Latin American Languages

Wall with Rarámuri words against a sunset

Berkeley offers multiple ways to study Latin American langauges, on and off campus. 

Mam

Members of the Mayan community in Oakland, the Laney Latinx Cultural Center, and the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies offered workshops in Mam Language during summer 2023.  More information can be found here. We are planning to offer another series of workshops in Spring 2024. With questions, please email julia.byrd@berkeley.edu.
For the last few years, the Latinx Cultural Center at Laney Community College hosted a series of Mam workshops. They have developed an excellent set of resources for learning Mam, which can be found here. 

Nahuatl

The Berkeley Department of Spanish and Portuguese is offering Nahuatl to Berkeley students for credit during the academic year as a real-time distance-learning course taught by native-language instructors from the University of Utah and IDIEZ (the Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology) in Zacatecas, Mexico. The course focuses on Nahua culture, history, and modern life. More information is available here. This course is organized by the University of Utah and supported by CLACS.

There are two other ways to study Nahuatl, not for credit: 

  1. Laney College offers Nahuatl courses for non-Berkeley students can enroll in Nahuatl courses at Laney College. For more information, with Professor Arturo Davila-Sanchez, Coordinator of the Latinx Cultural center at Laney College. More information is available here, or please contact Prof. Davila-Sanchez at (adavila@peralta.edu).
  2. Salt Lake Community College allows students and non-students to audit Nahuatl courses (shared with UC Berkeley and the University of Utah) by registering for the continuing education section of the course. Seats are limited, participants would have to pay for continuing education enrollment, and no credit is offered. More information is available here (search for "nahuatl").

Portuguese

Portuguese courses are available through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Quechua

CLACS is a partner of the Quechua Alliance

Spanish

Spanish courses are available through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Other Resources