Recently a close friend of mine, who is a descendant of one of the original cultures of the Americas and native speaker of the Yucatec Mayan language, asked me to help him save his language from evaporating from the pueblo ambiance, as he put it in Spanish. While his plea certainly provided the inspiration necessary for producing such an instructional guide for learning to speak the Yucatec Maya language; living in the Pueblo of Chicxulub over the past five years has provided the perspective necessary for presenting the lifestyle of a culture that is disappearing as rapidly as its speech community. After several authentic language lessons with my ‘compadre’ and language guide Don Tristeza, followed-up by hundreds of hours studying and practicing his language in my own time, I now find myself in a position to respond to this seemingly overwhelming yet undeniable request.

Though the number of speakers of Mayan languages numbers in the millions, and there are supposedly at least 800,000 speakers of the Yucatec Mayan variety, current trends towards greater cultural