Chicomuceltec (also Chikomuselteko or Chicomucelteco; archaically, Cotoque) is a Mayan language formerly spoken in the region defined by the municipios of Chicomuselo, Mazapa de Madero, and Amatenango de la Frontera in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as some nearby areas of Guatemala. By the 1970s–80s it had become Extinct language, with recent reports in Mayanist literature finding that there are no living native speakers.[See Campbell and Canger (1978); Ethnologue entry on "Chicomuceltec" (Gordon 2005).] Communities of contemporary Chicomucelteco descendants, numbering approximately 1500 people in Mexico and 100 in Guatemala[See Gordon (2005) for population estimates, which draw on sources collected in the early 1980s.] are Spanish language speakers.
Chicomuceltec was formerly sometimes called Cakchiquel Mam, although it is only distantly related to the Cakchiquel or Mam language, being much closer to Wastek language.
History and genealogy
The Chicomuceltec language was first documented in modern linguistic literature as a distinct language in the late 19th century, where it appeared in an account published by linguist
Karl Sapper of his travels in northern
Mesoamerica 1888–95.
[The work in question is Sapper 1897, with later expansions to the material appearing in Sapper 1912; as cited in Dienhart (1997), "Data sources listed by author" .]
Chicomuceltec's relationship with Wastek was established in the late 1930s (Kroeber 1939), which concluded via word-list comparisons with other Mayan languages that it bore a higher degree of affinity with Wastek than other Mayan language branches.[See précis of Kroeber 1939, appearing in Fernández de Miranda (1968), pp.74–75.]
Historical documentation
A two-page document dated to 1775 which was retrieved from the Bibliothèque nationale de France in
Paris is the oldest-known testament of the Chicomuceltec language. Taking the form of a Roman Catholic confession, the manuscript contains eight sentences written in Chicomuceltec. It also mentions that the language was then referred to as "Cotoque".
[As described by Dienhart (1997), the manuscript was reproduced in Zimmermann 1955 (whose research it was which uncovered the document), accompanied by his linguistic analysis of its contents.]
Geographical distribution
The geographical distribution of Wastek and Chicomuceltec in relation to the rest of the Mayan languages —with Wastek centered on the northern Gulf Coast region away from the others lying south and east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec— led Kroeber to also propose that Chicomuceltec was either a remnant population left behind after the
Huastec people migration north from the Chiapas highlands region, or alternatively represented a return of a Huastec subgroup to their earlier homelands.
[Fernández de Miranda, loc. cit.]
Decline and extinction
By the early 20th century it was clear the language was in decline, and when in 1926 Franz Termer visited the community of Chicomucelo, he reported finding only three individuals (all over 60 years of age) who could speak Chicomuceltec, out of a township of approximately 2,500. The Chicomuceltec speakers themselves conducted their day-to-day conversations in Spanish.
[Termer (1930), as annotated in Dienhart, op. cit.]
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