ANTP

Indo-European

Largest language family in the world, includes English and most Western European languages.

Spanish

Spanish is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula.

Otomanguean language

Spoken in Southern Mexico, the majority of speakers live in US

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

prehispanic

This word means "before the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica." The time prior to Spanish conquests in the Western Hemisphere.

Evidentials

forms or structures that provide an indication of how the speaker knows the information being conveyed

Morpheme

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Sociolinguistics

investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation and culture

protolanguage

language ancestral to several daughter languages

language endangerment

occurs when a language is spoken fluently by very few people and is in danger of death

Code-switching

switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and another depending on the cultural context

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

the idea that different languages create different ways of thinking

Paralanguage

vocalic behaviors that communicate meaning along with verbal behavior

language family

A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

Creole

A pidgin language that evolves to the point at which it becomes the primary language of the people who speak it

language revitalization

Attempts by linguists and activists to preserve or revive languages with few native speakers that appear to be on the verge of extinction.

Yucatec Mayan

Is one of the 33 Mayan languages of the Mayan language family. Yucatec Maya is spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize.

Aztecan

Nahuatl was the lingua franca of the Aztecs, who ruled Mexico between the 14th and 16th centuries before they were conquered by the Spaniards. It is still spoken by nearly 1.5 million Mexicans, but otherwise is largely unknown.

Nahuatl

Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

stigma

Negative feeling about a person speaking an indigenous language

Colonial Period New Spain

New Spain (1535-1821) ran from present-day Washington State southeast through Louisiana, then down through Latin America. From palaces in Mexico City, the viceroys also governed the Caribbean and the Philippines.

Zapoteca

The Zapotecs are the indigenous people of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

lingua franca

a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. Spanish

indigenous language

a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people

Phones

a speech sound in a language

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

a system of writing designed to represent all the sounds used in the different languages of the world

register

a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. Pray, military, formal, friends etc