body part is incorporated into the verb, usually functioning as an instrumental or direct object—for example, Pipil ni-mahmaa-tuuka (I-hands-bury [or I-hands-plant]) ‘I walk by feeling my way.’

An inclusive-exclusive contrast in first person plural pronouns—inclusive we embraces the addressee, while exclusive we does not—is a trait of several languages, including Huave, some Mayan languages (Chol, Mam, Akateko, Jakalteko), several Mixe-Zoquean languages, and several Otomanguean languages (Chatino, Chocho, Ixcatec, Mixtecan, Otomí, Popoloca, Tlapanec, Trique, and varieties of Zapotec). An example is Chol (Mayan) honon la ‘[exclusive] we ’ [i.e., I and one or more others but not you] versus honon lohon ‘[inclusive] we’ [I and one or more others including you].

Most Mesoamerican languages do not have a copula (a form of the verb ‘to be’) in equational constructions—for example, as in K’iche’ (Mayan) saq lee xaah [white the house] ‘the house is white.’ Some of these languages, however, have a pronominal equational construction in which a pronominal prefix or suffix can be attached to the noun—for example, Q’eqchi’ (Mayan) kwinq-at [man-you] ‘you are a man’ and Nahuatl ni-tlaakatl [I-man] ‘I am a man.’

Most Mesoamerican languages have no verb of possession equivalent to English ‘to have’; rather, most have a word equivalent to ‘there is’ or ‘there are’ or ‘there exists’ used in a construction with a possessed noun, as for example in Kaqchikel (Mayan) k’o xun nu-ts’i’ [there.is one my-dog] meaning ‘I have a dog.’ (The period symbol in the gloss is used to show that a single word in the language examined corresponds to multiple pieces in the glossing language.)

Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean languages, and many Chibchan languages, are characterized by what is known as ergative verb alignment. These languages are unlike English, which has nominative-accusative alignment where the subject of transitive verbs (such as she bit her) is the same in form as the subject of intransitive verbs (she ran)—called “nominative”—but different in form from the object of transitive verbs (she bit her)—called “accusative.” In these languages with ergative verb alignment, subjects of transitive verbs are marked differently (called “ergative”), while the subjects of intransitives and the objects of transitives both have the same marking (called “absolutive”), as in K’iche’ (Mayan) k-at-qa-kamisax [aspect-you.absolutive-we.ergative-kill] ‘we kill you’ and k-ox-a-kamisax [aspect-we.absolutive-you.ergative-kill], with the objects of these transitive verbs (-at- ‘you’ and -ox- ‘us’) marked in the same way as the subjects of the intransitive verbs k-at-kamik [aspect-you.absolutive-die] ‘you die’ and k-ox-kamik [aspect-we.absolutive-die] ‘we die,’ but differently from the ergatively marked subjects of the transitive verbs (-qa- ‘we,’ -a- ‘you’ in the examples meaning ‘we kill you’ and ‘you kill us’ above)—that is, the absolutive pronoun prefixes -at- and -ox- signal both the objects of the transitive verbs (as in ‘we kill YOU’) and the subjects of the intransitive verbs (as in ‘YOU die’), while the ergative pronoun prefixes -a- and -qa- signal only subjects of transitive verbs (as in ‘WE kill you’).

A few Mesoamerican languages are reported as having active-inactive verb alignment; these include Chol, Chontal, and Mopán (Mayan languages) and Amuzgo, Chocho, Popoloca, and varieties of Otomí (Otomanguean languages). In these languages, subjects of intransitive verbs are marked in two different ways, like the subject of transitive verbs when the subject is agentive (can perform, control, do volitionally—for example, she runs), but the intransitive subjects are marked like objects of transitive verbs when they are not agentive but are more patientlike (as for example in she dies, actually in form the equivalent of her dies, making its subject equivalent to the object of a transitive verb as in she bites her).