More than 40% of the world’s languages are in danger of extinction and 28 of those are Mayan languages that are still spoken today, according to the Endangered Languages Project.
Typically, older speakers pass these Indigenous languages down to younger generations, but as the elderly all over the world have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate at which endangered languages are disappearing could be accelerating.
“Language preservation and documentation was important before, but it has a new urgency,” Allison Bigelow, an associate professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, said recently. “The communities that we work with have been hit especially hard during COVID, and it has disproportionately taken out elders, or the holders of language and stories.
“To the extent that there is an ethical urgency to preserve the language and to make the newest generation of speakers feel connected to it, that’s the importance of our work and that’s why we really need to be doing it now.”
The work Bigelow is referring to involves associate professor Rafael Alvarado of UVA’s School of Data Science and a team of UVA scholars, graduate students and undergrads, in Spanish, global studies, linguistics, computer science, and the UVA Library. They are working with Maya researchers in Mexico and Guatemala to bring the “Popol Wuj” – or Mayan book of creation – to more people in those communities, with the goal of giving them access to the earliest Mayan mythology and culture via an interactive digital reader.
The “Popol Wuj” (also spelled “Vuh”) document is an important link to understanding Mayan cultures before the European colonial era, but exists in many versions, not readily accessible in Central America. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)
Bigelow and the team won a special $250,000 grant a few months ago from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities that will help create the digital resource they have already begun. In a larger sense, this joint project aims to advance scientific and scholarly knowledge concerning endangered human languages, while at the same time help to preserve the endangered Mayan K’iche’ and Yukatek languages specifically, and the unique cultural perspectives that they make possible.
Materials to promote language learning and protect against endangerment can be scarce in Central American regions, Bigelow and her Maya colleagues said. This project leverages the latest tools and technologies UVA has access to in order to collaborate with Maya linguists on new editions of the “Popol Wuj.”
“Popol Wuj” (pronounced “poh-poh voo” and sometimes spelled “Vuh,” following the colonial-era orthography) recounts the mythology and history of Mayan cultures that are documented in Central American paintings and engravings from as early as 200 BCE. The book is the longest and most complete document to survive the conquest of the region by the Spanish in the 16th century, and it is an important link to understanding the unique cultural characteristics of the Mayan people prior to the colonizing influences of the Europeans.
