Lacandón is a Yucatecan dialect that further divides into mutually intelligible northern and southern regional varieties. Although the northern and southern sub-dialects are mutually intelligible, each Lacandón group considers the other’s dialect as deficient, and at times, unintelligible (Bruce, p.c., 1992). There are approximately 500 Lacandón speakers, 350 of whom speak the northern dialect (McGee, p.c., 2000)

The Lacandón language is far closer than other Yucatec dialects to the original Classic Maya, simply because the Lacandones were not subject to centuries of political, cultural, religious, and linguistic domination by the Colonial Spaniards and the Mexican State. Spanish influence is limited to isolated terms which have been incorporated into an otherwise pure Peninsular Maya system.