Most people think of Mexico as a Spanish-speaking country, and they’re right—Spanish is the primary and majority language, used by people all throughout the country, regardless of ethnic group. But in fact, Mexico is a remarkably linguistically diverse country, with various indigenous ethnic groups still speaking their ancestral languages, sometimes in high numbers. Among the many Amerindian languages spoken in Mexico is Mayo, completely unrelated to Mayan languages.
According to Mexico’s 2020 census, the country houses roughly 39,000 native speakers of Mayo. Mexico’s General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples recognizes Mayo alongside 62 other indigenous languages as national languages, but that doesn’t mean the language isn’t endangered—in fact, UNESCO rates it as “critically endangered.” Mayo speakers are endeavoring to preserve their language for future generations, and we at TranslationServices.com would also like to help in the way we can: through translation services. Languages like Mayo are rarely served by translation agencies, but we’re proud to work with Mayo translators to bring you high-quality Mayo translation services.
How about seeing a free quote for our Mayo translation services by requesting one today?
Let’s discover what kind of a language Mayo is.
Mayo’s 39,000 or so speakers live in Mexico, specifically the northwestern state of Sonora and the neighboring state of Sinaloa. Part of the Uto–Aztecan language family from which the famous Nahuatl also hails, Mayo is one of two languages on the Cahitá branch, the other being Yaqui. Mayo and Yaqui are partially mutually intelligible, especially given that their division is more political than linguistic. Both are written in the Latin alphabet and feature a complicated morphological system with extensive inflection, as is common among Amerindian languages.
Mayo’s default word order is subject-object-verb (which is the most common word order among the world’s languages), but the language is rather flexible, with subject-verb-object (like English or Spanish) and object-subject-verb also possible in some circumstances. The language features numerous noun cases that indicate a noun’s grammatical role in a sentence, and Mayo verbs accept various suffixes to indicate tense and aspect. Mayo adjectives are not adjectives as we know them in English—rather, they usually function as verbs, accepting tense markers just like verbs. Mayo also uses verbal reduplication (the repetition of syllables in a word) to indicate the habitual aspect.
What kind of documents can we translate to and from Mayo?
If you’re worried that the massive differences between Mayo and English will complicate the translation job, don’t worry. Our Mayo translators are native speakers of this beautiful language and are highly skilled in translating the subtleties and nuances between Mayo and English. For translation services from Mayo, we can help you with historical documents, traditional stories, or contemporary writings—whatever you’d like to share with the broader world! For translation services into Mayo, we can work with surveys and questionnaires, educational materials, books, poems, websites, apps, games, and more to help you connect with Mayo speakers. In particular, translation into educational and entertainment content can do wonders for an endangered language, as it helps youth acquire the language and gives speakers more opportunities to use it. Our Mayo translators are eager to help, no matter what you need.
If you want to get started with your Mayo translation project, simply message us today.