Chapter 31: Ri qach'ab'äl: Language, Community, and Nation

Starting point#

Sunday evening at the family house in Tecpán. Ana is looking at her phone; the whole family is around the fire, the grandfather in his chair, the baby Ix'ey asleep.

ANA: Xta Ixchel, tatzu' re jun rutzijol re'. K'o pa ruxaq k'amaya'l richin ri Kaqchikel Cholchi'. Yitikïr ninsik'ij, po k'o jun tzij man wetaman ta.
Ixchel, look at this announcement. It's on the web page of the Kaqchikel Cholchi'. I can read it, but there's one word I don't know.

IXCHEL: Tasik'ij k'a chi nuwäch.
Read it out to me, then.

ANA: "Ri Kaqchikel Cholchi' nuya' rutzijol chiwe: k'o jun k'ak'a' tijonïk pa ruwi' rutz'ib'axik ri qach'ab'äl. Ri tijonïk xtb'an pa k'amaya'l. We nawajo' natz'ib'aj ab'i', k'o jun ximoj wawe'." ¿Achike ri tzij "ximoj"? Man wetaman ta wi Kaqchikel wi kaxlan.
"The Kaqchikel Cholchi' announces: there is a new class on the writing of our language. The class will be held online. If you want to sign up, there is a link here." What is the word "ximoj"? I don't know whether it's Kaqchikel or Spanish.

TZ'IKIN: Kaqchikel ri'. Ri ruxe'el ja ri tzij -xim. Ojer, ri ximoj xa jun xim; wakami ri winaqi' nkikusaj ri tzij re' pa k'amaya'l chuqa'. Ri qach'ab'äl nub'än k'ak'a' taq tzij, achi'el ri kematz'ib' chuqa' ri k'amaya'l.
That's Kaqchikel. Its root is the word -xim, "to tie". In the old days a ximoj was just a knot; today people use the word on the internet too. Our language makes new words, like kematz'ib' "computer" and k'amaya'l "internet".

KAWOQ: Töq in ak'wal, majun Kaqchikel pa tijob'äl. Man xya'öx ta q'ij chqe richin xqatz'ib'aj ri qach'ab'äl. Xa xe kaxlan tzij.
When I was a child, there was no Kaqchikel in school. We weren't given the chance to write our language. Only Spanish.

TZ'IKIN: Wakami jun wi. Pa nutijob'äl pa Chiq'a'l, ri ak'wala' nkisik'ij chuqa' nkitz'ib'aj pa Kaqchikel q'ij q'ij.
Today it's different. In my school in Comalapa, the children read and write in Kaqchikel every day.

IXK'AT: Chuqa' wawe' pa jay k'äs ri qach'ab'äl. Ri ti Ix'ey xtrak'axaj ri Kaqchikel nab'ey, k'a ri' ri kaxlan tzij.
And here at home the language is alive. Little Ix'ey will hear Kaqchikel first, and Spanish after.

MAMA'AJ: Ri qati't qamama' xkiya' kan ri ch'ab'äl chqe. Man timestaj ta.
Our grandmothers and grandfathers left us the language. Don't forget it.

ANA: Man xtqamestaj ta. Rin chuqa' ninwajo' nintz'ib'aj nub'i' pa ri tijonïk.
We won't forget it. I want to put my name down for the class too.

IXCHEL: Jeb'ël. Xtqab'än junam.
Wonderful. We'll do it together.

Three things in this conversation are new. Ana's man wetaman ta wi Kaqchikel wi kaxlan "I don't know whether it's Kaqchikel or Spanish" doubles the particle you know as "if" to mean "whether A or B". The announcement's we nawajo' "if you want" shows the same particle in the shape we, which many communities use instead of wi. And the vocabulary of the scene, ruxaq k'amaya'l "web page", ximoj "link", tijonïk "class", rutzijol "announcement", is the language of a living institution, the Kaqchikel Cholchi', whose story this chapter tells.

How it works#

Qach'ab'äl: what the language is called#

Speakers rarely say "Kaqchikel" among themselves. The everyday name is ri qach'ab'äl "our language", with the Set A (ergative) prefix qa- you have used since Chapter 4, on the noun ch'ab'äl "language, speech, word(s)". The Facebook corpus that this chapter draws on uses qach'ab'äl far more often than "Kaqchikel". Spanish is ri kaxlan tzij, literally "Castilian words"; kaxlan (from castellano) is the all-purpose adjective for things Spanish, foreign, or non-Maya, as in kaxlan wäy "bread" (Chapter 23) and kaxlan tijonïk "non-Maya schooling". A ladino or foreigner is jun kaxlan or jun mo's (plural moso'i'); Guatemala is Iximulew, "land of maize". The word amaq', in colonial texts "city, homeland", has been revived to mean "nation, people": the achamaq'i' are the indigenous peoples, and Congress is Rajpop Amaq'. Watch that little pattern, an old word given new work; it is the theme of this whole chapter.

The ALMG and the alphabet you have been using#

The spelling in this book is not one author's habit. In 1986 and 1987, Maya organizations pushed a unified alphabet for all the Mayan languages of Guatemala through the national Congress, so that the same sound is written the same way in each language. The body created to steward it is the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG), established by Congress in 1990 by Decreto 65-90, the state's authority for the description, promotion and teaching of the Mayan languages. (Chapter 1 followed our first source in implying the ALMG was created in 1989, "two years" after the 1987 alphabet; the law itself is from 1990. The sequel to that book gives the correct date, and we record the drift here honestly.) The original alphabet had nine vowels; the ALMG soon recognized the tenth, adding ë, which is why some older publications lack it.

The ALMG works through one Comunidad Lingüística per language. The Kaqchikel one calls itself Kaqchikel Cholchi', a coined compound of chol- "row, order" (the root of choloj "ordered discourse" and Cholq'ij, the 260-day count) and chi' "mouth, speech": the ordered voice of the language. Its Facebook page, which supplied many attested sentences in this chapter, announces classes in Kaqchikel writing and reading, in tzalq'omanïk "translation" and q'axan tzij "interpreting", and posts videos, poetry and news, all in qach'ab'äl. When a post calls the Kaqchikel Cholchi' ruq'a' ri Maya' Cholchi', "an arm (branch) of the Maya Cholchi'", that is the ALMG in Kaqchikel dress.

Weaving new words: the neologism project#

A standard alphabet was only the beginning. A language used in schools, offices and phones needs words for computers, links and downloads, and the Kaqchikel Cholchi' set out to make them. Its little handbook Rukemik K'ak'a' taq Tzij ("The Weaving of New Words", 1995/1997) lays down three criteria for a good coinage, a k'ak'a' tzij:

1. Follow the grammar. New instruments take the instrument suffix -b'äl (Chapter 7), and behave like any -b'äl noun: tewb'äl "refrigerator" (from tëw "cold"), possessed nutewb'al with the vowel tensing exactly as the rule predicts; tzijb'äl "match, lighter" (from -tzïj "light a fire"); oyonib'äl "telephone" (from -oyoj "call"; rajilab'äl oyonib'äl "phone number", and the posts say katoyon! "call!").
2. Follow the culture. When the planets needed names, the coiners started from what ritual speech already says: Qate' Ruwach'ulew "our Mother Earth", Qati't Ik' "our Grandmother Moon", Qatata' Q'ij "our Father Sun"; Pluto, the last-born of the family, became Ri Ch'ip, "the youngest child" (Chapter 24). "Universe" respects the fixed couplet order of kaj "sky" before ulew "earth": kajulew.
3. No kilometer-long words. A coinage should be one or two roots with a little derivation, not a phrase. "Computer" is the now-classic example: kematz'ib', from kem "weaving" and tz'ib' "writing" joined by a linking -a-: writing woven on a loom of wires. You met it in Chapter 7; it is in daily use, and the corpus even has nukematz'ib' "my computer".

The most charming coinage story is the bicycle. It used to be called kaxlan kej, "the foreigner's horse". Pakal B'alam Rodríguez proposed let'et', and argued for it partly on phonological grounds: words with t' are rare, and a common word with t' would help keep that sound stable. The proposal took, and grew: "motorcycle" was coined as ret'et', with the initial r trilled hard to sound like the revving of the engine. A language whose new words are chosen with an ear for its rarest consonant is a language being cared for.

Not every new word is a committee's. Ordinary usage stretches old words onto new things, exactly as English did with mouse and web: ximoj "knot, tie" is now the word for a link; -qasaj "to lower" is "to download" (tikirel niqasaj ri wuj "you can download the book", as a real post puts it); ruxaq "its leaf" is a page, so ruxaq k'amaya'l is a web page; silowachib'äl "moving image" is a video, taluwäch "spread-image" a television, talutzij "spread-word" a radio, k'amaya'l the internet. And loanwords keep arriving as they always have: tinamït "town" came from Nahuatl centuries before Spanish brought kamixa "shirt" and plural-shaped borrowings like limonix "lemons" and wakx "cow"; today CD, clic and even anime come straight from English and Japanese. A living language borrows, coins, and stretches, all at once.

The Peace Accords and the right to the language#

The politics behind all this is recent and painful, and the sequel to our first source, written with Kaqchikel teachers, tells it plainly; this section keeps to its facts. Guatemala's internal armed conflict began in 1960 and lasted thirty-six years; Maya communities suffered massively, above all in 1982 and 1983, and teachers, catechists and ajq'ija' (daykeepers) were among the targeted. In 1996 the government and the guerrillas signed the Peace Accords, in Kaqchikel Ruximik ri Uxlanib'äl K'u'x, "the binding of the peace of heart" (you will also see Rujunamixik Uxlanem K'u'x and other renderings; the phrase was itself new work for the language). One accord matters especially here: the Accord on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Nuk'ulem chi rij Kib'anikil, chuqa Kich'ojib'al ri Achamaq'i'. It committed the state to make room for the Mayan languages pa taq tijob'äl, pa taq q'atb'äl tzij, pa aq'omab'äl jay, pa champomal: in schools, courts, health posts and government, and to respect Maya spirituality, Maya' Nimab'äl K'u'x.

Implementation has been slow and uneven, and Mayas remain underrepresented in national politics; the teachers who helped write our source books also helped their communities read and debate the Accords, and they do not describe the promises as kept. But real changes are visible, and two touch this chapter directly. First, schooling: bilingual and intercultural education exists, normal schools train Maya teachers, and a teacher like a Tz'ikin can teach children to read and write pa ka'i' ch'ab'äl, in two languages, something ma Kawoq's generation was denied. The Kaqchikel Cholchi' runs training for teachers of Kaqchikel town by town and online. Second, spirituality: ceremonies that once had to be held pan ewäl, in hiding, are open again; since the 1985 Constitution and the Accords, ajq'ija' practice publicly, and the government now issues credentials (wujil) that give daykeepers free access to the ancient temple sites (k'oxtum) it administers. The credentials themselves are debated among ajq'ija', some finding them useful, others objecting that a government cannot certify a spiritual calling. This book takes no side; what matters for you is that the vocabulary of this debate, ajq'ij, wujil, k'oxtum, champomal, -ch'ojib'al "rights", is everyday Kaqchikel now.

Either ... or: we ... we, wi ... wi#

Now the grammar. Chapter 22 taught you wi "if, whether", and its doubling wi ... wi "either ... or". The reference grammar in the sequel completes the picture: the particle appears as we in many communities (the announcement in our dialogue says we nawajo' "if you want", exactly as the real posts do), and the doubled pair is we ... we or wi ... wi accordingly. One particle, two local shapes, three jobs:

"If" (Chapter 22, unchanged):

"Either ... or": double the particle, once before each alternative. Every alternative gets its we/wi; none is left bare the way English leaves the first one.

"Whether A or B" inside a sentence: after verbs of knowing, saying and asking, especially negated ones, the pair offers two alternatives where English says "whether ... or". This is the use Ana produced in the dialogue, and the sequel's own example is worth seeing whole:

Man wetaman ta wi karne'l wi k'isk'. "I don't know whether it was a sheep or a goat." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 286)

man w-etaman     ta  wi      karne'l  wi      k'isk'
NEG 1sA-know     IRR whether sheep    whether goat
"I don't know whether (it was) a sheep or a goat"

Note that the alternatives can be bare nouns; no verb "to be" is needed, just as in every non-verbal predicate since Chapter 3. Build your own on the same frame: Man xub'ij ta wi nb'e wi man nb'e ta. "She didn't say whether she's going or not."

One usage warning from the same grammar: in questions, Kaqchikel prefers two separate La questions over an "or" question. To offer a choice, ask twice: ¿La nawajo' kape? ¿La nawajo' ya'? "Do you want coffee? Do you want water?" An English-style "Do you want coffee or water?" translated word for word sounds odd; the double question is the idiom.

chi, the everyday relative#

Chapter 17 taught you the classic relative clause: the definite article ri doubles as "who/that/which", wetaman ruwäch ri ixöq ri xukem ri po't "I know the woman who wove the blouse", with the focus antipassive when the relativized noun is the agent. Chapter 22 then gave you chi "that" after verbs of saying and knowing: xub'ij chi man nrajo' ta nb'e "she said that she doesn't want to go".

Modern speech has taken that chi one step further: it now serves many speakers as an all-purpose relative-clause introducer, doing the work of English "that" across the board. The sequel's grammar states it and shows it:

Ri achin chi xsamäj pa ri awän, kosnäq xtzolin pa rochoch. "The man who worked in the cornfield returned home tired." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 286)

ri  achin  chi   x-Ø-samäj          pa ri awän ...
the man    that  COMPL-3sB-work     in the cornfield
"the man who worked in the cornfield ..."

You can build the same clause on an object: Ninwajo' ninlöq' ri po't chi xintz'ët pa k'ayb'äl "I want to buy the blouse that I saw in the market." Both ri and chi relatives are good current Kaqchikel; ri is older and is what careful writing prefers, chi is what you will constantly hear. Treat chi relatives as a listening skill first and a writing choice second: in your own writing, use ri, and never blink when a speaker says chi.

This is one visible corner of a broader loosening that Chapter 17 already flagged: fronting an agent used to require the focus antipassive, and today it no longer always does; the antipassive remains obligatory when you question the agent. Likewise the trace particle wi (Chapters 5, 20, 21): the grammar notes that younger speakers, with Spanish or English in their heads, often drop it after fronted place phrases. Keep your wi; just do not be surprised by its absence.

A history of "and": grammar in motion#

Chapter 22 told you the practical truth about "and": classic Kaqchikel mostly does without it, and chuqa' "also" or rik'in "with" step in when an overt link is wanted. Here is the history behind that advice, because it is the best example in this book of a grammar changing while everyone watches.

Stage one: no "and" at all. The oldest texts coordinate by juxtaposition, simply setting phrases side by side. The sixteenth-century Xajil Chronicle writes:

"Jo'!" xecha' Q'aq'awitz, Saqtekaw. "'Let us go!' said Q'aq'awitz [and] Saqtekaw." (quoted in Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 285)

No word joins the two names; the comma in the translation is all the "and" there is. You met this style in the couplets of Chapters 22 and 25: qate' qatata' "our mothers, our fathers".

Stage two: borrow it. Spanish arrived with a hard-working little conjunction, y, and by the 1800s it had become the ordinary spoken "and", written i in the modern alphabet: ixim i kinäq' "corn and beans", ri ma Kawoq i ri te Ixk'at "Kawoq and Ixk'at". Other Spanish connectors came with it and truncated on arrival: pero became po "but", entonces became tons or to "then, so", aunque joined native stape "although". Traditional storytellers even gave the loans structural jobs: k'a ri' "then" links steps inside an episode, tons opens a new one (Chapter 22 taught you to imitate this).

Stage three: push it back out. Since the mid-1990s, language activists have worked to purge recognizable Spanish loans, an effort linguists call purism. For "and" they promote chuqa' "also" and rik'in ~ ruk'in "with": ixim chuqa' kinäq'; xecha' ri Q'aq'awitz chuqa' ri Saqtekaw is how most speakers would say the Chronicle line today. That is the standard this book has taught you, and it is what you will read in print.

The grammar's own wry observation completes the story: the purist replacements did not restore stage one. Nobody went back to juxtaposition; speakers swapped one overt "and" for another, so that Kaqchikel syntax now matches Spanish syntax with Kaqchikel words. Languages in contact change in both directions at once: words move one way, patterns another, and a "purified" sentence can still carry the borrowed blueprint. None of this is decay. It is exactly how English absorbed Norse they and French very; you are simply close enough to watch it happen.

Reading the registers: oratory and the feed#

A register is a variety of a language keyed to an occasion: you already command several in English without noticing. Kaqchikel's registers run from choloj, ritual speech, to Facebook posts typed on a phone, and this book's method, take a real line apart the way Chapter 25 taught, works on all of them.

The formal end. Formal Kaqchikel is built on parallelism: consecutive phrases share their structure, pairs of words travel together (couplets), and sometimes the second half inverts the first (chiasmus, Chapter 25). The more solemn the occasion, the denser the weave; choloj is the maximal case. Here is a formal greeting to arriving guests:

Ïx petenäq näj, ïx petenäq naqaj. "You who have come from far, you who have come from near." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 300)

ïx    peten-äq        näj    |  ïx    peten-äq        naqaj
2pB   come-PERF       far    |  2pB   come-PERF       near

Two clauses, identical to the morpheme, differing in one word, and the pair näj / naqaj "far / near" together means "everyone, wherever you are from". That is the couplet logic of Chapter 25 doing social work: the form itself is the courtesy. Notice the register's other habits, which you already know: the perfect petenäq (Chapter 15), the free Set B pronoun ïx as subject of a non-verbal predicate (Chapter 3), and no loanword anywhere in sight.

The informal end. Now a real post from the corpus of Kaqchikel Facebook writing collected for this book, from a page working on language revitalization (Facebook corpus, lines 150-151):

Janila yojkikot ruma eqal eqal niqab'än samaj richin man xtikäm ta ri qach'ab'äl, richin chuqa' xtik'ase' pa k'amaya'l.
"We are very happy because little by little we are working so that our language will not die, and so that it will live on the internet."

janila  y-oj-kikot           ruma     eqal eqal        n-Ø-qa-b'än           samaj
very    INCOMPL-1pB-be.happy because  little.by.little INCOMPL-3sB-1pA-do    work

richin   man  xt-Ø-käm            ta   ri  qa-ch'ab'äl
so.that  NEG  POT-3sB-die         IRR  the 1pA-language

richin   chuqa'  xt-Ø-k'ase'      pa  k'amaya'l
so.that  also    POT-3sB-live     in  internet

Every structure is one you know: richin as "so that" (Chapter 21), the man ... ta frame around a potential verb (Chapters 12, 19), reduplicated eqal eqal "little by little". What makes it informal is the surface. The writer types yojkikot where the dictionary form is yojkiköt, and ruma where this book writes roma: on a phone, lax-vowel diacritics and glottal apostrophes are the first things to go, and dialect forms flow freely. Elsewhere in the same corpus you will find wakami, wakamin and even wokami side by side, chuqa without its apostrophe, Spanish sentences alternating with Kaqchikel ones, and English interface debris ("See more") embedded mid-line, with neologisms like silowachib'äl in the very same breath. None of it is bad Kaqchikel. It is the language relaxed, and being able to read it, restoring yojkiköt and chuqa' in your head as you go, is the final reading skill this book can give you. The same pages also show you the future being typed in real time: the corpus includes a course announcement for translators, a poem about sitting in the shade of a tree, congratulations to a graduate, and the proud notice of a book whose title alone is a Part I grammar lesson, Nintijoj wi' pa qach'ab'äl "I teach myself in our language" (Chapter 21's reflexive -i').

Reading: Ri qach'ab'äl wakami#

Ri Kaqchikel jun chike ri Maya' taq ch'ab'äl e k'o pa Iximulew. K'ïy winaqi' yetzijon pa Kaqchikel pa kochoch, pa k'ayb'äl, pa tijob'äl. Ri Kaqchikel Cholchi', ruq'a' ri Maya' Cholchi', nuya' tijonïk pa ruwi' rutz'ib'axik chuqa' rusik'ixik ri qach'ab'äl. Pa taq tijob'äl e k'o tijonela' nkik'üt ri tz'ib' chike ri ak'wala' pa ka'i' ch'ab'äl. Ri qach'ab'äl k'o chuqa' pa k'amaya'l: e k'o wuj, e k'o silowachib'äl, e k'o rutzijol pa Kaqchikel. Po k'o chuqa' k'ayewal. Pa jujun taq jay ri te'ej tata'aj man nkitzijoj ta chik ri qach'ab'äl chike ri kalk'wal; ri ak'wala' xa xe kaxlan tzij nketamaj. Roma ri', k'ïy winaqi' nkib'än samaj: nkitz'ib'aj wuj, nkib'än k'ak'a' taq tzij, nkiya' tijonïk pa k'amaya'l. Eqal eqal nsamäj ri tinamït richin man xtikäm ta ri ch'ab'äl, richin k'äs xtik'oje' kik'in ri qal, qamam.

Kaqchikel is one of the Mayan languages of Guatemala. Many people speak Kaqchikel in their homes, in the market, at school. The Kaqchikel Cholchi', a branch of the Maya Cholchi', gives classes on the writing and reading of our language. In the schools there are teachers who teach children their letters in two languages. Our language is also on the internet: there are books, there are videos, there is news in Kaqchikel. But there is also hardship. In some households the parents no longer speak the language to their children; the children learn only Spanish. For that reason, many people are working: they write books, they make new words, they give classes online. Little by little the community works so that the language will not die, so that it will remain alive with our children and grandchildren.

Patterns at a glance#

The doubled particle

Two relatives

The story of "and" and its friends

Register at a glance

Vocabulary#

Reference: the state in Kaqchikel#

Usage and dialect notes#

• we ~ wi. The conditional/disjunctive particle is wi in some towns, we in others, with no difference in meaning; the Kaqchikel Cholchi's own posts use we. This book has written wi since Chapter 22; produce whichever your community uses, and read both.
• Names for the language. Say qach'ab'äl among speakers, Kaqchikel or Kaqchikel ch'ab'äl when contrast is needed; Spanish is kaxlan tzij, or kaxlan alone once the topic is clear.
• chi relatives are for your ears first. In writing, prefer ri relatives, and keep the Chapter 17 antipassive rule when the head noun is the agent. Understand chi relatives everywhere; they are standard modern speech, not an error.
• Purism is a register, not a law. Po, tons, i are normal spoken Kaqchikel; xa ja ri', k'a ri', chuqa' are what a careful writer or radio announcer uses. Match your company, and never correct a speaker.
• Feed spelling. Expect missing apostrophes (chuqa for chuqa'), plain vowels for lax ones (yojkikot, wakamin), dialect ruma / roma, and Spanish or English mixed in. Restore the full forms silently when you read; use full ALMG spelling when you write.
• Neologisms vary in uptake. Kematz'ib', k'amaya'l and oyonib'äl are in wide real use; others (like let'et') live mostly in schools and print, while speakers say the Spanish word. Both facts are part of the sociolinguistic landscape; learn the coined word, and do not be surprised to hear bicicleta.
• The sequel's spellings. The companion volume this chapter cites writes wakamïn, rïn, chïk, chke where this book writes wakami, rin, chik, chike, applying a word-final vowel-laxing rule more broadly. When you quote, keep the source's spelling; when you write, keep ours, consistently.
• Respect vocabulary. Words like ajq'ij, Maya' Nimab'äl K'u'x and k'oxtum name living religious practice. Use them as their users do, plainly and with respect; "brujo" and its English equivalents are slurs you will hear reported, never words to repeat.

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter leaned on nearly everything: the alphabet politics of Chapter 1, the word-building of Chapter 7, relative clauses and the antipassive from Chapter 17, wi and the loanword connectors from Chapter 22, the reading method of Chapter 25, and the whole of Part II's habit of meeting the language inside Kaqchikel life. It is also the end of the book, for now, so here is where to go next. Read Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', the advanced sequel by the authors of our first source, whose chapter Champomali' gave this one its facts; its readings are real, hard, and worth every hour. Read the Kaqchikel Chronicles in Maxwell and Hill's edition to hear the sixteenth century, and the Cholsamaj and Kaqchikel Cholchi' anthologies, and the poets, to hear right now. Follow the Comunidad Lingüística online and let the feed be your daily reader. And above all, talk with speakers: take a class, visit, ask about names and days, thank people rik'in ronojel ak'u'x. The grandfather in our dialogue said it in six words: the language was left to us; don't forget it. Ri qach'ab'äl k'äs. Matyöx chiwe, matyöx k'a ri'. Our language is alive. Thank you all, and, for now, goodbye.