The Ch’orti’ Project is an MSU Denver language documentation effort in support of Ch’orti’ (Maya) language revitalization and related scholarship. The project director is Dr. Robin Quizar, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at MSU Denver. The project is also headed by Dr. Rich Sandoval, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at MSU Denver.
Robin worked extensively with the Ch’orti’ (Mayan) language and community in Guatemala throughout the 1970s and 80s, helping to produce a number of language reference and revitalization materials. After retiring from MSU Denver, Robin renewed this research, reconnected with the Ch’orti’ community, and founded the Ch’orti’ Project in 2013 as a collaborative effort with MSU Denver’s Ethnography Lab and its director, Dr. Rebecca Forgash, Professor of Anthropology at MSU Denver. Rich joined the project in 2017. Given his background in a variety of linguistics subfields, Rich was a good fit to help Robin run the project.
The project’s accomplishments over the years have been aimed at supporting Ch’orti’ communities of Guatemala and Honduras and heavily focused on collaboration with community members. One of the other main goals of the project is to give anthropology and linguistics undergraduate students real-world experience as well as the opportunity to develop a variety of practical and technological skills. The project has also involved other collaborators, including scholar/researchers. Because a primary focus of the Ch’orti’ Project is to support the Ch’orti’ community’s own language revitalization efforts, including the reclamation of the Classic Maya writing system, the project has undertaken a number of trips to Ch’orti’ community localities.
Work on this website started in the spring of 2019. It was developed under the direction of Rich and Jill Scott, the Laboratory Coordinator for MSU’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Content development started well before 2019, under the direction of Robin. Since the spring of 2022, Ch’orti’ speaker and linguist, Yaxun B’alam (William Arnaldo Marcos García), has provided content guidance. Current and past student assistants of the project are primarily responsible for the actual work of the website’s development, including content preparation and design. Please see “Acknowledgments” for a list of student contributors to the website and its content.