Гватемалалық қақчикел тілі

Mayan language spoken in Guatemala

The Kaqchikel language (in modern orthography; formerly also spelled Cakchiquel or Cachiquel) is an indigenous Mesoamerican language and a member of the Quichean–Mamean branch of the Mayan languages family. It is spoken by the indigenous Kaqchikel people in central Guatemala. It is closely related to the Kʼicheʼ (Quiché) and Tzʼutujil languages. Kaqchikel is taught in public schools through Guatemala's intercultural bilingual education programs.

Kaqchikel is spoken by the indigenous Maya in Central Guatemala. The Mayan civilization dates back to the Pre classic period (2000 BC to 300 AD). Geographically, the Maya expanded from Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. This changed between 900 AD and when the Spanish arrived. Their settlement moved west and into the highlands of Guatemala. Archaeological evidence shows suggestions of Kaqchikel living in Iximcheʼ, which today is located near Tecpán Guatemala.

In 1523, the Spaniards left Mexico and headed towards Guatemala. This crusade was led by Pedro de Alvarado. His first victory was over the Kʼiche, which led him towards the Kaqchikel capital. The Kaqchikel joined forces with de Alvarado, to take over the Tzʼutujiles. Instead, their hopes to become stronger were defeated when de Alvarado turned against them and destroyed their capital, which was a part of the Spanish mass extermination plans of the indigenous. This plan decreased the number of Kaqchikel speakers, as they were required to then speak Spanish. In the 1920s, William Cameron Townsend devised the first alphabet for Kaqchikel while working as a missionary in Guatemala.

Today, the Mayan language of Kaqchikel is being revitalized and several Mayans are using education as a way to restore their language and culture. In 1986 the Academy of the Mayan Languages of Guatemala (ALMG) standardized an alphabet for the Mayan languages, which started a new movement for linguistic conversation.

Literacy rates in Kaqchikel are low. Literacy campaigns are usually conducted in Spanish, and promote Spanish. In fact, most Mayan people are more literate in Spanish than they are in their native tongue. However, this is changing due to the movement to promote Mayan language literacy. Kaqchikel is being taught in public schools such as Guatemala's intercultural bilingual education programs. United States universities also offer programs that give the opportunity to learn Kaqchikel, such as Tulane University and the University of Kansas.

Kaqchikel is a member of the Mayan language family. Mayan languages fall under the Proto Mayan language family. This family is broken into four branches: Western, Eastern, Yucatecan, and Huastecan. Kaqchikel falls under the Qichean and Quichean Proper. Quichean Proper breaks down into four new languages: Kaqchikel, Tzʼutujil, Kʼicheʼ, and Achi. Tzʼutujil is the closest dialect to Kaqchikel. Mayan languages are spoken throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. In Joseph Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, Kaqchikel is classified as a member of the Penutian stock, in the Mayan branch of the Mexican family within that stock. However, this hypothesis has been largely discounted by modern linguists. Greenberg's hypothesis has received significant amounts of negative criticism from many important linguists ever since it was first published in 1987. In Greenberg's etymological dictionary of Amerind, Kaqchikel words are found in 5 entries. Four of the entries are unremarkable; but the fifth uses two words, a ĉin and iŝ tan, as examples of a protoword *tʼina / tʼana / tʼuna, meaning "son/child/daughter" despite the fact that a ĉin was already used in the dictionary to mean "elder". This is an example of a commonly cited flaw in the work, which is that Greenberg reaches too far in search of evidence. In general, the documentation of Kaqchikel in the Amerind etymological dictionary serves to highlight the problems with the hypothesis more than it helps Greenberg's cause.

In the charts below, each of the Kaqchikel phonemes is represented by the character or set of characters that denote it in the standard orthography developed by the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG) and sanctioned by the Guatemalan government. Where different, the corresponding symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet appears in brackets. The dialect used in this example is that of Xenacoj.

Only a certain number of syllable types occur in Kaqchikel. The most common syllable types are CV (consonant vowel) and CVC (consonant vowel consonant). V (vowel only) or VC (vowel consonant) syllables are not allowed phonetically; a syllable that is conceived of as beginning with a vowel will begin in pronunciation with a glottal stop, although this is not always reflected in standard orthography or in the phonological realization of a word. While two CVC syllables often occur next to each other in the same word, consonant clusters in a single syllable are relatively uncommon. When these do occur, they are normally at the beginnings or ends of words and consist of either two continuants, a sonorant and a stop, or a fricative and a stop, with the stop always to the inside of its partner.

Kaqchikel is a moderately synthetic language with fusional affixes. It has a strong system of affixation, including both suffixes and prefixes. These attach to both nouns and verbs; prefixes are exclusively inflective, whereas suffixes can be inflective or derivational. Inflective prefixes are quite short, often composed of a single sound and never consisting of more than three; suffixes can be longer than this. Because of the synthetic fusional nature of Kaqchikel, it is difficult to discuss the language's morphology and syntax as two separate entities; they are very robustly intertwined.

Kaqchikel has 6 major word classes and several minor classes, referred to collectively as "particles." The major word classes are groups of bases or roots that can take affixes. These classes are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and positionals. Positionals in this language are a group of roots which cannot function as words on their own; in combination with affixes they are used to describe relationships of position and location. In English, these words would fall into other categories, namely adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, both transitive and intransitive. The minor classes or particles are words that do not take affixes; they mostly function in adverbial roles, and include such things as interrogative particles, affirmative/negative words, markers of time and location, conjunctions, prepositions and demonstratives. In addition to these officially recognized classes, there are a few other groups of words which do not fall neatly into any of the above categories. These groups are articles, pronouns, numbers, affectives, and words used for measurement. All of these types of words function differently in Kaqchikel, and so they are considered to belong to different word classes.

Kaqchikel has a word order in which the head of a phrase usually comes before any other element of the phrase. The following sentences show examples of the order of sentences, determiner phrases (DP), noun phrases (NP), prepositional phrases (PP), and quantifier phrases (QP):

Sentences show considerable variability in their word order. The syntactic function of words is determined not only by their position at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence, but also by their definiteness, level of animation and potency, and a logical analysis of what role each word can play in the sentence. (For example, the verb to throw with the nouns child and stone can only have one logical ordering, regardless of the position of the nouns with respect to the verb. For this reason, an inanimate constituent cannot be the subject if the other constituent is animate.). Due to these conditions, Kaqchikel word order is relatively free and various orderings can be seen without there being any confusion or lack of understanding. Possible word orders that can occur in Kaqchikel are verb first orders (VSO, VOS) and subject first orders (SVO, SOV). (V: verb, S: subject, O: object)
Verb first orders (VSO, VOS). When the verb occurs first and only one constituent is definite, then that constituent functions as the subject. If both constituents are definite, then the one closest to the verb (the first constituent) is the subject; if both constituents are indefinite, then the subject is the latter of the two. Subject first orders (SVO, SOV). The subject can come first only if it is animate and the object is not. In this case, the definiteness of the two constituents does not matter; that is to say, the subject can be either definite or indefinite, so long as it is animate and occurs first. The order of the verb and object is unimportant. Other constituents of a sentence, such as dative, comitative, agentive, and adverbial phrases, tend to come first in the sentence. However, they can also come after the nucleus of the sentence, the predicate.

Kaqchikel uses reduplication as an intensifier. For example, the Kaqchikel word for large is ; to say that something is very large, the adjectival form is reduplicated as This form is not a single word but two separate words which, when combined, intensify the meaning of the base word, the same way "very" does in English.