Yucatec Maya language

Yucatec Maya (Yukatek Maya in the revised orthography of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala), called Màaya t'àan (lit. "Maya speech") by its speakers, is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. Maya is the only one of the approximately 32 languages of the Mayan language family that has the proper name Maya. To native speakers, the proper name is Maya and it is known only as Maya. The qualifier "Yucatec" is a tag linguists use to distinguish it from other Mayan languages (such as K'iche' and Itza' Maya). Thus, the use of term Yucatec Maya to refer to the language is a scientific jargon or nomenclature; its use is equivalent to persons referring to English as Germanic.

Yucatec Maya is incorrectly used as an ascribed ethnic, social, cultural, historical, national, racial, or civilizational term of identity or name. The use of Yucatec Maya as a term of identity is correctly used in the same way that terms such as Indo-European or Romance language speakers are used. The proper names of the Mayan languages, in contrast, tend to be the ethnic or cultural-racial names of identity. The word Mayan is, however, not an ethnic or cultural label or other term of social, political identification; Mayan, as an identity term, is an ascribed identity, not a self-identity.