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Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Mesoamerican Indian languages, group of more than 125 languages classified into some 10 language families (including language isolates) that are native to Mesoamerica. The term “Mesoamerica” refers to a culture area originally defined by a number of culture traits shared among the pre-Columbian.
The Mesoamerican language area is a sprachbund containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethnolinguistic traits found in the languages of Mesoamerica, which belong to a number of language ...
Mesoamerican Indian languages - Writing, Glyphs, Scripts: Ancient Mesoamerica had several writing systems, the only true pre-Columbian writing in the New World. Mayan hieroglyphic writing (by 400 bce to 1600 ce) is the best known.
- Where was Mesoamerica? Mesoamerica refers to the diverse civilizations that shared similar cultural characteristics in the geographic areas comprising the modern-day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
- When was Mesoamerica? Art historians and archaeologists divide Mesoamerican history into distinct periods and some of these periods are then further divided into the sub-periods—early, middle, and late.
- What language did people speak? There was no single language that united the peoples of Mesoamerica. Linguists believe that Mesoamericans spoke more than 125 different languages.
- Writing. Mesoamerican writing systems vary by culture. Rebus writing (writing with images) was common among many groups, like the Nahua and Mixtec. Imagine drawing an eye, a heart, and an apple.
Languages recorded in Mesoamerican writing include Classical Maya, Classical Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec, and various other languages, particularly of the Oto-Manguean and Uto-Aztecan families.
Mesoamerican Indian languages - Dialects, Classification, Diversity: Though languages of the Mesoamerican linguistic area share a number of structural similarities, they also have numerous traits that are markedly different from one another.
