Editor’s Note: An estimated 15,000 Mam speakers live in Oakland. Javier Armas, an Oakland born and raised educator, recently wrote, “Mam History: Oakland Notes on the History of the Mayan Mam language.” Armas shared an excerpt with Oakland Voices ahead of two Hispanic Heritage Month events at Oakland Tech High School next week.
To appreciate the origin of the Mam language, it is imperative to consider the grassroots of the Mayan language before its division.
The Mayan languages we interact with today have been revealed to have been a derivative of the Proto-Mayan language dating back no less than five thousand years ago. Linguists have theorized that the Proto-Mayan language was spoken in the Cuchumatanes Mountains of Guatemala around 2,200 to 2,400 BCE. Reconstructed vocabulary of Proto-Mayan speakers has been highly successful agriculturalists.
Corn, or Maize, was central to their agricultural practices. Proto-Mayan language included words for material culture, commerce, spirituality and religion, and social organization. The writing aspect of the Mayan language is historically impressive.
Anthropologist Dennis Tedlock frames the historical landscape, ‘if we apply a narrow definition of writing, demanding that it record the sequence of sounds in a spoken language, we cannot get around the fact that writing existed in the Americas long before Europeans brought the roman alphabet here. Mayans started writing when English (even Old English) had yet to be born.’”
Upcoming events:
- October 7, 11:50 a.m. to 12:20 pm, on the Oakland Tech High School steps, 80 free copies of the book will be given away.
- October 9, 11:50am-12:30pm at the Oakland Tech library, in partnership with the Latino Student Achievement and Equity Office, a presentation based on the book.
El Timpano and Bay Area Current have also reported on the “Mam History.”
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