The Classic Maya language is the oldest historically attested member of the Maya language family. It is the language documented in the Pre-Columbian inscriptions of the Classic Era Maya civilization.

Relationships

Classic Maya is split into at least two dialects, Ch'olan and Yucatecan. These dialects eventually evolved into the contemporary up into the Chol language and the Yucatec Maya language. Modern Ch'ol and Yucatec speakers can understand many words in Classic Maya.

Writing System

Classic Maya is written in the descendant of an Olmec script, and is one of only a handful of original writing systems. The Classic Maya script is similar to Ancient Egyptian in the way it functions. The script is basically syllabic, but a large number of logographs exist, and many verb and noun roots are given by logographs. Grammatical affixes are usually written syllabically.

Classification

Like the other Maya languages, Classic Maya is VSO and ergative in its basic typology. It uses both prefixes and suffixes to show grammatical function.