Kaqchikel from the Ground Up

A practical grammar of Kaqchikel Maya, with deep explanations

Kaqchikel

Kaqchikel is spoken by roughly half a million people in the central highlands of Guatemala, between Guatemala City and Lake Atitlán. It belongs to the K'ichean branch of the Mayan family, alongside K'iche', Tz'utujil, Poqomchi' and Q'eqchi'. It is a language with a written history going back to the sixteenth century (the Memorial de Sololá, also known as the Annals of the Kaqchikels), a rich oral literature of tales and ceremonial discourse, and a lively modern revitalization movement led by Kaqchikel linguists, teachers and writers.

How the book was made

The explanations, example sentences, dialogues and vocabulary lists in this book were written fresh for it. The linguistic facts they rest on were checked against two published references that the author keeps at hand and recommends:

• R. McKenna Brown, Judith M. Maxwell and Walter E. Little, ¿La ütz awäch? Introduction to Kaqchikel Maya Language (University of Texas Press, 2006), especially Judith Maxwell's grammar summary and Walter Little's glossary.
• Manuel de Jesús Salazar Tetzagüic, Rupach'uxik kina'oj qati't qamama' / Características de la literatura maya kaqchikel (Cholsamaj, 1995), a study of Kaqchikel literature with a bilingual anthology of tales, poems and ceremonial speeches. A few short lines from that anthology are quoted, with attribution, where a real text is analyzed word by word.

The facts were also verified against a third, newer source: Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela' / Kaqchikel Maya Life, the unpublished sequel to ¿La ütz awäch? by Walter E. Little, Judith M. Maxwell, Baldomero Cuma Chávez and Ambrosia Cuma Chávez, whose draft reference grammar and dialogues are used here with the authors' permission.

This book is an independent study companion. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a substitute for those works; learners who can should read them too.

Conventions

• Kaqchikel is written in the standard alphabet of the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG): ' a ä b' ch ch' e ë i ï j k k' l m n o ö p q q' r s t t' tz tz' u ü w x y. The apostrophe after a consonant marks a glottalized consonant; on its own it is the glottal stop. Vowels with a diaeresis (ä ë ï ö ü) are the lax ("relaxed") vowels. See Chapter 1.
• The two pronoun sets are called Set A (ergative: marks the subject of a transitive verb and the possessor of a noun) and Set B (absolutive: marks the subject of an intransitive verb, the object of a transitive verb, and the subject of a noun or adjective used as a predicate). Glosses use 1sA, 2sA, 3sA, 1pA, 2pA, 3pA and 1sB ... 3pB.
• The verb prefixes are called incompletive (present/habitual; n- or y-), completive (past/completed; x-), potential (future/possible; xt- or xk-) and imperative (commands and wishes; t- or k-).
• Grammatical terms (predicate, subject, ergative, aspect, relational noun, irrealis) are defined where they first do real work, and all of them are collected in Appendix C: Glossary of grammatical terms. Three of them are hard enough to be re-explained wherever they matter: the Set A / Set B split, the difference between aspect and tense, and the relational noun.
• In morpheme breakdowns, hyphens separate the pieces and a gloss line names each piece: x-Ø-u-löq' = COMPL-3sB-3sA-buy, "she bought it". Ø marks the silent third person singular Set B.
• Verb roots are cited with a leading hyphen (-b'e "go", -tz'ët "see") because they never occur bare; nouns that must be possessed are cited with their citation suffix or in a possessed form (te'ej / nute' "my mother").
• English glosses use "y'all" for the second person plural, because Kaqchikel always distinguishes "you (one person)" from "you (several people)".
• The recurring characters in the examples are an invented family from Tecpán (Iximche'): ma Kawoq, a farmer; te Ixk'at, his wife, a weaver; their son a Tz'ikin, a teacher in Comalapa (Chiq'a'l); their daughter xta Ixchel, who sells vegetables in the market; Tz'ikin's friend a Tojil, a student from Sololá (Tz'olöj Ya'); and Ana, a learner from the United States.

A note on variation

Kaqchikel is spoken in some forty-four towns, and each has its own flavor. The number of vowels, the shape of a few prefixes, the choice between older and newer words, all vary. This book follows the written standard promoted by the ALMG and its Kaqchikel branch, Kaqchikel Cholchi', which leans toward the central towns (Tecpán, Comalapa, Patzún, Chimaltenango). Where a variant is common enough that you will hear it, it is mentioned. When a speaker tells you "we say it differently here", they are right; learn their form too.

Contents

Part I: Foundations 1. Sounds and Spelling 2. How a Kaqchikel Sentence Works 3. Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk 4. Pronouns and "Being" 5. Possession 6. Existence, Location, and Having 7. Pointing Words: this, that, the, and "it was X that" 8. Nouns: Plurals, People Words, and Word-Building 9. Describing Things and People 10. Numbers, Counting, and Time

Part II: The Verb 11. Intransitive Verbs in the Incompletive 12. Transitive Verbs in the Incompletive 13. Talking About the Past and the Future 14. Commands, Requests, and Wishes 15. Directionals and Verbs of Motion 16. States, Results, and Ongoing Actions 17. Wanting, Liking, Needing, Being Able 18. Voice: Passive, Antipassive, and Focus 19. Positionals 20. Negation, Doubt, and "If only" 21. Asking Questions 22. Relational Nouns in Depth 23. Connecting Ideas and Keeping a Conversation Going

Part III: Living in the Language 24. Market, Food, and Home 25. People, Work, Body, and Feelings 26. Reading Real Kaqchikel

Part IV: Kaqchikel in Life 27. Ri Cholq'ij: the Sacred Calendar and Ceremony 28. Ri awän: the Milpa, from Seed to Table 29. B'anob'äl: Crafts and the Work of Hands 30. Samaj: Work, Home, and Town 31. Yab'il chuqa' aq'om: Health and Healing 32. Ri qach'ab'äl: Language, Community, and Nation

Part IV is the advanced tier. It assumes you have finished Parts I-III: each chapter takes one domain of Kaqchikel life, teaches the vocabulary and the handful of new grammar points that live there, and recycles everything else hard. The chapters follow the cultural ground covered by Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', the advanced course by the authors of this book's primary source, and quote it occasionally with attribution; the scenes and sentences are this book's own.

Appendices A. Master paradigm tables B. Core vocabulary C. Glossary of grammatical terms D. Dialect cheat sheet E. Sources and further reading

Chapter 1: Sounds and Spelling

Starting point

Here is a short exchange you will meet again in Chapter 3: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk. For now, do not worry about the grammar. Read it aloud several times, following the pronunciation notes, and listen for the sounds described in this chapter.

ma Kawoq: Xseqër k'a.
Good morning.

a Tojil: Xseqër, matyöx.
Good morning, thank you.

ma Kawoq: ¿La ütz awäch?
How are you? (literally: is your face good?)

a Tojil: Ütz, matyöx. ¿La ütz awäch rat?
Fine, thanks. And how are you?

ma Kawoq: Ütz, matyöx. ¿Aj akuchi' rat?
Fine, thanks. Where are you from?

a Tojil: Rin in aj Tz'olöj Ya'.
I am from Sololá.

Notes for reading aloud:

• Xseqër: the x is English "sh"; the q is a k-like sound made further back in the throat; ë is the vowel of English "bet". Stress the last syllable: sh-se-QËR.
• k'a: a k followed by a tiny "pop" made by closing and releasing the throat at the same moment. Say "ka" while holding your breath for an instant.
• ütz: the ü is the vowel of English "put"; tz is the "ts" of "cats".
• awäch: w is an ordinary English w here; ä is the vowel of English "cup"; ch as in "church".
• akuchi': the final apostrophe is a glottal stop, the catch in the middle of "uh-oh". Kaqchikel words very often end in one.
• Tz'olöj Ya': tz' is "ts" with the throat pop; ö is the vowel of "caught"; j is an English h; ya' ends in a glottal stop.

How it works

An alphabet built to fit the language

Kaqchikel has thirty-four distinctive sounds, which linguists call phonemes. A phoneme is a sound that can change the meaning of a word: English "pat" and "bat" differ by one phoneme. The official Kaqchikel alphabet writes these sounds with thirty-two letters and letter-pairs (graphemes), one of which, the tenth vowel ë, was added after the original list was agreed. The guiding principle is "one sound, one letter". With a handful of exceptions explained below, a word is spelled exactly as it is pronounced, and once you know the letters you can read any word.

The full inventory, in dictionary order:

'  a  ä  b'  ch  ch'  e  ë  i  ï  j  k  k'  l  m  n  o  ö  p  q  q'  r  s  t  t'  tz  tz'  u  ü  w  x  y

Two things stand out immediately. First, the apostrophe is a real letter. After a consonant it marks a glottalized consonant (b', ch', k', q', t', tz'); after a vowel it is the glottal stop. Second, there are ten vowels in five pairs, a "tense" one written plain and a "lax" one written with two dots (diaeresis): a/ä, e/ë, i/ï, o/ö, u/ü. Both points are the heart of Kaqchikel pronunciation and get their own sections below.

Letters that look familiar but behave differently from English: j is always h (never the English j of "jam"), x is always "sh" (never "ks"), tz is one sound, and w and y change their quality at the end of a word. There is no c, d, f, g, h, v, z, or ñ; if you meet these letters in a Kaqchikel text they are in a Spanish loanword or a proper name spelled in Spanish.

Consonants: the plain set

Most plain consonants are close to English and need only a note.

The stops p, t, k, q before a pause. At the end of a word, and before another consonant, the plain stops are released with a puff of air: pop "mat" ends in a clearly audible p, tinamit "town" ends in an audible t, säq "white" ends in a breathy q. Do not swallow them as an English speaker might at the end of "stop".

w and y at the end of a word. Between vowels or at the start of a word these are the w of "wine" and the y of "yes". At the end of a word they devoice: final w comes out like the wh of "which" in accents that distinguish "which" from "witch", or with light friction, and final y comes out like the German "ich" sound, a hissing y with no voice. Listen for this in tew "cold", kow "hard", ulew "earth", and in k'iy "many", juyu' "hill", ne'y "baby". Do not add a vowel after them.

Consonants: the glottalized set

Six consonants are written with an apostrophe: b', ch', k', q', t', tz'. In five of them the apostrophe means that the throat closes at the same moment as the mouth, and both closures are released together. This produces a sharp, slightly popping quality that English does not use as a distinctive feature. The sixth, b', is different: it is an implosive, made by lowering the larynx while the lips are closed, so that when they open the air moves slightly inward. To an English ear it sounds like a b that is held a little longer and pronounced with more tension. Do not exaggerate the inward pull: for many speakers the ingressive airflow is minimal, and you will occasionally even hear a lightly voiced English-style b. The tension and timing matter more than any audible sucking.

One glottalized pair is recorded on both sides, and it is the easiest place to start: choy "lake" against ch'oy "mouse". Play them back to back several times before you try either.

Three practical tips:

1. Start from the plain consonant and add the throat closure; do not try to "push" harder with the lungs. Glottalized consonants are about timing, not force.
2. The vowel after a glottalized consonant often starts with a tiny creak. That is normal and is a good sign you have it.
3. In careful speech the contrast between plain and glottalized is never neutralized. ik "chile" and ik' "moon, month" are different words; so are käq "red" and k'äq "flea".

k, q, k', q': the four back consonants

English has one "k"; Kaqchikel has four sounds in this region, and every one of them distinguishes words. The two dimensions are place (velar, at the soft palate, for k/k'; post-velar, further back toward the uvula, for q/q') and glottalization (plain vs. throat-closed).

                 plain     glottalized
velar (front)    k         k'
post-velar       q         q'

To find q, say "caw" and notice where the back of your tongue touches; now say "key" and notice it touches further forward. Kaqchikel q is made further back than even the k of "caw", with the tongue body against the very back of the soft palate. The vowel after it tends to sound a little lower and darker, which is a useful cue: a/ä after q sounds "deeper" than after k.

Practice these contrasts slowly, then at normal speed. Start with the pairs marked heard: both of their words carry a native-speaker recording in the app, so you can play them back to back before you try to say them. Listening to a contrast before producing it is not optional politeness to your ear; it is the part of the work that actually changes what you can hear.

The recordings do not cover every pair, and a book cannot make a sound. Where there is no recording, use the pair you can hear as your model for the one you cannot: qulaj teaches you where q is made, and kaj puts a plain k in the same frame, so you can move between them yourself and check by recording your own voice.

Vowels: tense and lax

Kaqchikel has five vowel qualities, each in two versions. The plain, "tense" vowels a, e, i, o, u are close to Spanish vowels: pure, with no glide at the end.

The "lax" vowels, written with two dots, are shorter and made with the tongue a little more central and relaxed. English has good models for all five:

(On tinamit: the source grammars cite the bare noun with a lax final vowel, tinamït, though running text usually spells it tinamit; the word belongs to a class of nouns whose final lax vowel tenses when the noun is possessed, so "my town" is nutinamit with a plain i. Treat the final syllable of the bare word as lax in speech.)

The contrast matters. chaj is "ashes, gray"; chäj is "pine, ocote". sak is "dice" (and, in some towns, "locust"); säq (with a different final consonant too) is "white". Four vowel pairs are recorded in the app on both sides, and they are the ones to train first:

The big rule: where lax vowels live

Now the part of the vowel system that drives a good deal of later grammar. A lax vowel can occur only in the last syllable of a word. As soon as a suffix is added, so that the syllable is no longer final, the vowel tenses. In other words, laxness is a property of word-final syllables, not of the root itself.

Here is one pair worked through in full, with the morpheme boundary marked:

winäq          winaq-i'
person         person-PL
"person"       "people"

And here is the same rule running through a range of words:

So when you meet a word with a lax vowel in its last syllable, expect the vowel to change to its tense partner whenever something is attached to the end. Conversely, a tense vowel in a final syllable stays tense: ya' "water" keeps its a in ruya' "its water" (nothing changes because there is no lax vowel to tense). There is one more regularity worth learning now: a vowel that stands directly before a glottal stop is always tense. That is why ya', tz'i' and juyu' have plain vowels, and why the few verb roots that end in a glottal stop, like -to' "help" and -tzu' "look at, watch", have tense vowels where other roots have lax ones. This rule is the reason transitive verb roots like -b'än, -löq', -tz'ët have lax vowels but their imperatives tab'ana', taloq'o', tatz'eta' have tense ones, and why the passive of a root transitive shows a tense vowel (Chapter 18: Voice). Learn it now and much of the later morphology will look regular instead of arbitrary.

One more consequence: lax vowels are never long, and the language has no length contrast in vowels. If you hear a vowel stretched out, it is intonation (greetings, see below), not a different word.

The glottal stop

The glottal stop, written ' after a vowel, is the catch in the middle of English "uh-oh". In Kaqchikel it is a full consonant. It can end a word (ya' "water", tz'i' "dog", chwa'q "tomorrow" where it sits before another consonant), and it can stand between vowels (ka'i' "two", wo'o' "five", ne'y "baby", ko'öl "small"). Make it crisply: stop the air completely at the throat, then release. At the very end of an utterance it may be released with a little puff of breath.

Why initial glottal stops are not written. Every Kaqchikel word that seems to begin with a vowel actually begins with a glottal stop: ixim "corn", ulew "earth", aq "pig", oj "avocado" are pronounced with a catch before the vowel. Since this is automatic and never contrasts with anything, the practical alphabet leaves it off at the start of a word. You will hear it reappear when a prefix is added: ye'el "they leave" is ye- plus -el, and the apostrophe now shows the glottal stop that was always there at the start of -el; compare yatel "you leave", where the prefix yat- ends in a consonant and no stop is needed. Similarly e'- is the form of the 3rd person plural prefix before a vowel-initial stem (Chapter 11: Intransitive Verbs in the Incompletive). The convention is: write the glottal stop whenever it is inside a word or at its end; never at the start.

Syllables and consonant clusters

Kaqchikel roots are overwhelmingly of the shape consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC): jay "house", säq "white", -b'e "go" (CV), -wär "sleep", tz'i' "dog" (the final consonant is a glottal stop). Longer words are strings of such syllables: ti.na.mit, sa.ma.jel "worker", k'a.yi.b'äl "market". Note that a letter-pair like tz' or ch' is a single consonant and a single letter for syllable purposes.

Clusters of two or three consonants at the start of a word arise when grammatical prefixes attach to a stem: xb'e "she went" is x- plus -b'e; nkib'än "they do it" is n-ki-b'än; xtz'ët (after the 3rd person zero) "it was seen". Clusters beginning with x- are pronounced as written, without inserting a vowel. After the other one-consonant prefixes (the n- of the incompletive, and the xt- and t- you will meet in Chapter 13: Talking About the Past and the Future and Chapter 14: Commands, Requests, and Wishes), most speakers break up the cluster with a brief helping i, called an epenthetic vowel: niwär "he sleeps" is written with that i because the cluster nw- is awkward, and "he goes" is heard, and often written, as nib'e alongside nb'e. In ordinary speech many speakers also insert a t or d after n- before a short verb, so nel "he leaves" is heard as ntel or ndel; the standard spelling is nel, and the source dictionary lists the other two only as spoken variants.

Stress

Stress falls on the last syllable of a word: tinaMIT, tijoNEL "teacher", k'ayiB'ÄL "market", samaJEL "worker", nutz'I' "my dog". This is so regular that stress is never written. Because suffixes move the end of the word, stress moves with them: ixÖQ "woman" but ixoQI' "women".

The one common exception is a pair of vocatives (the forms used to call or address someone): táta "sir, father" and nána "ma'am, mother" carry stress on the first syllable. You will hear them constantly in polite speech, especially in markets and at doorways.

In a phrase, the heaviest stress lands on the last word: ri tijonel "the teacher" has its main beat on -NEL; xb'e pa tinamit "she went to town" peaks on -MIT.

Intonation: statements, questions, greetings

Statements end with a fall, as in English: Xb'e pa tinamit. "She went to town." Questions that begin with a question word (achike "what, who", akuchi' "where", jampe "how much, when") also fall at the end, again as in English: ¿Akuchi' xb'e wi? "Where did she go?"

Yes/no questions, with or without the question particle la, rise at the end, or rise and then drop sharply: ¿La ütz awäch? "Are you well?" If la is omitted, the rising tune is the only thing marking the sentence as a question, so it must be clear.

Greetings have a special melody, and getting it right is one of the quickest ways to sound natural. In the opening greeting, the last syllable is stretched to two beats; the first beat is high, the second low and level (not falling). Think of Xseqër as "Xse-QË-ër" with the pitch stepping down between the two halves of the last syllable. The same holds for Xqa q'ij "good afternoon" and Xoq'a' "good evening". The reply often ends with the particle k'a, which carries a sharp rise-and-fall all by itself while the words before it stay level: Xseqër k'a. When matyöx "thanks" closes the reply instead, its last syllable again splits into two beats with a high-low contour: "matyö-öx". Leave-taking phrases tend to end on a high-fall, especially when the last word is k'a: Ke ri' k'a. "That's it, then; bye."

Apart from these stylized greeting tunes, Kaqchikel intonation will feel familiar: falling for statements and question-word questions, rising for yes/no questions.

Reading the old spelling

You do not need the colonial orthography to use this book, but it is worth seeing once, because it shows you what the modern alphabet is for. Here is one line from the Annals of the Kaqchikels (the Memorial de Solola), the sixteenth-century chronicle kept by the Xajila lineage, in Daniel Brinton's 1885 edition, with each colonial letter mapped onto its modern equivalent:

Ha k'a ka tata Francisco rahpop achi tz'ian rucah al.     (as written, c. 1600)
Ja k'a qa tata Francisko rajpop achi tz'ian rukaj al.     (same letters, modern values)
"Our father Francisco, the counselor Tzian, was the fourth son."

The mapping is mostly mechanical: h was doing the work of modern j, c stood for both k and q, and v for w. What the old spelling cannot tell you is the one thing Chapter 1 has spent the most effort on. It does not write lax vowels. Four centuries of Kaqchikel documents, and none of them records whether that a in ka tata was tense or lax, because the Latin alphabet the scribes inherited had no way to ask the question. That is precisely the gap the ALMG alphabet was built to close, and it is why converted colonial text is good evidence about grammar and no evidence at all about vowel quality.

When you see older spellings (c, qu, 3, 4, k with a cedilla) in colonial documents or in older dictionaries, they are the Parra system or its descendants, not errors.

Dialects: one language, many accents

Kaqchikel is spoken in over forty municipalities in the departments of Guatemala, Sacatepéquez, Chimaltenango, Sololá and Suchitepéquez, and linguists group these into about ten dialect areas. This book follows the speech of the central highlands around Tecpán and Comalapa, which also anchors the written standard, and its example family lives in Tecpán.

Most of the variation is in the vowels, and one point of it is worth having now, because it affects the very first vowel you will practise:

• ä is the one lax vowel every town keeps, but each gives it its own color. In Comalapa it sounds like the e of "bet"; in San Antonio Aguas Calientes it is the "cup" vowel taught above; in Tecpán it is made high and far back in the mouth with the lips unrounded, a vowel English does not have; and in Santa María de Jesús it drifts, sometimes almost merging with plain a. Think of the whole central area of the vowel space as belonging to ä; the "cup" value is a safe default that is understood everywhere.

The other four lax vowels are not equally robust: in descending order of survival they run ä, ü, ï, ö, and finally ë, which is fully distinct only in San José Poaquil. Beyond the vowels, the commonest things you will hear differ from this book are the final m of possessed nouns (often n or ng), the quality of w, and a handful of everyday words. Appendix D has the full sheet; consult it when you have a speaker to compare yourself against, and do not try to learn it now. Speakers of different towns understand one another, and the standard spelling gives you a neutral written form that everyone recognizes.

A first text to read aloud

You do not yet have the grammar to build this text, and you are not expected to; it is here for your mouth and ears. Read it aloud line by line, slowly, checking every glottalized consonant, lax vowel and final devoiced w, y, l, r. The translation lets you follow the meaning. Every word in it is in this chapter's vocabulary or in the dialogue above, except a few small grammatical words you will meet in Chapter 2: How a Kaqchikel Sentence Works.

Rin Tojil nub'i'. In aj Tz'olöj Ya'.
My name is Tojil. I am from Sololá.

Wakami in k'o pa Iximche'. Nim ri tinamit.
Today I am in Tecpán. The town is big.

K'o jun k'ayb'äl; e k'o k'iy winaqi'.
There is a market; there are many people.

Ri ixoqi' nkik'ayij po't, ixim chuqa' ik.
The women sell blouses, corn and chile.

Rin ninlöq' jun po't. Jeb'ël ri po't: käq chuqa' säq.
I buy a blouse. The blouse is beautiful: red and white.

Ri winaqi' yetze'en. Rin yitze'en chuqa'.
The people laugh. I laugh too.

Xqa q'ij. Yib'e pa jay. K'o jun nutz'i'.
The afternoon has come. I go home. I have a dog.

Ko'öl ri nutz'i'. Ütz ri q'ij wakami.
My dog is small. The day is good today.

Patterns at a glance

Consonants

Vowels

Rules to remember

Vocabulary

These twenty words are the chapter's deck: the high-frequency items to learn first, and the ones the flashcards and Kojtzijon will drill. Every one of them recurs in the next few chapters.

Reference: the words used as sound examples

The rest of this chapter's words were chosen for their consonants and vowels, not for how often you will need them, so they are here to look up rather than to memorize. Hover any of them for a gloss, and play the recording where there is one. If one of them turns out to matter to you (wuj and ulew usually do), move it into your own flashcards.

Usage and dialect notes

• Spanish habits to unlearn. If you know Spanish, resist reading j as the Spanish jota (a harsh velar fricative); it is a gentle h. Resist reading x as "ks" or as the Spanish x of México. Resist softening k before e and i: Kaqchikel kej "horse" has the same k as kow "hard".
• English habits to unlearn. Do not aspirate p, t, k at the start of a word (no puff of air, as in "spin, stop, skip"). Do not reduce unstressed vowels to "uh": every vowel keeps its quality, and the only "uh"-like vowel is ä, which has its own letter. Do not add an off-glide to e and o. And do not move the stress forward: English likes it early ("TEACHer"), Kaqchikel puts it last (tijoNEL), and only táta and nána break the rule.
• The two dots are not decoration. chaj and chäj, käq and k'äq, sak and säq are different words. Read the diaeresis every time, and write it: dropping it is the same class of error as dropping a letter.
• The apostrophe is not optional either. Writing ya for ya' or tzi for tz'i' produces different, often nonexistent words. In texting and handwriting people sometimes drop it; you should not. At the end of a word, make the glottal stop by stopping the air completely at the throat: English has nothing after the vowel of "ya", so learners let ya', tz'i' and juyu' trail off.
• Glottalized consonants are timed, not loud. k' and q' are not "k with emphasis". The throat and the mouth release together; if you push harder with the lungs you will get a loud k, not a k'. Conversely, the glottal stop at the start of a vowel-initial word (ixim, ulew) is real but automatic: do not write it and do not exaggerate it.
• Hearing q vs k. If you cannot yet hear the difference, watch the following vowel: after q and q', a and ä sound darker and lower. Many learners hear the vowel difference before the consonant difference, and that is fine.
• Ask yes/no questions with a rise. Without la or a clear rising tune, Ütz awäch sounds like a statement.
• Capitalization follows English practice for proper names (Iximche', Tz'olöj Ya', Ixchel), but the polite titles that precede names (a, xta, ma, te, ya) are written lowercase: ma Kawoq, xta Ixchel. You will meet them in Chapter 3.
• Spelling variation in older or informal texts: q written as k or c, k' as k with an apostrophe or "c'", the glottal stop as a right single quote or a saltillo. When in doubt, convert to the ALMG letters before looking a word up.

Looking back and ahead

You now have the sound system and the spelling rules, and you have already met a whole greeting exchange. Chapter 2: How a Kaqchikel Sentence Works steps back to show the architecture of a sentence before any paradigms are learned, and Chapter 3: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk returns to the dialogue above and builds your first real conversations. Keep coming back to the lax-vowel rule and to the four back consonants; they will pay off in Chapter 5: Possession and in every verb chapter from Chapter 11 onward.

Chapter 2: How a Kaqchikel Sentence Works

Starting point

A short scene. Ana, visiting from the States, is at the market in Tecpán with xta Ixchel, who sells vegetables there. Read the Kaqchikel, read the translation, and then look at the notes. Do not try to produce these sentences yet; just notice their shape.

Ixchel: Xseqër k'a, Ana. ¿La ütz awäch?
Good morning, Ana. How are you?

Ana: Ütz, matyöx. Xseqër, xta Ixchel. ¿Akuchi' k'o wi ri ate'?
Fine, thanks. Good morning, Ixchel. Where is your mother?

Ixchel: Xb'e pa tinamit. Nuk'ayij ri po't.
She went to town. She sells the blouses.

Ana: ¿Achike nab'än rat wawe'?
What do you do here?

Ixchel: Rin ninkanoj jun ch'akät. E k'o k'iy winaqi' wakami.
I am looking for a chair. There are a lot of people today.

Ana: Ja'. Jeb'ël ri k'ayb'äl.
Yes. The market is beautiful.

Five things to notice:

1. Xb'e pa tinamit. "She went to town" is three words, and the first one, xb'e, is a complete sentence by itself: it contains "went" and "she". No separate pronoun is needed.
2. Nuk'ayij ri po't. The verb nuk'ayij "she sells it" comes first, then the object ri po't "the blouse(s)". The subject "she" is inside the verb.
3. Rin ninkanoj jun ch'akät. Here a pronoun rin "I" does appear, in front of the verb, because Ana has just asked what Ixchel does, and Ixchel is contrasting herself. The verb ninkanoj already says "I look for it"; rin adds emphasis.
4. Jeb'ël ri k'ayb'äl. "The market is beautiful" has no word for "is". The adjective jeb'ël "beautiful" is the predicate and comes first; ri k'ayb'äl "the market" follows.
5. E k'o k'iy winaqi'. "There are many people" is built on k'o "there is / there are", a predicate word that again comes first; the little word e in front of it marks the plural of an animate subject (Chapter 6: Existence, Location, and Having).

How it works

Predicate first

In English the normal order is subject, then verb, then object: "Ixchel sells blouses." In Kaqchikel the normal order is the predicate first. The predicate is the part of the sentence that says something: a verb ("sells"), or a noun ("is a teacher"), or an adjective ("is beautiful"), or an existential word ("there is"). The things being talked about (subject, object) come after it, unless the speaker pulls one of them to the front for emphasis.

Nuk'ayij   ri po't    ri ixöq.
sells-it   the blouse the woman
"The woman sells the blouse."

Tijonel    ri achin.
teacher    the man
"The man is a teacher."

Jeb'ël     ri k'ayb'äl.
beautiful  the market
"The market is beautiful."

K'o        jun ch'akät.
there-is   a chair
"There is a chair."

This single fact explains why Kaqchikel sentences feel "backwards" at first and why you should train yourself to find the predicate first when reading. Once you locate the verb or predicate word, everything else falls into place.

No verb "to be"

English needs "am, is, are" to turn a noun or adjective into a statement. Kaqchikel does not. A noun or adjective can be a predicate directly; it takes a subject marker (below) and it is a sentence.

There is no hidden "is" that got dropped. The grammar simply never had one. When you want to say "is located" or "there is", you use k'o, which is a predicate word in its own right (Chapter 6: Existence, Location, and Having); when you want to say "is a teacher" or "is big", you use the noun or adjective itself. Chapter 4: Pronouns and "Being" gives you the full set of forms.

Every predicate carries its subject

In Xb'e pa tinamit, the subject "she" is not missing; it is inside xb'e. Every predicate in Kaqchikel carries a marker for its subject, and transitive verbs also carry a marker for their object. On verbs these markers are prefixes; with nouns and adjectives they are short separate words placed in front (in tijonel, at aj Iximche'). Because of this, a free-standing pronoun or noun phrase is always optional, added for clarity or emphasis. The verb word alone is a grammatical sentence.

y-i-wär            x-at-el            n-Ø-qa-tz'ët          x-Ø-ki-b'än
INCOMPL-1sB-sleep  COMPL-2sB-leave    INCOMPL-3sB-1pA-see   COMPL-3sB-3pA-do
"I sleep"          "you left"         "we see it"           "they did it"

Written as words: yiwär, xatel, nqatz'ët, xkib'än.

Two sets of person markers: Set A and Set B

Here is the most important structural fact in the language. Kaqchikel has two sets of person markers, and they are distributed not by "subject vs. object" as in English but by a different principle.

• Set B (called absolutive by linguists) marks (a) the subject of an intransitive verb, a verb with no object, such as "sleep", "go", "arrive"; (b) the object of a transitive verb; and (c) the subject of a non-verbal predicate (noun, adjective, k'o).
• Set A (called ergative) marks (a) the subject of a transitive verb, a verb that has an object, such as "see", "buy", "do"; and (b) the possessor of a noun ("my", "your", "his").

An analogy may help. English says "I sleep" and "I see it": the subject "I" looks the same whether or not there is an object. Kaqchikel instead groups "I" of "I sleep" together with "me" of "you see me", and puts the "I" of "I see it" in a different set, together with the "my" of "my house". Think of Set B as marking the participant something happens to or is true of (the sleeper, the seen thing, the one who is a teacher) and Set A as marking the one who acts on something or owns something. This pattern is called ergativity, and every Mayan language has it.

Here is one transitive verb worked through completely, so that you can see both sets in one word:

x-Ø-u-löq'
COMPL-3sB-3sA-buy
"she bought it"

Aspect x- (completive), then the Set B object (3rd singular, zero), then the Set A subject u- (the form of ru- after an aspect prefix), then the stem -löq'.

Before you read any table, work out four forms yourself. Here are four words, all of which you have already seen: yiwär "I sleep", xatel "you left", yojsamäj "we work", yewär "they sleep". Each is an aspect prefix plus a Set B marker plus a stem. Cover the answer and fill in the middle column.

The answers are i-, a-, Ø, oj-, e-: exactly what is left when you strip the aspect prefix off the front and the stem off the back. That is the whole method, and the rest of this chapter is you doing it to longer words.

The complete grids for both sets are in Patterns at a glance at the end of this chapter, and again in Appendix A. Do not learn them now. Chapter 4 teaches Set B properly and Chapter 5 teaches Set A; what you need here is only the shape of the machine.

Three observations to store away. First, the third person singular of Set B is zero: nothing at all is written or said. "He sleeps" is niwär (aspect prefix plus stem), and "she sees it" is nutz'ët (aspect prefix n-, then Set A u-, then stem); the 3rd person object is invisible. This is why, as the next section shows, the incompletive prefix has two shapes. Second, the Set A forms on verbs are the same as the possessive prefixes on nouns, with two small adjustments: the 1st person singular is nu-/w- on nouns (nutz'i' "my dog", wochoch "my house") but in-/inw- on verbs (nintz'ët "I see it", ninwajo' "I want it"); and the 3rd person singular ru- loses its r when it follows an aspect prefix (xulöq' "she bought it", nutz'ët "she sees it"), though the prevocalic r- stays (nrajo' "she wants it", xrajo' "she wanted it"). Compare ruwäch "his face" with xutz'ët "he saw it": the same marker, minus its r after x-. Third, the other four persons (a-/aw-, qa-/q-, i-/iw-, ki-/k-) are identical on nouns and verbs. If you learn possession (Chapter 5: Possession), you have learned almost all of the transitive subject markers for free.

Glossing conventions used in this book: 1sA, 2sA, 3sA, 1pA, 2pA, 3pA for Set A; 1sB, 2sB, 3sB, 1pB, 2pB, 3pB for Set B.

The verb template

Every inflected verb is built on one template:

ASPECT  +  Set B  +  Set A  +  STEM  (+ suffix)
           (object of a transitive,      (subject of a transitive)
            or subject of an intransitive)

For an intransitive verb there is no Set A slot, because there is no object and the subject goes in the Set B slot:

x-i-wär         COMPL-1sB-sleep      "I slept"
x-Ø-wär         COMPL-3sB-sleep      "she slept"   (written xwär)
y-e-wär         INCOMPL-3pB-sleep    "they sleep"

For a transitive verb both slots are filled, object first, then subject:

x-Ø-u-löq'      COMPL-3sB-3sA-buy    "she bought it"   (written xulöq')
x-Ø-in-löq'     COMPL-3sB-1sA-buy    "I bought it"     (written xinlöq')
y-in-a-tz'ët    INCOMPL-1sB-2sA-see  "you see me"      (written yinatz'ët)
n-Ø-qa-tz'ët    INCOMPL-3sB-1pA-see  "we see it"       (written nqatz'ët)

Notice that the order inside the word is fixed: aspect, then the Set B marker, then the Set A marker, then the stem. English speakers expect the subject to come before the object; in the Kaqchikel verb word the object marker comes first. Because the 3rd person singular Set B marker is zero, a verb like xulöq' looks as if it has only aspect and subject. It does have an object, but the object is the zero.

A reminder about the first and third persons singular of Set A on verbs: 1s is in- before a consonant-initial stem (xinlöq' "I bought it", ninkanoj "I look for it", xtinb'än "I will do it") and inw- before a vowel-initial stem (ninwajo' "I want it"); on nouns it is nu-/w- (nupo't "my blouse", wochoch "my house"). 3s ru- drops its r after an aspect prefix (xulöq', nulöq', xtulöq'), while prevocalic r- is kept (xrajo', nrajo', xtirajo'). You will meet this in detail in Chapter 12: Transitive Verbs in the Incompletive.

Aspect is not tense

The first slot of the template is usually called "tense" by learners, but it is more accurate to call it aspect. Tense locates an event in time (past, present, future). Aspect describes how the event is viewed: as completed and whole, as ongoing or habitual, or as not yet real. The two overlap a great deal, which is why this book gives the familiar labels in parentheses, but the difference shows in real usage.

The incompletive is the most flexible. It covers an action happening right now (ninsik'ij ri wuj "I am reading the book"), a habit (yisamäj pa k'ayb'äl "I work at the market"), a planned future (chwa'q yojb'e pa tinamit "tomorrow we go to town"), and, in stories, the narrative present once the time frame is set. So "present tense" undersells it. The completive marks an event as a finished whole; it usually translates as English past, but "I have eaten" is also completive. The potential marks something not yet realized: a future, a possibility, a prediction.

Why do the incompletive and the potential have two shapes each? Because of the zero. When the Set B slot is empty (3rd person singular), the aspect prefix stands right next to the Set A marker or the stem, and the language uses n- / xt-; when the Set B slot is filled with a vowel (i-, a-, oj-, ix-, e-), it uses y- / xk-. Compare niwär "he sleeps" (n- plus zero, plus an epenthetic i before w) with yiwär "I sleep" and yewär "they sleep". Compare nqatz'ët "we see it" (zero object) with yojrutz'ët "he sees us" (1pB object oj-). Once you see the pattern, the two shapes stop being two things to memorize and become one rule.

Word order after the verb, and the front slot

When the subject and object are spelled out as noun phrases, the default order after a transitive verb is verb, object, subject (VOS):

Xutz'ët    ri tz'i'    ri achin.
saw-it     the dog     the man
"The man saw the dog."

Nuk'ayij   ri po't     xta Ixchel.
sells-it   the blouse  Ms. Ixchel
"Ixchel sells the blouse."

For an intransitive verb, the subject simply follows (VS): Xb'e ri tijonel. "The teacher went."

Because the verb already tells you who is acting on whom, word order is free to do a different job: signaling what the sentence is about and what is new. A noun phrase or pronoun moved to the front, before the predicate, is a topic or focus: "as for X", "it is X who". Compare:

Fronting the subject of an intransitive verb or a non-verbal predicate is free and common. Fronting the subject of a transitive verb traditionally required a change in the verb (the antipassive, Chapter 18: Voice).

For now, remember: neutral order is predicate first; anything in front of the predicate is there for emphasis or topic. When you produce sentences, put the verb first and you will almost never be wrong.

The article ri and the word jun

ri is the definite article, "the": ri achin "the man", ri po't "the blouse". It marks something already known or identifiable. It also precedes names in some contexts and is used with titles (ri ma Kawoq). It does not change for number or gender: ri ak'wal "the child", ri ak'wala' "the children".

jun is the numeral "one" and doubles as an indefinite article "a, an": jun ch'akät "a chair", jun po't "a blouse". It introduces something new into the conversation; afterwards ri takes over. Chapter 7: Pointing Words explores this and the demonstratives (re ... re' "this", la ... la' "that").

Particles: the small words that shape meaning

Kaqchikel leans on short, uninflected words (particles) to add nuance that English often carries with intonation or auxiliary verbs. You will meet them gradually; here are the ones you will see most in the first chapters.

Particles are never stressed and never carry person markers. Learn them as fixed furniture around the predicate.

Roots and derived stems

The stem slot of the template can hold a bare root or a root with derivational pieces attached. This distinction will matter in every verb chapter, so here is the idea.

A root is the smallest meaningful unit: -b'än "do", -löq' "buy", -tz'ët "see", -wär "sleep", -b'e "go". Root transitive verbs are typically one syllable, consonant-vowel-consonant, with a lax vowel (the Chapter 1 rule; roots that end in a glottal stop, like -to' "help" and -tzu' "look at", have tense vowels instead, because a vowel before a glottal stop is always tense). A derived stem has something added: -kanoj "look for" and -k'ayij "sell" and -tz'ib'aj "write" end in -Vj (a vowel plus j) and are transitive; -samäj "work" and -b'ixan "sing" are intransitives built from nouns; -tz'uye' "sit down" is built from a positional root with -e'. Derived stems behave slightly differently from roots when they form imperatives, passives, and antipassives (for example root transitives add a vowel plus glottal stop in the imperative, tab'ana' "do it!", while derived transitives do not, tak'utuj "ask it!"). When you learn a new verb, note whether it is a CVC root or a longer derived stem; it will predict its other forms.

Where dialects differ

Everything above is shared by all varieties of Kaqchikel. Dialects differ mostly in surface matters: the pronunciation of lax vowels (Chapter 1), some vocabulary, and a few small grammatical habits. Three you will hear early: many speakers insert a t or d after the incompletive n- before a short verb (nel "he leaves" is heard as ntel or ndel); rin "I" has the common variants yin (also written yïn) and ri'in; and "today/now" is wakami, with the fuller form wakamin in the central area and kamik elsewhere. These never change the template.

A short text: a day at the market

Here is a connected text built only from structures in this chapter. Read it for the shape of each sentence: find the predicate first, then ask who is inside it.

Wakami xta Ixchel k'o pa k'ayb'äl. Nuk'ayij ichaj, ixim chuqa' kinäq'.
Today Ixchel is at the market. She sells vegetables, corn and beans.

E k'o k'iy winaqi' wakami: achi'a', ixoqi' chuqa' ak'wala'.
There are many people today: men, women and children.

Jun ixöq xulöq' ixim. Jun achin xulöq' kinäq'.
A woman bought corn. A man bought beans.

Ri ak'wala' yetze'en. Man yesamäj ta.
The children laugh. They do not work.

Ana xpe pa k'ayb'äl. Nukanoj jun po't.
Ana came to the market. She is looking for a blouse.

Xutz'ët jun jeb'ël po't. Xulöq'. Janila ütz ri po't.
She saw a beautiful blouse. She bought it. The blouse is very good.

Xqa q'ij. Xta Ixchel xb'e pa jay; Ana xb'e chuqa'.
Afternoon came. Ixchel went home; Ana went too.

Chwa'q yesamäj chik.
Tomorrow they work again.

A decoder walkthrough

Here are eight sentences, each built from material you will study later. For each, find the predicate, strip off the aspect prefix, find the Set B and Set A markers, and identify the stem. Try each one before reading the analysis.

1. Xwär ri ak'wal. "The child slept."

x-Ø-wär         ri ak'wal
COMPL-3sB-sleep the child
"the child slept"

Intransitive verb, so only Set B appears, and it is the zero 3rd person. The subject noun phrase follows the verb.

2. Yojsamäj chwa'q. "We work tomorrow."

y-oj-samäj       chwa'q
INCOMPL-1pB-work tomorrow
"we work tomorrow"

Incompletive with a non-zero Set B (1p oj-), so the prefix is y-. Incompletive used for a planned future; the time word chwa'q makes the reference clear.

3. Nutz'ët ri tz'i' ri achin. "The man sees the dog."

n-Ø-u-tz'ët         ri tz'i'  ri achin
INCOMPL-3sB-3sA-see the dog   the man
"the man sees the dog"

Transitive. Object marker is zero (3s), so the prefix is n-; subject marker is Set A u- (the form of ru- after the aspect prefix). After the verb: object first (ri tz'i'), then subject (ri achin).

4. Xinlöq' jun po't. "I bought a blouse."

x-Ø-in-löq'       jun po't
COMPL-3sB-1sA-buy a blouse
"I bought a blouse"

Transitive in the completive. Zero object, Set A 1s appears as in- before a consonant stem. jun introduces a new item.

5. In tijonel. "I am a teacher."

in   tijonel
1sB  teacher
"I am a teacher"

A noun as predicate. No verb, no aspect. The subject is the Set B free word in.

6. K'o jun nutz'i'. "I have a dog." (literally "there is a dog of mine")

k'o       jun  nu-tz'i'
there-is  a    1sA-dog
"I have a dog"

The existential predicate k'o comes first, then the possessed noun. "Having" in Kaqchikel is existence plus possession (Chapter 6: Existence, Location, and Having). Note Set A nu- doing its other job: possessor.

7. Ri ixöq xuk'ayij ri wäy. "The woman sold the tortillas."

ri ixöq    x-Ø-u-k'ayij        ri wäy
the woman  COMPL-3sB-3sA-sell  the tortilla
"the woman sold the tortillas"

The subject has been moved to the front as the topic. The verb still carries both markers; nothing is lost. wäy "tortilla" is not pluralized; low-animacy nouns usually are not.

8. ¿La xab'e pa tinamit? "Did you go to town?"

la  x-a-b'e       pa tinamit
Q   COMPL-2sB-go  to town
"did you go to town?"

The question particle la opens a yes/no question; the intonation rises. Intransitive, so the 2nd person subject is Set B a- (before a consonant).

If you can take any sentence apart this way, you can read Kaqchikel. Everything in Parts I and II is an expansion of these eight analyses.

Patterns at a glance

Design principles

Aspect prefixes

Person markers (summary)

Vocabulary

The deck for this chapter is its nouns and its small words: the article, the pronouns, the particles. Those you can use immediately, in the non-verbal sentences of Chapters 3 and 4. (ixöq, jay, k'iy, nim, tijonel, tinamit, tz'i', ütz and winäq all appear again here but were carded in Chapter 1, so they are not repeated.)

Reference: the verbs in this chapter's texts

Every verb below appears in the dialogue or the graded text above, and you should recognize all of them on sight. But you cannot yet inflect a single one, and you will not be able to until Chapters 11 and 12, so drilling them as cards now would mean nine chapters of reviewing "to buy" without ever being able to say "I buy". They enter your deck in the chapter that teaches their forms. For now, read them as whole words and let the hover gloss do the work.

Usage and dialect notes

• Do not hunt for "is". Learners waste time looking for a copula. If a sentence begins with a noun or adjective and has no verb, that noun or adjective is the predicate: Tijonel ri achin "The man is a teacher."
• Do not add pronouns by default. Rin yiwär is not the neutral way to say "I sleep"; yiwär is. Add rin only for contrast or emphasis, as a Spanish speaker would add "yo".
• After the verb, the first noun is the object. Xutz'ët ri tz'i' ri achin means the man saw the dog, not the reverse. Find the verb, then expect object, then subject. Context and animacy help, and speakers front the subject when there is real risk of confusion.
• The zero is real, and it drives two other rules. When you see nutz'ët, say to yourself "n-Ø-u-tz'ët, he sees it", not "he sees": a Kaqchikel transitive verb always has an object, even where English leaves it out. And because that slot is empty, the aspect prefix takes its other shape: nqatz'ët, not yqatz'ët; nuk'ayij, not yuk'ayij. The prefix is y- only when a real Set B vowel follows.
• Two shapes for the first person singular, and they are not interchangeable. nu- is "my" on nouns (nupo't); in- is "I" on transitive verbs (xinlöq'). Same person, two jobs. More generally, before you choose any marker for "I", ask whether the verb has an object: "I sleep" takes Set B (yiwär), "I see it" takes Set A (nintz'ët), "my dog" takes Set A (nutz'i').
• Aspect is not tense. Chwa'q yojb'e uses the incompletive for tomorrow, and the completive xb'e can mean "has gone" as well as "went".
• nd- in speech. If you hear what sounds like ntel or ndel for nel "he leaves", that is the ordinary spoken form of the incompletive before a short verb. Write nel.
• yin. In many towns "I" is yin (also written yïn) or ri'in rather than rin. All of them are understood everywhere; this book writes rin.
• Article with names. You will see both xta Ixchel and ri xta Ixchel. The article before a title plus name is common and does not change the meaning.

Looking back and ahead

Chapter 1: Sounds and Spelling gave you the letters; this chapter gave you the blueprint.

One thing to expect, so that it does not worry you. From here to Chapter 11 you will read inflected verbs in every dialogue and every graded text (xb'e, nuk'ayij, xulöq', yetze'en) that you cannot yet build. That is deliberate: the chapters in between teach what you can use without the verb system, while the verb forms go past you often enough that by the time Chapter 11 opens them up they already feel like words rather than formulas. Until then, read a verb as one chunk and take the meaning; the blueprint above is there so the chunks have somewhere to sit, not so that you can assemble them yet. When you reach Chapter 11, come back and take apart the graded texts of Chapters 1 to 10: they are the best practice material in the book, because you already know what they mean. Chapter 3: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk puts both to immediate use in real exchanges, most of which are non-verbal predicates and fixed phrases. Chapter 4: Pronouns and "Being" then works through the Set B free words and equational sentences in full, and Chapter 5: Possession does the same for Set A on nouns. When you reach the verb chapters (Chapter 11 onward), come back to the template and the decoder; every paradigm there is just this chapter's template filled in.

Chapter 3: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk

Starting point

Ana has come with a Tz'ikin to the house of his parents in Tecpán (Iximche'). It is mid-afternoon.

(At the door.)

a Tz'ikin: ¿At k'o, nána?
Are you there, ma'am?

te Ixk'at: Ja', in k'o. ¿Xape?
Yes, I'm here. You've come?

a Tz'ikin: Ja', xipe. Xqa q'ij k'a.
Yes, I've come. Good afternoon.

te Ixk'at: Xqa q'ij, matyöx. ¿La ütz awäch?
Good afternoon, thanks. How are you?

a Tz'ikin: Ütz, matyöx. ¿La ütz awäch rat?
Fine, thanks. And how are you?

te Ixk'at: Ütz, matyöx. ¿Achike rub'i' ri xtän?
Fine, thanks. What is the young woman's name?

a Tz'ikin: Ana rub'i'. Rija' aj Chicago.
Her name is Ana. She is from Chicago.

Ana: Xqa q'ij, nána. ¿La ütz awäch?
Good afternoon, ma'am. How are you?

te Ixk'at: Ütz, matyöx. ¿Aj akuchi' rat, Ana?
Fine, thanks. Where are you from, Ana?

Ana: Rin in aj Chicago. Chicago rub'i' nutinamit.
I am from Chicago. My town is called Chicago.

te Ixk'at: Aa, ütz k'a. Katok.
Ah, good then. Come in.

Ana: Matyöx.
Thank you.

te Ixk'at: Man tab'ij ke ri'.
Don't mention it.

Read the dialogue aloud with the greeting tune from Chapter 1: Sounds and Spelling (two beats on the last syllable of Xqa q'ij, high then low; a sharp rise-fall on k'a).

How it works

Greetings by time of day

There are three standard greetings, and each is a tiny sentence about the day.

Each one begins with x-, the completive prefix you met in Chapter 2: How a Kaqchikel Sentence Works: x-Ø-seqër "it dawned", x-Ø-qa q'ij "the sun descended" (-qa "go down", q'ij "sun"), x-Ø-ok aq'a' "night entered" (-ok "enter", aq'a' "night"), which contracts to xoq'a'. You will also hear the fuller xok aq'a', often written as one word, xokaq'a', and in the morning simply seqër without the prefix. So a Kaqchikel greeting does not wish you a good morning; it notes, with the person you meet, that the morning has arrived. This is worth knowing because it explains the shape of the reply: you say the same word back, and add matyöx "thanks".

The particle k'a at the end of the opening greeting is hard to translate ("then, well, there"). It softens and rounds off the phrase and is typical of the person who speaks first. The reply uses matyöx instead. Both carry the special intonation described in Chapter 1: the last syllable of Xseqër or matyöx is stretched to two beats, high then low.

The nouns for the parts of the day, which you will use with these greetings and elsewhere:

How are you?

The standard question is ¿La ütz awäch? It is a yes/no question (particle la), and its literal meaning is "Is your face good?": ütz "good" is the predicate, and awäch is aw- "your" (Set A 2s before a vowel) plus -wäch "face". Since the face is where one's state shows, "your face is good" is "you are well". (Possessed nouns like awäch are the subject of Chapter 5: Possession; use the phrase as a chunk for now.) Two useful variants:

• ¿Achike ab'anon? "How are you doing? / What's up?" Literally "what is your done-thing", built on -b'än "do". Use it with people you know.
• ¿La raxnäq awäch? "Are you well / healthy?" with raxnäq "healthy, sound".

Answers, from most to least cheerful:

After answering, return the question: ¿La ütz awäch rat? The independent pronoun rat "you" at the end is the emphasis pattern from Chapter 2 ("and you?").

A full exchange can then be closed with Matyöx k'a ri'. "Thanks, then." This phrase marks that the greeting ritual is complete and that the speakers can move on to other things or part. It is not a thank-you for anything in particular.

The doorway ritual

When you arrive at someone's house you do not knock and wait in silence. You call out ¿At k'o? "Are you there?" (at 2s Set B free word plus k'o "be present"), usually with a title: ¿At k'o, nána? The person inside answers Ja', in k'o. "Yes, I am here", often with a thank-you folded in, In k'o, matyöx, and then asks the visitor ¿Xape? "You have come?" (x-a-pe, completive, 2sB, "come"). The visitor answers Ja', xipe. "Yes, I have come." Only then do greetings by time of day and ¿La ütz awäch? follow. The host may then say Katok. "Come in" (k-at-ok, imperative with 2sB and -ok "enter"; the plural kixok "come in, all of you" is the form the source grammar cites).

The questions sound odd in English ("Are you there?" to someone who has just answered, "You've come?" to someone standing at the door) but they are not requests for information. They are the Kaqchikel way of opening a visit, and the only correct answers are the yes-answers given above.

A related question you will be asked when you run into someone in the street or the market is ¿La yab'iyaj? "Are you out walking / visiting / about?" (-b'iyaj "stroll, travel about"). Answer Ja', yib'iyaj. "Yes, I am out and about", even if you are on your way to do something specific. It is a greeting, not an inquiry.

Titles and forms of address

Kaqchikel speakers rarely use a bare first name for an adult. A short title comes first, and it is written in lowercase before the name.

When you call to someone or address them without a name, use the vocatives nána "ma'am" and táta "sir", stressed on the first syllable (Chapter 1). These are the polite way to address a market seller, an elder, or the person who answers the door: Xseqër, nána. ¿At k'o, táta?

The source dictionary notes that in some towns ma is used for young men and a becomes the term of respect for older men, and that the women's titles xta, te and ya are receding in some communities. When in doubt, listen to how the people around you address one another and copy them; using a title is always safer than omitting one.

Asking and giving names

"Name" is a possessed noun: you do not say "the name" but "my name, your name". The forms are built with the Set A prefixes from Chapter 2 on the stem -b'i' (the independent word is b'i'aj, which drops -aj when possessed; this is a regular noun class you will meet in Chapter 5: Possession).

One form worked through in full:

nu-b'i'
1sA-name
"my name"

The full set:

The question is ¿Achike ab'i'? "What is your name?", often with the pronoun added: ¿Achike ab'i' rat? achike is the question word "what, who, which". The answer is Ana nub'i'. "Ana is my name", and very often with the pronoun in front: Rin Ana nub'i'. Note that this is a non-verbal sentence of the kind described in Chapter 2: the predicate is the name, nub'i' is the subject ("Ana [is] my name"), and rin is a topic ("as for me").

You can also ask a yes/no question with la: ¿La Ixchel ab'i'? "Is your name Ixchel?" The answers are Ja', Ixchel nub'i'. "Yes, my name is Ixchel" or Manäq, man Ixchel ta nub'i'. "No, my name is not Ixchel." The negation man ... ta wraps around the word being denied, here the name (Chapter 4: Pronouns and "Being" and Chapter 20: Negation, Doubt, and "If only").

After hearing a name, people often repeat it with a small acknowledgment: Aa, Ixchel ab'i'. Matyöx. "Ah, your name is Ixchel. Thank you."

Where are you from?

Three ways to ask, all common:

The key piece is aj, a little word placed before a place name to mean "person of, native of": aj Iximche' "someone from Tecpán", aj Chiq'a'l "someone from Comalapa", aj Tz'olöj Ya' "someone from Sololá". To say "I am from X" you use the Set B free word and aj: Rin in aj Iximche'. "I am from Tecpán." This is the same noun-predicate structure as In tijonel "I am a teacher"; aj Iximche' is simply a noun phrase meaning "Tecpán person". With akuchi' "where", aj akuchi' means "from where?"

The second question uses tinamit "town" with the possessive prefixes: nutinamit "my town", atinamit "your town", rutinamit "his/her town", qatinamit "our town". The answer mirrors the name pattern: Iximche' rub'i' nutinamit. "My town is called Iximche'."

Kaqchikel towns have Kaqchikel names alongside their Spanish ones, and speakers use the Kaqchikel names among themselves. Some you will need:

For a foreign visitor the simplest honest answer is the name of your city or country in its usual form: Rin in aj Chicago. You can add Pa Jotöl to place it: Chicago k'o Pa Jotöl. "Chicago is in the States."

Thanking and replying

Matyöx is "thank you" (also spelled matyox, the form common in schoolbooks). To thank a particular person, add the relational noun for "to you": Matyöx chawe. "Thank you (to you)"; Matyöx chiwe. "Thank you all." (Relational nouns are the subject of Chapter 22: Relational Nouns; treat these two as chunks.) The verb "to thank" is -matyoxij, as in ninmatyoxij chawe "I thank you", but in conversation the bare matyöx does the work.

The polite reply is Man tab'ij ke ri'. "Don't say that / don't mention it." Structurally it is a negative command (man plus tab'ij "you say it" plus ke ri' "like that"), and it is one of the few negative commands without the particle ta; it has become a fixed formula. A second common reply is simply Ütz k'a. "Fine, then."

Please, sorry, yes, no

Please is Tab'ana' utzil, literally "do a kindness/favor" (tab'ana' "do it!" from -b'än, utzil "goodness, favor", the tensed noun from ütz). It goes at the start or the end of a request: Tab'ana' utzil, katok. "Please come in." A fuller version is Tab'ana' jun utzil chwe. "Do me a favor" (chwe "to me").

Sorry, excuse me. Kinakuyu'. "Forgive me" (k-in-a-kuyu': imperative, 1sB object "me", 2sA subject "you", -küy "forgive"; note the lax vowel of the root tensing before the suffix, as Chapter 1 predicted). For a real apology: Takuyu' numak. "Forgive my fault." The noun sachb'äl mak "pardon" is used in more formal requests for forgiveness. (Commands are explained in Chapter 14: Commands, Requests, and Wishes.)

Yes is ja'. No is manäq, very often shortened to näq in conversation. Both stand alone or precede a full answer:

And when you do not know: Man wetaman ta. "I don't know" (literally "it is not known by me"; wetaman is the perfect of -etamaj "learn, know", Chapter 16: States, Results, and Ongoing Actions).

Taking your leave

Leave-taking phrases are short and usually end on k'a or chik with the high-fall intonation from Chapter 1.

When someone leaves and you want to send regards, use rutzil ruwäch "greeting", literally "the goodness of his/her face": Taya' rutzil ruwäch te Ixk'at. "Give my greetings to te Ixk'at." The verb for "greet, visit" is -q'ejela': Xinq'ejela' ri ma Kawoq. "I greeted ma Kawoq."

The intonation of a greeting exchange

Putting Chapter 1 together with this chapter, here is the melody of a complete exchange. Level pitch is written with "=", a rise with "/", a fall with "\", and the two-beat high-low ending of a greeting word with "^v".

The general rule: greeting words stretch and step down; k'a jumps up and falls; yes/no questions rise; everything else falls like an English statement.

A note on names

Kaqchikel family names may be of Mayan origin (Chakäch is a well-known one) or Spanish. First names are usually Spanish in origin, but a growing number of families choose names from Maya tradition. A person's home town is one of the strongest parts of Kaqchikel identity: it shapes speech, dress, and how one is introduced. So ¿Aj akuchi' rat? is never idle; it is one of the first things people want to know.

A short text: Ana's morning

This short narrative uses only phrases from this chapter and the sentence shapes of Chapter 2. Read it aloud.

Ana k'o pa Iximche' wakami. Nimaq'a' xb'e pa k'ayb'äl.
Ana is in Tecpán today. In the morning she went to the market.

Pa k'ayb'äl k'o jun ixöq; Ixchel rub'i'. Rija' aj Iximche'.
At the market there is a woman; her name is Ixchel. She is from Tecpán.

Ana xub'ij: "Xseqër k'a, xta Ixchel. ¿La ütz awäch?"
Ana said: "Good morning, Ixchel. How are you?"

Xta Ixchel xub'ij: "Xseqër, matyöx. Ütz, matyöx. ¿La ütz awäch rat?"
Ixchel said: "Good morning, thanks. Fine, thanks. And how are you?"

Ana xub'ij: "Ütz, matyöx."
Ana said: "Fine, thanks."

K'a ri' xpe ma Kawoq. Rija' rutata' xta Ixchel.
Then ma Kawoq came. He is Ixchel's father.

Ana xub'ij: "Xseqër, táta. ¿La ütz awäch?"
Ana said: "Good morning, sir. How are you?"

Ma Kawoq xub'ij: "Ütz, matyöx. ¿Achike ab'i' rat?"
Ma Kawoq said: "Fine, thanks. What is your name?"

Ana xub'ij: "Rin Ana nub'i'. In aj Chicago."
Ana said: "My name is Ana. I am from Chicago."

Ma Kawoq xub'ij: "Aa, ütz k'a. Chicago k'o Pa Jotöl."
Ma Kawoq said: "Ah, good then. Chicago is in the States."

Tiqaq'ij Ana xb'e pa jay. "Matyöx k'a ri'", xub'ij.
In the afternoon Ana went home. "Thanks, then", she said.

"Chwa'q chik", xub'ij xta Ixchel.
"See you tomorrow", said Ixchel.

Patterns at a glance

Greetings and replies

Names and origin

Possessed "name" and "town"

Politeness kit

Vocabulary

Reference: place names

These are for looking up, not for drilling; learn the ones you will actually use (your own haunts and the family's towns) and let the rest wait.

Usage and dialect notes

• Greet first, and greet everyone. On a path or in a small street, people who pass each other exchange at least Xseqër / Xseqër even if they are strangers. Not greeting is noticed. In the market, greet the seller before asking a price.
• The reply echoes; "fine" comes later. Do not answer Xseqër k'a with Ütz, matyöx; answer with Xseqër, matyöx. The how-are-you question is the next step, not this one, and after you answer it, always return ¿La ütz awäch rat? Omitting that is the equivalent of saying "fine" and walking off.
• Yes to ritual questions. ¿At k'o?, ¿Xape? and ¿La yab'iyaj? expect ja'. Answering them literally ("well, actually I came to ask about...") sounds abrupt.
• Soften your questions. A question puts a demand on the person asked, and Kaqchikel etiquette treats even a routine one as a small imposition. When you need information from a stranger or an elder, preface it with Tab'ana' utzil tab'ij pe chwe "please tell me" (a fixed chunk; the pieces are explained in Chapter 14: Commands, Requests, and Wishes and Chapter 15: Directionals and Verbs of Motion), or open with Takuyu' numak. It costs one breath and marks you as someone who knows how things are done.
• Titles are not optional with names. Kawoq alone, said to or about an adult, sounds like a child speaking. Say ma Kawoq. English speakers tend to drop titles because first names feel friendly in English; in Kaqchikel the title is the friendly form. And the vocatives nána and táta are stressed on the first syllable, alone among the words in this chapter.
• There is no "is" in "my name is". Rin Ana nub'i' is "I, Ana [is] my name": the name is the predicate and nub'i' is the subject. A bare name is not a sentence, so "I am Ana" is Ana nub'i', not Ana and not In Ana. Put nub'i' first only if you mean the contrastive Nub'i' Ana "my name is Ana (whatever else you may have heard about me)".
• The negation frame wraps the word denied. man Ixchel ta nub'i' "my name is not Ixchel", man in aj Iximche' ta "I am not from Tecpán". Do not drop ta; only the fixed Man tab'ij ke ri' goes without it.
• Use the Kaqchikel place name. Among Kaqchikel speakers, say aj Iximche', not "aj Tecpán".
• matyöx vs matyox. Both spellings appear; the pronunciation varies by town between a tense and a lax o. This book writes matyöx.
• xoq'a' / xok aq'a' / xokaq'a'. The contracted xoq'a' is widespread in the central area; the fuller xok aq'a', also written as one word, xokaq'a', is transparent ("night entered") and fully acceptable. All of them end in a glottal stop. Keep the greeting apart from xokoq'a' "rainbow": one o too many and you have wished someone a good rainbow.
• näq. In fast speech manäq "no" is usually näq. Do not confuse it with -näq, a perfect suffix you will meet later, or with majun "nothing, none", which answers "is there any?" rather than a yes/no question about yourself.

Looking back and ahead

Almost everything in this chapter is a non-verbal predicate (in aj Iximche', Ana nub'i', ütz awäch) or a fixed formula built on a verb (xseqër, katok, kinakuyu'). Chapter 4: Pronouns and "Being" takes the non-verbal predicates apart properly, with the full set of Set B free words, the yes/no question with la, and negation with man ... ta. Chapter 5: Possession returns to nub'i' and nutinamit and shows how all nouns take the Set A prefixes. The verbs hiding inside the formulas (-pe, -ok, -b'iyaj, -küy, -b'ij) come back in Chapter 11: Intransitive Verbs in the Incompletive and Chapter 14: Commands, Requests, and Wishes.

Chapter 4: Pronouns and "Being"

Starting point

a Tz'ikin teaches at the school in Comalapa. Ana has come to see it, and outside the door they meet his friend a Tojil.

Everything here except three words is already yours from Chapters 1 to 3. The three new ones are tijoxel "student" and the two forms öj and ïx, which do for "we" and "you (pl)" what in and at already do for "I" and "you".

Notice that there is no word in any of these sentences that means "am", "are" or "is". In tijoxel is a complete sentence: "I (am a) student." The rest of the chapter explains why, and how to build every sentence of this kind.

How it works

4.1 Six people, six pronouns

Kaqchikel has six personal pronouns. They stand on their own as words, so grammarians call them independent pronouns.

Three things to notice:

• There is no difference between "he" and "she". Rija' covers both; context tells you which.
• There is no difference between subject and object forms. Rin is "I" and "me"; rija' is "she" and "her".
• Singular and plural "you" are different words. Rat is one person, rix is two or more. English speakers forget this constantly; Kaqchikel speakers never do.

Pronunciation reminders from Chapter 1: röj has a lax vowel (the two dots), and the i of rix is also short and lax. Rija' and rije' end in a glottal stop, the catch in the throat; do not let them trail off into a plain vowel.

You will also hear yïn (or yin) for "I" in many towns, and roj or ri'oj for "we". These are normal regional variants; the forms in the table are the standard written ones.

Here is the important part: you do not need these pronouns in order to make a sentence. In English, "am a teacher" is not a sentence; you must say "I am a teacher." In Kaqchikel the subject is built into the predicate. So the independent pronouns do a different job: they add emphasis, mark a contrast, or set up the topic. We will come back to that in 4.4. First, the built-in subject.

Two words mean "I", and they are not interchangeable. This trips up nearly every learner, so it is worth settling before the table below. In is a Set B marker, the actual grammatical subject, attached to the predicate; it is not optional. Rin is an independent pronoun, and it always is: take it out of any sentence and what remains still stands, because in is already doing the work of marking the subject.

In short, rin is added to in, never used instead of it, and the same holds for rat with at, röj with öj, and rix with ïx.

Third person is the exception, and it is worth seeing why. Set B third person is zero, so there is no marker to carry the person. Ajkem on its own is a complete sentence, "he/she is a weaver". Adding rija' does not add emphasis to an existing marker, because there is no marker; it supplies the reference itself: Rija' ajkem picks out which person is meant. So for 1st and 2nd person the independent pronoun is decoration; for 3rd person it is often the only thing identifying who you are talking about.

4.2 No verb "to be": the predicate carries its own subject

In English a predicate that is a noun ("a student") or an adjective ("tired") cannot stand alone; it needs the linking verb "be". Kaqchikel does not have such a verb at all. Instead, the noun or adjective itself is the predicate, and a small subject marker is placed in front of it. That marker comes from the pronoun set we call Set B (the grammatical name is absolutive). Set B marks the subject of anything that is not a transitive verb: the subject of a noun predicate, of an adjective predicate, and later (Chapter 11) the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb.

The other set, Set A (ergative), marks possessors and the subjects of transitive verbs. You met one Set A form already when you said your name (nub'i' "my name"); Chapter 5 is all about Set A. Keep the two sets apart in your mind from the start: Set B = "who is / who is affected"; Set A = "whose / who does it to something".

Here is one sentence taken apart. The gloss line uses the labels 1sB (first person singular, Set B), and so on:

in tijonel
1sB teacher
"I am a teacher"

The full set:

Read the table out loud a few times. In tijonel. At tijoxel. Tijonel. Öj samajela'. Ïx tijoxela'. E tijonela'. Six complete sentences.

Why do öj and ïx have lax vowels here? Because of the rule from Chapter 1: a lax vowel can only live in the last syllable of a word. As free-standing words, öj and ïx are one-syllable words, so their syllable is final and the vowel stays lax. When the same markers are glued onto a verb as prefixes (oj-, ix-, Chapter 11), they are no longer in a final syllable and the vowel tenses. Same pronoun, two spellings, one rule.

The zero third person. The most surprising line in the table is the third singular: nothing at all. "He is a teacher" is simply tijonel. In Kaqchikel, third person singular is the unmarked case across the whole grammar; you will meet the same zero on verbs (nwär "he sleeps" next to yiwär "I sleep"). Practically it means that a bare noun can be a full sentence about "him", "her" or "it". To make clear who you mean, you add the person's name or a noun phrase:

Notice the order: predicate first, then the subject noun phrase with ri "the". Kaqchikel puts the predicate first by default (Chapter 2). The subject can also come first when you are talking "about" it: Ri a Tz'ikin tijonel, "As for Tz'ikin, he is a teacher." Both orders are correct; the predicate-first one is the neutral way to state a fact.

Plural nouns. When the subject is plural, the predicate noun is plural too, and the marker is e (3p) or öj / ïx. Human nouns take a plural suffix, usually -a' or -i':

Chapter 8 deals with plurals in detail, including why ixöq becomes ixoqi' (the lax ö tenses when the suffix is added: the final-syllable rule again).

4.3 "Where from" and "what kind": aj + place

A very common noun predicate is built with aj followed by a place name: aj Iximche' "a person from Tecpán", aj Chiq'a'l "a person from Comalapa", aj Tz'olöj Ya' "a person from Sololá". It takes Set B like any other noun:

As in Chapter 3, a visitor names her city or country in its usual form after aj (aj Chicago) and can add where that is with the chunk k'o Pa Jotöl "is in the States" (Pa Jotöl, literally "in the high place, up north", is the source's name for the United States; like other place names it needs no extra preposition). The question that goes with these statements is ¿Aj akuchi' rat? "Where are you from?" (Chapter 3). Look closely at that question: there is no at before aj, even though it means "are you". That is not a misprint; the Usage notes at the end of the chapter explain the omission.

The same aj builds occupation words: ajkem "weaver" (from kem "weaving"), ajq'ij "day-keeper, calendar priest" (from q'ij "day, sun"), ajtz'ib' "writer, scribe" (from tz'ib' "writing"), ajanel "carpenter". Again, Set B subjects:

4.4 Adding the independent pronoun: emphasis and topic

Now we can place the independent pronouns from 4.1. They are extra; when you add one, it usually goes in front and tells the listener "this is who we are talking about" or "this one, as opposed to others":

The third person line is the one to memorize: Rija' ajkem, pronoun plus bare noun. Learners often try to insert something between them; there is nothing to insert.

Typical reasons to add the pronoun:

• Contrast: Rija' tijonel; rin in tijoxel. "He is a teacher; I am a student."
• Answering "who": ¿Achike ri tijonel? Rin. "Who is the teacher?" "Me." Or fuller: Rin in tijonel.
• Starting a self-introduction: Rin Ana nub'i'. In aj Chicago. In tijoxel.
• Politeness when turning a question back: ¿Rat? "And you?"

The pronoun can also follow the predicate, which is the neutral position for any subject: In tijonel rin. Sentence-initial position is the topic or focus position, which is why Rin in tijonel feels like "as for me". The choice follows what the conversation is already about. Stating a new fact, put the predicate first: someone asks what you do and you answer In tijonel. Picking your listener's topic back up, put the pronoun first: a Tojil asks ¿Rat? "And you?" and the natural reply is Rin in tijoxel, or you move down a line of people introducing each in turn.

4.5 Saying your name: X nub'i'

Names are not given with "I am X". Kaqchikel says "X is my name": the name is the predicate, and nub'i' "my name" is the subject. -b'i' "name" is a possessed noun; the possessive prefixes are Set A (full treatment in Chapter 5). Here is the set you need now:

The order can flip for emphasis, exactly as with other predicates: Ana nub'i' (neutral), Rin Ana nub'i' (as for me, Ana is my name), and even Nub'i' Ana (my name, it's Ana). You will hear all three.

The same pattern names things and places: ¿Achike rub'i' re'? "What is this called?" Tz'ib'ab'äl rub'i'. "It is called a pen." ¿Achike rub'i' atinamit? "What is your town called?" Iximche' rub'i' nutinamit. "My town is called Tecpán."

And when you point at someone and say who they are, you can either use the name directly as the predicate, Rija' Tojil "He is Tojil", or the naming formula, Rija' Tojil rub'i' "His name is Tojil". The second is more common when introducing.

4.6 Adjectives as predicates

Everything said about nouns holds for adjectives: they are predicates on their own, with Set B subjects.

With things, the zero third person again means that adjective plus noun phrase is a sentence:

Careful: jeb'ël po't (adjective directly before noun, no ri) is a phrase, "a beautiful blouse", not a sentence. Jeb'ël ri po't (with ri setting the noun off as the subject) is a sentence, "the blouse is beautiful." Chapter 9 builds on this.

When the subject is plural, the marker e may appear before the adjective, and some adjectives have a plural form (nim "big", plural nima'q):

A group of words that look like adjectives but describe positions (tz'uyül "seated", pa'äl "standing", kotz'öl "lying down") behave the same way: In tz'uyül "I am seated", E pa'äl ri ak'wala' "The children are standing." They belong to a special class called positionals (Chapter 19); you only need to recognize the pattern for now.

4.7 Yes/no questions with la

A statement becomes a yes/no question in two steps: put la in front, and let your voice rise at the end. La has no meaning of its own; it simply announces "question coming". In writing it is preceded by the Spanish-style inverted question mark.

In fast speech la is sometimes dropped and intonation alone does the job, but learners should keep it; it is always correct. A tag question, "right?", is ¿peja'? placed at the end: At tijonel, ¿peja'? "You're a teacher, right?"

Answers:

• Ja'. "Yes." Often followed by an echo: Ja', in tijonel.
• Manäq. "No." (shortened in conversation to näq). Usually followed by the negative sentence: Manäq, man in tijonel ta.
• It is polite and natural to echo the predicate rather than answer with a bare yes or no.

4.8 Saying "not": the frame man ... ta

Negation of a noun or adjective predicate uses the two-part frame man ... ta. Man goes before the thing denied; ta closes the frame right after it. The Set B marker stays inside the frame, attached to its predicate:

man in tijonel ta
NEG 1sB teacher IRR
"I am not a teacher"

Why two words? Man is the actual "not"; ta is a particle that marks something as unreal, not the case; grammarians call it irrealis (IRR in the gloss). Together they fence off exactly the piece of the sentence being denied. The fence is tight: it encloses the smallest unit that makes sense, which for a non-verbal predicate is the predicate plus its Set B marker. A subject noun phrase stays outside: Man tijonel ta ri a Tojil, "Tojil is not a teacher."

The independent pronouns stay outside too, unless they are themselves what you deny:

The second sentence is a useful pattern for correcting someone: Man rin ta ri ajkem, ja ri te Ixk'at. "I'm not the weaver, it's Ixk'at." (Ja ri ... "it is ..." is explained in Chapter 7.)

With names, what you deny is the name, so the name sits inside the frame and nub'i' outside:

Negative yes/no questions are answered as in English: ¿La man at tijonel ta? "Aren't you a teacher?" Ja', in tijonel "Yes, I am" / Manäq, man in tijonel ta "No, I'm not."

A few short negatives you will hear constantly: Man wetaman ta "I don't know"; Man ütz ta "It's not good / that's not right"; Man ke ri' ta "It's not like that."

Tojil and Ana keep talking outside the school. Every line is the frame you have just learned, and it brings in po "but", which joins a positive statement to the negative that qualifies it:

4.9 "Too", "also", "and": chuqa'

Chuqa' means "also, too, and". With pronouns it is the easiest way to say "me too", "you too":

Note the last sentence: chuqa' can link two nouns ("and"), and the predicate then takes plural e. "Neither" in a negative sentence is still chuqa': Rin chuqa' man in k'ulan ta, "I am not married either."

4.10 Why there is no "to be": a little depth

Learners often assume a missing verb is a gap in the language. It is the other way around. Mayan languages treat nouns and adjectives as fully capable of predicating; a word like tijonel already means "be a teacher" as much as "a teacher". What such a word needs is not a verb but a subject, and Set B supplies it. The very same Set B markers that make in tijonel a sentence will make yiwär "I sleep" a sentence in Chapter 11. From the grammar's point of view, "I am a teacher" and "I sleep" are the same kind of sentence: a predicate with a Set B subject.

Two consequences follow, and both matter for English speakers:

1. No tense on "is". A non-verbal predicate has no past or future form. In yawa' is "I am sick"; whether it was yesterday or is now comes from context or a time word (wakami "now, today"). When the time matters, speakers reach for a real verb or for a particle such as chik "already, any more" (man in yawa' ta chik "I'm not sick any more"). Chapters 13 and 16 cover the verbal ways of talking about past states.

2. No "it is". English needs a dummy "it" in "it is cold" or "it is a book". Kaqchikel just says the predicate: Tew. "It is cold." Wuj. "It is a book." If you want to point, you use a pointing word (Chapter 7): Wuj re'. "This is a book."

4.11 Reading: Tojil introduces his friends

Read this short text twice: once for meaning, once underlining every Set B marker and every man ... ta frame.

Rin Tojil nub'i'. Rin in aj Tz'olöj Ya'. In tijoxel; chuqa' in b'ixanel. Man in k'ulan ta. Ri a Tz'ikin wachib'il. Rija' aj Iximche', po tijonel pa Chiq'a'l. Man aj Chiq'a'l ta rija'. Ri ma Kawoq tikonel; ri te Ixk'at ajkem. Ri xta Ixchel k'ayinel pa Iximche'; man ajkem ta. Jeb'ël ri rupo't. Ri Ana chuqa' wachib'il. Rija' aj Chicago, man aj Iximche' ta. Rija' tijoxel chuqa'. Öj tijoxela', röj. Man öj b'eyoma' ta, po man öj yawa' ta. Ütz.

My name is Tojil. I am from Sololá. I am a student; I am also a singer. I am not married. Tz'ikin is my friend. He is from Tecpán, but he is a teacher in Comalapa. He is not from Comalapa. Kawoq is a farmer; Ixk'at is a weaver. Ixchel is a vendor in Tecpán; she is not a weaver. Her blouse is beautiful. Ana is also my friend. She is from Chicago, not from Tecpán. She is a student too. We are students, we two. We are not rich, but we are not sick. Good.

(Wachib'il "my friend" and rupo't "her blouse" carry Set A prefixes; Chapter 5 explains them. Use them as chunks here.)

Patterns at a glance

Independent pronouns

Set B free forms with non-verbal predicates

Sentence frames

Vocabulary

(Words from Chapter 2 used again here, such as tinamit, po't, wäy, ch'akät, jay, wuj, kape, ütz, nim and wakami, are not repeated in this table. The positionals tz'uyül, pa'äl, kotz'öl and the softening particle b'a "just" appear in the Chapter 6 list.)

Usage and dialect notes

• No "is" is hiding anywhere. English speakers reach for a verb and produce rija' k'o tijonel or similar. K'o means "there is / is located" (Chapter 6) and is wrong here. Rija' tijonel is complete, and after rija' there is nothing to insert: not rija' e ajkem, not rija' in ajkem. The third person Set B marker is zero, so the pronoun sits straight against the noun.
• Never drop ta. Man in tijonel is an unfinished sentence. Say the closing ta every time until it is automatic, and remember that manäq answers a question ("No") but does not negate a sentence on its own.
• Adjective without ri is a phrase, not a sentence. Nim jay is "a big house"; "the house is big" is nim ri jay. The ri is what sets the noun off as the subject.
• Names take the naming formula. In Ana is understood but odd; the idiom is Ana nub'i'.
• Plural "you". If you are addressing a family or a class, use rix and ïx, never rat.
• Aj phrases without the marker. The set question ¿Aj akuchi' rat? "Where are you from?" has no at: the aj phrase alone is the predicate and the pronoun follows it directly. The source keeps this omission in origin questions of the same shape, so ¿La aj Chiq'a'l rat? in the dialogue is normal, and in fast speech you will hear it spread to statements. It is a habit of aj phrases with a following pronoun, not a general license to drop Set B; in statements, keep the marker, as the attested paradigms do: Rin in aj Chicago, Rat at aj Chiq'a'l. The authors' sequel keeps it in exactly this frame too: Öj aj Pa Jotöl "We are from the States" (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 282).
• Polite "you". There is no tú/usted split. Rat is used for everyone; respect is shown with titles (ma, te, nan, tat) and with tone, not with pronouns. The titles are lowercase and go before the name: men a (young), ma (older); women xta (young), te (older).
• The article ri. Names and possessed nouns often take ri before them when they are subjects: ri a Tz'ikin, ri nute'. Leaving it out is not wrong in short answers, but the pattern PREDICATE + ri + SUBJECT is the one to imitate. One place ri never goes is direct address: calling someone by name or title takes no ri; the article returns as soon as you talk about the person.
• Rija' for things. Kaqchikel rarely uses a pronoun for an object. "It is big" is just nim, or nim ri jay with the noun repeated. Use rija' for people and, if needed, animals.
• Yïn. In many communities yïn is the everyday "I". Understand it; write rin. Some towns near the lake go the other way and lengthen the pronouns instead: riyin "I", riyät "you".
• Ïx and öj spellings. Some materials write ix and oj for the free forms. The lax vowel is what speakers actually say; this book keeps the dots.
• La can be left out. Rising intonation alone makes a question in casual speech. Keep la in your own speech until the intonation is automatic.

Looking back and ahead

Chapter 3 gave you greetings and the naming formula; this chapter explained the machinery behind them: predicates that carry their own Set B subject, and a negation frame that wraps exactly the word it denies. Chapter 5 turns to the other pronoun set, Set A, which you glimpsed in nub'i', and to everything that possession does to a noun. Chapter 6 adds the word k'o for "there is", "is at" and "has", the one "being" idea that does need a word of its own. The Set B markers come back as verb prefixes in Chapter 11.

Chapter 5: Possession

Starting point

Ana is visiting te Ixk'at in Tecpán. On the wall there is a family photograph.

Look at what happened to words you already knew. B'i' became rub'i', po't became rupo't, samaj became nusamaj, tz'i' became itz'i' and then qatz'i'. Nothing was added to the end of these nouns and no separate word for "my" or "her" appeared; a prefix went on the front, and that prefix is the whole subject of this chapter. Only four words here are new: achib'äl "photograph", wachijil "my husband", nuk'ajol "my son" and wochoch "my house", and the last of those is the one irregular shape worth watching, because "house" on its own is jay.

How it works

5.1 Set A: the possessive prefixes

Kaqchikel has no separate words for "my", "your", "his". Instead a prefix from Set A (the ergative set) is attached to the front of the noun. Each prefix has two shapes: one used before a consonant, one before a vowel.

Here is one possessed noun taken apart. The gloss 1sA means first person singular, Set A:

nu-wuj
1sA-book
"my book"

The full set:

(-ochoch is the possessed form of "house"; the unpossessed word is jay. See 5.3, behavior 6.)

Why two shapes? Look at the prevocalic column: w-, aw-, r-, q-, iw-, k-. These are the core consonants of the prefixes. Before a vowel they attach directly. Before a consonant, a bare w- or k- would produce an awkward cluster (wwuj, kwuj), so a vowel is supplied and, in the first person, the w is replaced by n (nu-). Historically nu- and w- go back to different forms that have settled into this division of labor. For you the practical rule is: consonant-initial noun, take the left column; vowel-initial noun, take the right column. (One caveat for later: the first person singular forms nu-/w- are the possessive forms used on nouns. On verbs, Chapter 12, the same person is marked in-/inw-. The other five persons are identical on nouns and verbs.)

Some more vowel-initial nouns to practise with: awän "cornfield" (wawän, awawän, rawän, qawän, iwawän, kawän), aq "pig" (waq, awaq, raq, qaq, iwaq, kaq), achib'äl "picture" (wachib'äl, awachib'äl, rachib'äl ...; the lax ä stays, see 5.3), ach'alal "family, relative" (wach'alal, awach'alal, rach'alal, qach'alal, iwach'alal, kach'alal), ixim "corn" (wixim, awixim, rixim), ulew "land" (wulew, awulew, rulew, qulew).

A warning about two look-alikes. The 2s prefix before a consonant is a- (awuj); the 2s Set B marker before a consonant on a verb is also a- (Chapter 11). And 2p Set A before a consonant is i-, exactly like the 1s Set B free form in minus its n. Context and the word class always disambiguate: a prefix on a noun is Set A; on a verb you will learn to tell them apart by position. For now, just notice that the forms overlap.

A second warning. The 3s prefix ru- is the one you will see most, because "the X of the Y" uses it (5.2). When the noun begins with a vowel it shrinks to r-: rochoch "his house", rawän "his cornfield", rachib'äl "her picture", rutata' but rati't ("his father" but "his grandmother").

Possessed nouns, like any noun, can be subjects or predicates:

5.2 "The X of the Y": possessed noun first

English says "the teacher's house" or "the house of the teacher". Kaqchikel has one order only: the possessed noun, carrying the 3rd person prefix, followed by the possessor.

r-ochoch ri tijonel
3sA-house the teacher
"the teacher's house"

The possessed noun agrees in number with the possessor: singular possessor ru-/r-, plural possessor ki-/k-. Learners who translate word by word from English put the possessor first; resist that. The possessed thing always comes first, and it always wears its prefix even though the possessor is named right after it. There is no Kaqchikel equivalent of the bare English genitive "teacher's".

Chains work the same way, possessed noun after possessed noun, each pointing back to the next:

Read them from right to left to get the English: Tojil > his father > his house.

When the possessor is a pronoun you want to stress, put the independent pronoun after the noun: nupo't rin "my blouse (mine, not yours)", rochoch rija' "his house", qawän röj "our cornfield". The pronoun is optional; the prefix alone is the normal way.

The article ri usually introduces the possessor when it is a noun or a titled name (ri tijonel, ri ma Kawoq, ri xta Ixchel); when the possessor is a bare name, ri is frequently dropped: rochoch Tojil.

5.3 What possession does to the noun: six behaviors

Most nouns simply take the prefix and nothing else happens. But a sizable group change shape. Grammarians sort Kaqchikel nouns into classes by what happens when they are possessed. The class numbers do not matter; the six behaviors do, because you will meet all of them in the first weeks.

Behavior 1: no change. The noun takes its prefix, full stop. This is the biggest class and the one new words join.

Notice the last one. Ch'ab'äl has a lax ä and keeps it, and so does achib'äl "picture": rachib'äl "his picture". Having a lax vowel does not by itself make a noun change; the next behavior is a matter of which words, not a rule of sound.

Behavior 2: lax vowel becomes tense. Some nouns with a lax vowel in the last syllable (ä ë ï ö ü) turn it tense (a e i o u) when possessed.

Which nouns do this has to be learned word by word, with two big exceptions that are fully regular:

• Every instrument or place noun built with -b'äl (Chapter 8) tenses its vowel: tijob'äl "school" > qatijob'al "our school"; k'ayb'äl "market" > ruk'ayb'al; wayb'äl "eating place" > kiwayb'al; warab'äl "bedroom, inn" > nuwarab'al; oyonib'äl "telephone" > woyonib'al; mesemb'äl "broom" > numesemb'al. (Words that merely happen to end in -b'äl without being instruments, like ch'ab'äl, do not.)
• Every action noun in -ik (tijonik "teaching, class", k'utunik "question", b'ixik "saying, pronunciation") tenses: rub'ixik "its pronunciation".

Why would a prefix at the front of a word affect the vowel at the end? It does not, directly; the vowel is still in the final syllable, where lax vowels are allowed. That is exactly why this is lexical rather than phonological: it is a historical habit of certain words and two productive suffixes, not the automatic tensing that happens when a suffix is added after the vowel (Chapter 1). Keep the two apart: suffix after the vowel, tensing is automatic; prefix before the word, tensing is a property of the word.

Behavior 3: the noun drops a suffix. This is the class that will surprise you most, and it is the class of the most intimate nouns: body parts and close kin. These words almost always occur possessed (you rarely talk about "a mother" or "a head" in the abstract; you talk about someone's). When they are cited alone, they carry a suffix, most often -aj, which marks them as detached from any owner. Possess them, and the suffix disappears.

te'-ej   >   nu-te'
mother-UNPOSS   1sA-mother
"a mother"   >   "my mother"

Body parts:

Kin terms (more in 5.4):

As the table shows, the detaching suffix is not always -aj: kin terms use -laxel, -lonel, -om and -ätz as well. What they share is the behavior: the suffix is there when nobody is named as the owner, and gone as soon as a Set A prefix arrives.

A few sound changes ride along with the loss of the suffix, and they are worth understanding because they show the vowel rule at work:

• aqanaj > waqän, wachaj > nuwäch. When the suffix -aj goes, the vowel before it lands in the final syllable, and in these words it is a lax vowel there: -aqän, -wäch. The lax vowel was always underlying; it only shows when it is final.
• telemaj > nutele'm, tzamaj > nutza'm. A glottal stop that was suppressed before the suffix reappears. Kaqchikel avoids a glottal stop plus consonant in the middle of a CVCV stretch; remove the suffix and the glottal comes back.
• q'ab'aj > nuq'a'. The b' of the root weakens to a glottal stop. Compare alib'ätz > wali'.
• eyaj > wey, ijaj > wij. Vowel-initial roots take the prevocalic prefixes: w-ey, w-ij, aw-ey, r-ey, r-ij (the last is the source of the relational noun chi rij "behind", Chapter 6).
• Final m is often heard as n. Nutele'm, nutza'm, nupam are pronounced by many speakers with n (nutele'n, nutza'n, nupan) or a velar nasal; the spelling keeps m.

Two old suffixed forms are fading. Wexaj "pants" is now mostly wex even unpossessed (so it is moving to behavior 1: nuwex). Ana'laxel "man's sister" is mostly just ana' (wana' "my sister", man speaking).

Behavior 4: the noun adds a suffix. A small group of nouns, mainly internal body parts, add -Vl (a vowel plus l) when the thing is possessed as an inherent part of the owner.

The interesting part is that the same nouns can be possessed without the suffix, and then the meaning shifts to something you merely have: nub'aq "my bone" (one I found in the soup), nukik' "my blood" (a sample in a jar). So this is less a class of nouns than a way of possessing: the -Vl form says "intimately, definitionally mine". Other nouns can borrow the pattern for a special sense: nuwuj "my book" but nuwujil "my papers, my ID document"; ruya' "his water" but ruya'al "its juice"; nujuyu' "my hill, my town" but nujuyub'al "my home territory". The same suffix turns adjectives into abstract nouns, always possessed: kow "hard" > rukowil "its hardness"; tew "cold" > rutewal "its coldness"; meq'en "hot" > rumeq'enal "its heat"; räx "green" > ruraxil "its greenness". (Chapter 8 returns to these.)

Behavior 5: always possessed. Some nouns never appear without a prefix because their whole meaning is a relationship. These are the relational nouns: wichin "mine" (5.7), roma "because of him", rik'in "with her", ronojel "all of it", ruyon "by himself". Chapters 6 and 22 treat them.

Behavior 6: the root changes. Two or three everyday nouns have a different root when possessed:

Jay is the one you will use every day: "my house" is wochoch, never nujay. In colonial Kaqchikel nujay existed with the meaning "my lineage"; the modern split keeps jay for the building and -ochoch for a home.

Can every noun be possessed? Traditional grammars list "unpossessable" nouns such as q'ij "sun, day" and ch'umil "star", but the authors' newer grammar calls that class illusory: every noun proposed for it can in fact be possessed, and what changes is the reading, which is often culturally weighted (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, pp. 248-249). Ruq'ij means "his day, his birthday, his special day"; a sweet-talker can call his beloved nuch'umil "my star"; and with the -Vl of behavior 4, nuch'umilal means "my destiny". The meaning shifts to something personal; the grammar itself never says no.

5.4 The kinship system

Kaqchikel kin terms sort relatives by criteria that English ignores: the sex of the speaker, relative age, and whether the link goes through a man or a woman. All of them are behavior-3 nouns (suffix dropped) or plain nouns, and all are normally possessed. Here is the core system, shown with "my".

The logic, in three rules:

1. Siblings of your own sex are ranked by age: older -nimal, younger -chaq'. Siblings of the other sex are not ranked by age: a woman's brother is -xib'al whatever his age; a man's sister is -ana'.
2. Children are named by the parent's sex. A father says nuk'ajol "my son" and nume'al "my daughter". A mother says wal "my child" for either, adding ala' or xtän if she needs to say which.
3. Grandchildren likewise: a grandfather's -mam, a grandmother's -iy.

Applied to our family:

That last line shows possession chains doing real work: rutata' nutata' "my father's father", then the whole phrase is the subject of the predicate numama'.

The question "Who is he to you?" is ¿Achike rija'? or more pointedly ¿Achike awach'alal rija'? "What relative of yours is he?"; the answer is a possessed kin term: Nuxib'al. "My brother."

Cultural note. Kinship vocabulary in Kaqchikel communities reflects households where several generations often live close together and where a person's position is known by relative age and by line. The "same-sex sibling" terms reflect who grows up doing the same kinds of work side by side: older sisters teach younger sisters at the loom, older brothers take younger brothers to the milpa. Forms of address between in-laws are respectful; wali' and nuji' are used for the spouses of one's children. Many people today also use Spanish terms at home; the Kaqchikel terms remain the ones used with elders and in formal speech.

5.5 Body parts in use

Body parts are possessed whenever they are someone's. "Head" in a sentence is almost always nujolom, ajolom, rujolom, not jolomaj:

Height is said with -aqän "leg": nim raqän "he is tall" (literally "his leg is big"), ko'öl raqän "she is short". Chapter 9 develops descriptions; Chapter 25 has the full body and health vocabulary.

Two body-part words can also combine into a complex noun that names a new thing: ruwi' q'ab'aj, literally "the hair of the hand", is "finger", and runaq' wachaj, "the seed of the eye", is "eyeball". The first noun already wears a possessive prefix pointing at the second, and a noun cannot wear two prefixes at once. So when the whole thing is possessed, the new owner is marked on the second noun, the one that names whose body it is: "my finger" is ruwi' nuq'a' (the hair of my hand), "my eyeball" runaq' nuwäch. The same pattern builds ruchi' jay "door" ("the mouth of the house"; "my door" is ruchi' wochoch) and ruk'u'x tinamit "town center", both of which return in Chapter 6.

Some possessed body parts have turned into place words: ruwi' "its top", rij "its back", ruxe' "its root, its underside", rupam "its inside", ruchi' "its mouth, its edge", ruwäch "its face, its front". With the prepositions pa and chi they mean "on top of", "behind", "under", "inside", "at the edge of", "in front of". That is Chapter 6.

5.6 Possessed nouns with pointing words

The frames re ... re' "this" and la ... la' "that" (Chapter 7) wrap around a possessed noun just as around a plain one. The prefix stays on the noun:

Inside a sentence: Re nupo't re' k'ak'a'. "This blouse of mine is new." La rawän la' nim. "That cornfield of his is big."

5.7 "It belongs to me": -ichin

To say that something is someone's without naming the thing again, Kaqchikel uses the relational noun -ichin "belonging to". It is a behavior-5 noun: it never appears without a Set A prefix. Because it begins with a vowel, the prefixes are the prevocalic ones.

The word is itself a predicate, so it takes the usual zero 3s subject and the usual negation:

The question word is achojichin "whose?". It is simply the question particle achoj- (achoq- before some stems) "whose" in the Set A slot of -ichin. The same achoj- attaches to other relational nouns: ¿Achojik'in? "With whom?" (Chapter 21).

Two ways to say the same thing, then:

-ichin also means "for (the benefit of)" and, with a following clause, "so that, in order to": richin ta "so that". Chapter 22 takes that up.

5.8 "I have a ...": a preview

There is no verb "to have". You say that your thing exists: k'o "there is" plus a possessed noun.

Chapter 6 is devoted to k'o; this is just so you can ask the questions you need.

5.9 Reading: Tz'ikin's family

Read the text once for meaning, then a second time marking every Set A prefix and deciding whether it is before a consonant or a vowel.

Rin Tz'ikin nub'i'. Rin in aj Iximche', po in tijonel pa Chiq'a'l. Nutata' Kawoq rub'i'; rija' tikonel. Nute' Ixk'at rub'i'; rija' ajkem. K'o jun wana', Ixchel rub'i'. Rija' k'ayinel pa k'ayb'äl. Jeb'ël rupo't; rusamaj nute'. Numama' rijiläj achin; k'o pa qochoch. Majun wati't. Ri a Tojil wachib'il; rija' aj Tz'olöj Ya'. Rutata' ri a Tojil chuqa' tikonel. Nim rochoch ri a Tojil; qochoch röj ko'öl. Re wuj re' wichin; la wuj la' richin ri a Tojil.

My name is Tz'ikin. I am from Tecpán, but I am a teacher in Comalapa. My father's name is Kawoq; he is a farmer. My mother's name is Ixk'at; she is a weaver. I have a sister; her name is Ixchel. She is a vendor at the market. Her blouse is beautiful; it is my mother's work. My grandfather is an old man; he is at our house. I have no grandmother. Tojil is my friend; he is from Sololá. Tojil's father is also a farmer. Tojil's house is big; our house is small. This book is mine; that book is Tojil's.

Patterns at a glance

Set A prefixes

What happens to the noun

Word order

Kin terms (1s): nute', nutata', wati't, numama', nunimal, nuchaq', nuxib'al (woman's brother), wana' (man's sister), nuk'ajol, nume'al (man's children), wal (woman's child), wixjayil, wachijil, wali', nuji', numam, wiy, nuch'ititata', nuch'itite', wach'alal.

Vocabulary

Usage and dialect notes

• Nasal endings. Possessed forms ending in m (nupam, nutza'm, nutele'm) are pronounced with n in many towns (San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Santa María de Jesús) and with a velar nasal in Tecpán and Comalapa. Write m, say what you hear locally. The written m is itself gaining ground in speech: teachers use the spelling pronunciation in class and pupils carry it home (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 245).
• Wex and ana'. The suffixed forms wexaj, ana'laxel survive in some towns and in older speech; most people now use wex and ana' as the bare words. Both are fine. Where the old form survives, it can carry real meaning: in communities that still weave pants at home, hand-woven pants remain wexaj while store-bought ones are plain wex, and around Lake Atitlán a young woman weaves a wexaj for her intended; by accepting it, and calling it nuwex from then on, he accepts the engagement (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, pp. 250-251).
• Ri before names. "Ixchel's blouse" is usually rupo't ri xta Ixchel with the title; with a bare name rupo't Ixchel is common.
• -ichin and -oma / -uma. Around Lake Atitlán you will hear -uma for -oma and -uk'in for -ik'in; -ichin has no such variant.
• Plural of kin. A plural possessor takes ki-/k-: kite' "their mother", kitata' "their father", kach'alal "their family". A plural possessed kin noun usually does not take a plural suffix: e k'o oxi' nuchaq' "I have three younger siblings" is normal, with the numeral carrying the plurality.
• Dialect of -b'i'. "My name" is nub'i' everywhere; you may see the older citation form b'i'aj in word lists.
• Me'al / mi'al. "Daughter (of a man)" is nume'al in some towns and numi'al in others.
• Rochoch / rachoch. "His/her house" appears in the source both as rochoch and as rachoch (the same shrinking of ru- to r- before the vowel, with a different vowel in the root). This book writes rochoch; understand both.

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. English order. Never say ri tijonel rochoch for "the teacher's house". Possessed noun first, always.
2. Forgetting the prefix after a possessor. Rochoch ri tijonel needs the r- even though "the teacher" follows. There is no prefixless form.
3. Nujay. "My house" is wochoch.
4. Set B vs Set A on vowel-initial words. Wachib'il "my friend" (Set A w-) is different from in achib'il "I am a friend" (Set B in). Watch which one you mean.
5. Using the citation form in a sentence. Jolomaj, te'ej, q'ab'aj are dictionary forms. In real sentences you nearly always need the possessed form: rujolom, rute', ruq'a'.
6. Wrong kin term for the speaker. A man does not say wal for his son, and a woman does not say nuk'ajol. Ask yourself first: who is speaking?
7. Translating "have" with a verb. There is none. K'o jun nutz'i', not a verb plus tz'i'.

Looking back and ahead

Chapter 4 gave you Set B, the markers for "who is"; this chapter gave you Set A, the markers for "whose", and showed that a possessed noun is the building block of kinship talk, body talk and the relational nouns. Chapter 6 puts k'o together with possessed nouns to say "there is", "is at" and "has", and turns the body-part words -wi', -ij, -xe', -pam into "on", "behind", "under", "inside". In Chapter 12 the Set A prefixes reappear on transitive verbs as subject markers: nub'än "he does it" carries the same 3s prefix as rochoch (the ru- loses its r after the aspect prefix). One difference to note now: on verbs the first person singular is in-/inw- (ninb'än "I do it", ninwajo' "I want it"), while nu-/w- belong to nouns only.

Chapter 6: Existence, Location, and Having

Starting point

Ana has come to Tecpán on market day. She is looking for xta Ixchel's stall.

At the stall:

Every k'o in this dialogue is the same word. Sometimes the best English is "there is", sometimes "is (at)", and in Chapter 5 you saw it mean "has". Now the details. (Two chunks to take as wholes for now: rik'in "with" is a relational noun treated in Chapter 22, and Katz'uye' "Sit down" is a command, Chapter 14.)

How it works

6.1 One word, three English jobs

K'o is a non-verbal predicate, like the nouns and adjectives of Chapter 4. It is not a verb: it takes no aspect prefix and it takes Set B free forms as its subject. Its core meaning is "be present, be in existence (somewhere)". From that single meaning English needs three translations:

Here is the first one taken apart:

k'o jun tijob'äl pa Chiq'a'l
EXIST one school in Comalapa
"there is a school in Comalapa"

Since k'o is a non-verbal predicate, it takes the Set B free forms you know from in tijonel:

In k'o is what you answer when someone calls your name; ¿At k'o? "Are you there?" is what you call at a door (Chapter 3). Plural third person is e k'o, and it is used for "there are" whenever the things are several, especially people and animals, and very commonly for any counted things:

For low-animacy things in a mass or when you are not counting, speakers often keep the singular k'o even if English would say "there are": K'o ch'akät pa k'ayb'äl "There are chairs (chairs are available) in the market" is also fine. Put the two side by side on the same noun and the difference is clear: E k'o oxi' ch'akät pa k'ayb'äl "There are three chairs in the market" counts them, so it takes e k'o, while K'o ch'akät pa k'ayb'äl only says that chairs are to be had, so plain k'o serves. The rule of thumb: counting or people, use e k'o.

Word order follows the usual pattern: predicate first. K'o comes first, then the thing that exists, then the place, or k'o, then the place, then the located person. When the subject is definite and known (my mother, Tojil), it usually comes last; when it is new and indefinite (a school, a chair), it comes right after k'o with jun "one, a".

6.2 There is not: majun, manäq, man k'o ta

Three negatives, with different jobs.

Majun "none, nothing, no one" is the everyday negative of existence. It replaces k'o and means "there is no X (at all)".

Used alone it answers a question: ¿La k'o ch'akät? Majun. "Is there a chair?" "None." Majun is built on jun "one"; it is literally "not one". You will also see it with a closing ta for emphasis: Majun kape ta "there is no coffee whatsoever".

Manäq "no" can also stand in for majun as the negative of existence (Manäq ch'akät "There is no chair"), and many speakers use it that way; but in conversation manäq is mainly the word for "no", and majun is the safer choice for "there isn't any".

Man k'o ta is the ordinary man ... ta frame around k'o. It is used above all for "is not here / is not there", that is, for the location sense:

man k'o ta ri a Tojil pa jay
NEG EXIST IRR the a Tojil in house
"Tojil is not at the house"

The difference between majun and man k'o ta is roughly "there isn't one" versus "it isn't here". Majun ch'akät means no chair exists in this place; man k'o ta ri ch'akät means the chair (a specific one we know) is not where expected. With people, man k'o ta is the normal way to say someone is out: ¿La k'o ri ma Kawoq? Manäq, man k'o ta. K'o pa awän. "Is Kawoq in? No, he's not. He's at the cornfield."

6.3 Asking where: akuchi' and the particle wi

"Where?" is akuchi'. With k'o it forms the fixed question ¿Akuchi' k'o wi ...? "Where is ...?":

What is wi? It is a small particle that appears right after the predicate when a phrase of place (or manner) is focused: put at the front because it is the point of the sentence, the piece that answers "where?". A question word like akuchi' is always the point of its sentence, so in these questions wi is obligatory. A statement takes wi for the same reason when it insists on the place, the pattern English renders as "it is in X that ...":

Being focused is not the same as merely coming first. A place phrase often opens a sentence just to set the scene, the way English does in "In the house there is a table": the place is the backdrop, not the point, and there is no wi. Chupam ri jay k'o jun ch'atal. "Inside the house there is a table." The reading in 6.10 opens sentence after sentence this way, and the source's own texts do the same: a description walks from room to room on preposed place phrases with no wi, but switches wi on the moment a room is singled out as the place where something happens. So the working rule is: wi when the place is the answer or the correction ("it's THERE that ..."), no wi when the place is the setting ("there, the following holds"); and in akuchi' questions, always.

You will meet wi again with verbs (Chapters 11, 15): ¿Akuchi' yab'e wi? "Where are you going?" Two cautions. First, do not put wi in a plain answer where the place stays in its normal position after the predicate: K'o pa Chiq'a'l, not K'o wi pa Chiq'a'l. Second, this wi is a different word from wi "if" (Chapter 23); they are spelled the same but do not interact.

Answers to "where?" normally keep the place after k'o:

6.4 Here and there

Chi ri' deserves a note. It is chi "at" plus ri' "that (one)" (Chapter 7), and it is the normal way to refer back to a place in a story: "I went to the market. Chi ri' I saw Tojil." Its partner ke ri' "like that, so" and k'a ri' "then" share the same ri'; Chapter 7 lines them up.

6.5 The two prepositions: pa and chi

Kaqchikel has only two real prepositions, and both are short.

Pa means "in, at, on, to, into, toward", the all-purpose preposition of place. Before a vowel you will also see pan (the source glossary gives pan ulew "on the ground", though pa ulew occurs too), and the n is part of some place names (Pan Ajache'l "Panajachel", Pan Q'än "Antigua"). It goes directly before a noun or a place name:

Chi means "at, to" and appears mainly in combination: with the relational nouns of 6.6 (chi ruwäch "in front of it"), with ri' (chi ri' "there"), and in the dative forms chwe "to me", chawe "to you", chi re / chre "to him/her" (Chapter 12). On its own before a noun it is rarer than pa; you will see chi in some fixed phrases and in the fused forms chu- (chi + ru-), chwäch (chi + ruwäch).

So to say that something is simply "in" or "at" a place, use pa. To say "on top of", "under", "behind", "beside", "in front of", "inside", you need the next section.

6.6 Locative relational nouns: on, under, behind, beside, in front of, inside

Chapter 5 ended with a hint: the possessed body-part nouns ruwi' "its top", ruxe' "its base", ruwäch "its face", rij "its back", ruxikin "its ear, its side", rupam "its belly", ruchi' "its mouth, its edge" are the raw material for location. Combined with pa or chi, they mean what English prepositions mean. A noun used this way is called a relational noun: a possessed noun that expresses a relation between two things. The thing whose top or back it is follows, exactly as a possessor follows a possessed noun.

pa ru-wi' ri ch'atal
in 3sA-top the table
"on the table" (literally "in its top, the table")

The forms in parentheses are fused or shortened variants you will see and hear: chi ru- contracts to chu- (chuwäch, chupam), and chi ruwäch further to chwäch, chi rij to chrij. Some towns use xe for "beside": xe ruxkin "beside it" (with the short form ruxkin for ruxikin). All are the same construction. The last row, -kojol "between, among" (also spelled -kojöl), is built like the others; our first source shows it only with a plural possessor, chi ikojöl "among you (pl)", which makes sense, since "among" needs more than one. The other persons do occur, taking the other Set A prefixes in the usual way: the authors' sequel has chi rukojol "amid, surrounded by it" and chi kikojol "among them" (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, pp. 238, 258).

Examples with k'o:

Why are these nouns and not prepositions? Because they inflect. Ruwi' is "its top" with ru-; change the possessor and the prefix changes: pa nuwi' "on top of me, above me", chi awij "behind you", chi qawäch "in front of us", chi kij "behind them". Complete the two sets below for people before you read on; you already know the Set A prefixes, and the full sets follow immediately underneath.

The full sets:

Notice the vowel-initial roots: -ij takes w-, aw-, r-, q-, iw-, k-, so "behind me" is chi wij, and rij "its back" is the same word you saw in Chapter 5 as the possessed form of ijaj "back". Locative meaning and body meaning live in the same word.

Why pa ruwi' but chi ruxe'? Pa is the preposition of being contained in or resting on a surface; chi is the preposition of being at a point or side. So "on top of" takes pa, while "at its base, at its face, at its back, at its side, at its mouth" take chi. "Inside" has both: pa rupam and chupam; "alongside" has both: chi ruchi' and pa ruchi'.

Negating a location follows the man ... ta frame from Chapter 4, with one twist: the frame can enclose just the relational noun, leaving the possessor outside, or the whole phrase:

These are corrections: the place is exactly what is being singled out, so it is focused and carries wi. Chapter 20 goes deeper into negation scope.

6.7 To have: existence plus possession

Put k'o in front of a possessed noun and you have "have":

k'o jun nu-xib'al
EXIST one 1sA-brother
"I have a brother" (literally "there is one my-brother")

Literally, k'o jun nuxib'al is "there is one my-brother": the brother exists, and he is mine. That is all "having" is in Kaqchikel. The consequences:

• The "haver" is not the subject. The subject of k'o is the thing had (nuxib'al). So if the thing is plural, k'o becomes e k'o: E k'o ka'i' wal.
• To ask "how many do you have", you ask how many exist: ¿Janpe awal e k'o? "How many children do you have?" (Chapter 10 covers janpe / jaru.)
• There is no separate negative "don't have": majun plus possessed noun, or man k'o ta plus possessed noun. Majun nupwaq is the more common way to say "I'm broke".
• Feelings and states are often "had": k'o woyowal "I am angry" (I have anger), k'o nuwaran "I am sleepy" (I have sleepiness), k'o nusamaj "I am busy". Chapter 25 collects these.

And the possessor can be named after the possessed noun just as in Chapter 5: K'o rawän ri ma Kawoq "Kawoq has a cornfield" (literally: there is his-cornfield the Kawoq).

A related expression you will hear constantly: k'o chi + verb, "must, have to", literally "there is that ...": K'o chi yib'e "I have to go." Chapter 17 treats it.

6.8 How many, how much: quantity with k'o

Quantity words sit between k'o and the noun:

A short list of useful quantity words: jun one / a, ka'i' two, oxi' three, kaji' four, wo'o' five, waqi' six, wuqu' seven, waqxaqi' eight, b'eleje' nine, lajuj ten; k'ïy many, much; jub'a' a little, a few; nik'aj half, some; jujun some, a few (one by one); konojel all of them; xa xe only, just. Chapter 10 builds the number system.

6.9 Positions as locations: a preview

Alongside k'o, Kaqchikel has a family of words that say not just that something is somewhere but how it is placed there: tz'uyül "seated", pa'äl "standing", kotz'öl "lying down", jotöl "up high, raised", xulan "down low, sloping down". They are positionals (Chapter 19). In use they replace k'o when the posture matters and take the same Set B free subjects and the same place phrases:

Compare K'o ri tz'i' chi ruxe' ri ch'atal "The dog is under the table" with Kotz'öl ri tz'i' chi ruxe' ri ch'atal "The dog is lying under the table": same frame, more information. The positional answers "where?" as well as "how?", so the question ¿Akuchi' tz'uyül wi ri te Ixk'at? "Where is Ixk'at sitting?" carries the same wi.

A last preview: there is also a true verb -k'oje' "to be (somewhere), to stay, to exist", which takes aspect prefixes and is used when the time frame matters: Xk'oje' ka'i' juna' pa Chiq'a'l ri a Tojil "Tojil was in Comalapa for two years" (completive); Chi ri' nk'oje' wi "That is where it stays" (Chapters 11 and 13). K'o itself is timeless; for past and future location, Kaqchikel reaches for -k'oje'.

6.10 Reading: Kawoq's house

Read the text twice. The second time, mark every k'o / e k'o / majun and every relational noun, and say for each relational noun what the possessor is. Notice also that the place phrases that open sentences (Chupam ri jay ..., Pa ruwi' ri ch'atal ..., Chi rij ri jay ...) carry no wi: they set the scene rather than answer "where?" (6.3).

Ri rochoch ri ma Kawoq k'o pa Iximche', chi rij ri k'ayb'äl. Man nim ta, po jeb'ël. Chupam ri jay k'o jun ch'atal chuqa' e k'o kaji' ch'akät. Pa ruwi' ri ch'atal e k'o ka'i' läq, jun xara chuqa' jub'a' wäy. Chi ruxe' ri ch'atal kotz'öl ri tz'i'. Majun mes. Chi ruwäch ri jay k'o jun che'; chi rij ri jay k'o ri awän. Ri te Ixk'at tz'uyül chi ruchi' ri jay; k'o rusamaj wakami. ¿Akuchi' k'o wi ri ma Kawoq? Man k'o ta pa jay; k'o pa awän rik'in ri a Tz'ikin.

Kawoq's house is in Tecpán, behind the market. It is not big, but it is beautiful. Inside the house there is a table and there are four chairs. On the table there are two plates, a cup and a little tortilla. Under the table the dog is lying. There is no cat. In front of the house there is a tree; behind the house is the cornfield. Ixk'at is sitting at the door of the house; she has work today. Where is Kawoq? He is not at the house; he is in the cornfield with Tz'ikin.

Patterns at a glance

K'o with Set B