Maya, which is now distinguished as Yucatec Maya, is only one of many languages in the Mayan language family. There are approximately 42 Mayan languages that have been researched by linguists and some 32 are still spoken today. They all derive from a single language, known as proto-Maya, which has yet to be recovered. There are two schools of scholarship that are still out on the decipherment of the Maya "glyphs". Some scholars say that the "glyphs" are all written in a lingua-franca or a heiratic courtly language while some suggest linguistic variation in the glyphs themselves. So far most would agree that the majority of Classic period (c250 c.e. - 900 c.e.) "glyphs" are written in Cholan, a dead language that is closely related to Chol, Lacantun, and Yucatec Maya.