Ep 30: Pedro Mateo Pedro on Mayan Language Research & Revitalization

This month's episode is with Pedro Mateo Pedro from University of Toronto.

Pedro is a native speaker of Q’anjob’al, a Mayan language of Guatemala. His research focuses on the documentation and description of Mayan languages, specifically language acquisition, Mayan languages in contact and dialectal variation. 

Pedro received his PhD in linguistics at the University of Kansas in 2010 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Pedro has taught at universities in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States. 

Additionally, Pedro has worked on the production of educational materials in Mayan languages in coordination with different institutions in Guatemala, such as the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Maya Languages of Guatemala (ALMG in Spanish). In 2019, Pedro received an award as a distinguished professor at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Campus Altiplano.

Things mentioned in this episode

• Mayan language family
• Qʼanjobʼal language 
• Yucatec Maya language
• Chuj language
• Kʼicheʼ language
• Mam language
• Guatemala Field Station