Tektitek language
language
Tektitek (name in Guatemala) or Teko (name in Mexico), called b'a'aj by native speakers, (also known as Tectiteco, Teco, Kʼontiʼl, Qyool, among others) is a Mayan language classified under the Mamean branch, spoken by the Teko people of Chiapas, Mexico and southern Huehuetenango Department, Guatemala. It is very closely related to the Mam language. A number of Tektitek speakers from Huehuetenango have settled in Mexico. Due to the close proximity of Huehuetenango to the Mexican border the speakers of the language have appropriated aspects of Mexican Spanish into the language. While 4,900 speakers were recorded in 2010 by Ethnologue, Juventino de Jesus Perez Alonzo estimated that there were just 2,000 speakers of the language left at that time. He noted however, that measures are being taken to teach the children in Huehuetenango the Tekitek language. According to the Endangered Languages Project, the language is currently threatened. Little is known about the culture, but there are resources that provide vocabulary as well as other educational tools.
Geographic distribution
Teko is spoken in the municipalities of Amatenango de la Frontera, Frontera Comalapa and Mazapa de Madero in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.
In the Huehuetango Department it is spoken in the municipalities of Tectitán and Cuilco.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tektitek language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.