Classic Maya language  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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edit1.jpg Part of an inscription at Palenque Region Yucatan,
Guatemala Era 9th through 12th centuries Language family
Language codes ISO 639-3 emy Linguist List emy Epigraphic Mayan
Classic Maya is the oldest historically attested member of the
Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the
pre-Columbian inscriptions of the Classic Era Maya civilization.
It is now thought that the codices and other Classic texts were
written by scribes, usually members of the Maya priesthood, in a
literary form of the Ch’olti’ language.[1][2] It is possible
that the Maya elite spoke this language as a lingua franca over
the entire Maya-speaking area, but also that texts were written
in other Mayan languages of the Petén and Yucatán, especially
Yucatec. There is also some evidence that the Maya script may
have been occasionally used to write Mayan languages of the
Guatemalan Highlands.[2] H