Chüoltiü is an extinct language belonging to the ChâÂÂolan branch of the Mayan family of languages. It was spoken in Belize and Guatemala prior to its extinction in the late eighteenth century. It and its sister Chüortiü language are now deemed likely (or likeliest) descendants of Classic Mayan, the language represented in Mayan hieroglyphic writing.
The inclusion of ChâÂÂoltiâ within the Eastern ChâÂÂolan, ChâÂÂolan, ChâÂÂolanâÂÂTseltalan, Western Mayan, and Core Mayan families is âÂÂthe most widely accepted classificationâ as of 2017.
The common ancestor of all ChâÂÂolan languages, thought to have been in use throughout the southern Maya Lowlands since at least circa 200 BC, is believed to have split into Eastern and Western ChâÂÂolan at about AD 600, with Eastern ChâÂÂolan finally diversifying into ChâÂÂoltiâ and ChâÂÂortiâ possibly around AD 1500. By the time of Spanish contact, ChâÂÂoltiâ was almost certainly spoken in the Manche ChâÂÂol Territory, and possibly also in some neighbouring polities. The later Spanish conquest of Peten would bring about the extinction of the language in the late eighteenth century, making ChâÂÂoltiâ one of only two Mayan languages not extant as of 2017.
The colonial variant of ChâÂÂoltiâ is known only from an ethnolinguistic manuscript by Francisco Morán, a Dominican friar who drafted the text during his to the former Manche ChâÂÂol Territory between 1685 and 1695. Recently, ChâÂÂoltiâ has become of particular interest to the epigraphic study of Mayan hieroglyphs, since it seems certain that most of the glyphic texts are written in an ancestral form of one or more of the ChâÂÂolan languages.