The Cultural Repository of Language: Weather Discourse among the Ch’orti’ Maya of Guatemala
Presenter(s)
Affiliation
Topic
Language as a Vehicle of Culture
Type
Papers
Abstract
Weather terms sometimes encode deep cultural conceptions, be they mythic, geographic, or based on observed phenomena. Geography often exists in a reciprocal relationship with weather conceptions, both informing the other over time. In this paper, I investigate the origin of weather-related terminology and discourse more generally in dialogue with both geography and mythology among the Ch’orti’ Maya of Guatemala. Based on my more than twenty-five years working with the Ch’orti’ Maya, I here argue for an elastic and reflexive relationship between climate and human thought based on Ch’orti’ cultural conceptions preserved in language.
First, I will describe how weather nouns in Ch’orti’ Mayan often include cultural entailments, such as the Ch’orti’ Mayan word for “rainbow,” makchan, meaning “blocking-snake,” since they believe a rainbow is a large serpent stretched across the sky. I will also show how Maya weather terms can be conceptually linked to quotidian objects, such as “snow” being referred to as ‘mountain cotton’, something also attested in ancient Maya hieroglyphic script. I also show the close connection between winds and sickness dominated by terminology linked to “winds” (ik’ar). Additionally, I explain how most weather phenomena are directly related to mythological paradigms, such as wind coming from animate caves, rain being caused by the Moon Goddess tipping her liquid-filled jar as the moon wanes through its cycles, or sun and moon dogs being caused by the male Sun and female Moon who are said to be “bathing” in a basin of water. Finally, I will draw linguistic and cultural parallels regarding weather between the ancient Maya and their descendants among the Ch’orti’ to show a considerable degree of continuity over time.
