Chapter 23: Market, Food, and Home

Starting point#

Thursday is market day in Tecpán. Ana, the learner visiting from the States, has been staying with ma Kawoq and te Ixk'at. She goes to the market to buy for the house, and stops at the stall of xta Ixchel, who sells vegetables.

IXCHEL: Xseqër, Ana. ¿Achike nakanoj wakami?
Good morning, Ana. What are you looking for today?

ANA: Xseqër. Ninkanoj xkoya' chuqa' xnakät. ¿La k'o?
Good morning. I'm looking for tomatoes and onions. Are there any?

IXCHEL: Ja', k'o. Jeb'ël ri xkoya', käq chik. ¿Janipe' nawajo'?
Yes, there are. The tomatoes are lovely, red already. How many do you want?

ANA: Ka'i' etab'äl. ¿Janipe' rajil?
Two pounds. How much is it?

IXCHEL: Jun etab'äl, oxi' manq'uq'. Ka'i' etab'äl, waqi' manq'uq'.
One pound, three quetzals. Two pounds, six quetzals.

ANA: ¡Uy! Yalan jotöl ri rajil. ¿La man naqasaj ta jub'a'?
Oh! The price is really high. Won't you lower it a little?

IXCHEL: Ütz k'a, Ana. Ri ka'i' etab'äl, wo'o' manq'uq'; chuqa' ninsipaj jun chik xkoya' chawe. Tak'waj.
All right, Ana. The two pounds, five quetzals; and I'll throw in one more tomato for you. Take them.

ANA: Matyöx. Chuqa' taya' pe chwe oxi' xnakät chuqa' jun anx.
Thank you. And give me three onions and a head of garlic.

IXCHEL: Ja'. Ronojel, wuqu' manq'uq'.
Yes. Everything, seven quetzals.

ANA: Tak'waj ri pwäq. ¿La k'o saq'ul?
Here is the money (take the money). Are there bananas?

IXCHEL: Manäq, xk'is yan. Chwa'q k'o chik.
No, they're already finished. Tomorrow there will be more.

ANA: Ütz k'a ri'. Matyöx, k'a chwa'q.
Fine then. Thanks, until tomorrow.

Look at how much of this you already command. ¿Achike nakanoj? is a transitive verb in the incompletive with a question word (Chapter 11: Transitive Verbs in the Incompletive; Chapter 20: Asking Questions). ¿La k'o? is existence (Chapter 5: Existence, Location, and Having). rajil "its price" is a possessed noun (Chapter 4: Possession). Tak'waj and taya' pe are imperatives (Chapter 13: Commands, Requests, and Wishes), and ¿La man naqasaj ta jub'a'? wraps the same request in the polite negative question of Chapters 19 and 20. Awoma rat is a relational noun (Chapter 21: Relational Nouns in Depth). Xk'is yan and k'o chik use the particles of Chapter 22: Connecting Ideas and Keeping a Conversation Going. The rest of this chapter gives you the words to fill those frames.

How it works#

At the market: finding, asking, bargaining#

The market is k'ayb'äl (in some towns the fuller k'ayib'äl), a word built from -k'ayij "sell" with the place-and-instrument suffix -b'äl (Chapter 7: Nouns: Plurals, People Words, and Word-Building). The same word means "shop, store". The seller is k'ayinel (plural k'ayinela'), the buyer loq'onel, from -löq' "buy". Here are the moves of a typical purchase.

Opening. The seller usually speaks first:

The buyer answers with -kanoj "look for", -ajo' "want", or simply asks whether something is there:

Price. "Price" is a possessed noun, -ajil; "its price" is rajil (the r- of Set A before a vowel; "my price" would be wajil, which is the answer to the "Try it first" above). The question uses janipe' "how much" (also jampe and, in many towns, jaru):

janipe'    r-ajil
how.much   3sA-price
"how much is it?"

The quetzal, Guatemala's currency, is manq'uq', in origin the name of the male quetzal bird (you may also hear the Spanish word). The small unit of weight people buy by is the pound, etab'äl, literally "a measuring thing". Vegetables are also sold by the piece, with plain numbers: oxi' xnakät "three onions".

Too expensive. The positional jotöl "high, up" and its opposite qasan / qajnäq "lowered" describe prices:

To bargain you ask the seller to "lower it": taqasaj is the imperative of the derived transitive -qasaj "lower, bring down" (no suffix, because it is derived in -aj; Chapter 13), and jub'a' "a little" softens it:

Bargaining in a Kaqchikel market is gentle. A small reduction, or an extra item thrown in (jun chik "one more"), is the usual outcome; haggling hard over a few centavos would be poor manners with a neighbor.

Closing. The seller hands over the goods with tak'waj "take it, carry it off" (imperative of -k'waj "carry, take"). The buyer pays: -töj "pay" (nintöj "I pay it"), or simply "give the money".

Notice the directional pe "toward here" on taya' pe "hand it over (to me here)", and the relational noun -e for the recipient: chwe "to me", chawe "to you" (Chapter 14: Directionals and Verbs of Motion; Chapter 21).

Foods and how their words behave#

The food words themselves are in the Vocabulary bank ("Staples and foods", "Fruits and vegetables"). Here is what you need to know to use them.

Two formation patterns stand out. kaxlan "foreign, Spanish, of Castile" marks introduced goods: kaxlan wäy bread (literally "foreign tortilla"), kaxlan ya' soda ("foreign water"), kaxlan ik bell pepper, kaxlan ixim wheat. And ru-X Y "the X of Y" builds compound names: ruwäch che' "fruit" (literally "the face/fruit of tree"), ruwäch ichaj "vegetables" ("the fruit of greens"), ruti'ij äk' "chicken (meat)", ruya'al limonix "lime juice" (Chapter 7).

wäy "tortilla" also stands for food in general, and it is possessed like any noun: nuway, away, ruway, qaway (the lax ä tenses when a suffix or prefix brings the stress forward, as in Chapter 4). q'utu'n "cooked food, a dish" does the same: nuq'utun "my food". Many of the fruit and vegetable names are loans or adaptations (limonix, tra's, kulix, xna'j); the staple words (ixim, kinäq', ik, wäy, ik'oy, saq'ul) are old.

Animals. Most animal names have no separate plural; the number word or taq carries the plural (Chapter 7). A few do take -a' / -i': chikopi' "animals", tz'ikina' "birds", umuli' "rabbits", utiwa' "coyotes", b'alami' "jaguars", koti' "eagles". Useful body-part words for animals: xik'aj "wing" (ruxik' "its wing"), jey "tail" (rujey "its tail"), aqanaj "leg" (raqän "its leg"), eyaj "teeth" (rey). To raise animals is -k'iytisaj "cause to grow": nuk'iytisaj äk' "she raises chickens".

Flavors, tastes, and liking#

Each flavor word is an adjective that can also become a possessed abstract noun in ru-...-il / -al "its X-ness" (Chapter 7). Both are common: "the chile is hot" or "the chile has heat".

Flavor words are predicates, so they come first and take Set B (absolutive) subjects: ki' "it is sweet", with the zero 3rd person marker (Chapter 3: Pronouns and "Being"). To ask about the taste: ¿Achike rutijik? "What does it taste like?" (literally "what its eating?").

To say you like a food you have two patterns from Chapter 16: Wanting, Liking, Needing, Being Able: nqa chi nuwäch "it descends before my face" and ütz ninna' "I feel it good" (-na' "taste, feel" for flavors; ütz nintz'ët "I see it good" for looks).

n-Ø-qa             chi   nu-wäch
INCOMPL-3sB-descend  at    1sA-face
"I like it" (it descends before my face)

Meals and the table#

The day's meals are named with the root wa' "eat (intransitive)" and the noun wa'in "meal, eating":

The words for what is on the table and in the kitchen (plate, jug, pot, comal, grinding stone, basket, fork, spoon, knife, table, fire, firewood, hearthstone, pila) are in the Vocabulary bank under "Kitchen and table". Two of them deserve a comment: läq "plate" is possessed as nulaq (the ä tenses), and its plural is taq läq; rute' q'aq' "kitchen" is literally "the mother of the fire", a compound of the kind you met in Chapter 7.

Etiquette around food is warm and formulaic, and you should learn the formulas as fixed phrases. A host invites with the imperative of -wa': ¡Kawa'! "Eat!" to one person, ¡Kixwa'! "Eat, all of you!", ¡Kojwa'! "Let's eat!". The polite answer is Matyöx, and during a meal people keep urging each other on with Kawa' and answering Matyöx, kawa' rat "Thanks, you eat too". At the end, thanking each person present for the meal (Matyöx chi nuway "thanks for my food") is the custom, and an older person may reply that it is God who has given it. You do not have to reproduce every step as a visitor, but saying Matyöx when urged to eat, and again at the end, will be noticed and appreciated.

In the kitchen: from ear of corn to tortilla#

Corn is the center of the diet and of the culture, and the vocabulary reflects it: a just-forming young ear (och'), a fresh ear (äj), a dried ear (jäl), the shelled grain (ixim), the lime used to soften it (chun), the dough (ke'en), the finished tortilla (wäy), the tamalito (sub'an), each has its own word. So do the actions. Here is a short procedural text in the style of Chapter 22 (first, then, then). Read it for the verbs.

The verbs:

n-Ø-r-elesaj              ri  ixim   chi-r-ij       ri  jäl
INCOMPL-3sB-3sA-remove    the corn   at-3sA-back    the dried.ear
"she takes the corn off the cob"

Other kitchen verbs worth having: -b'än q'utu'n "cook, make food" (nub'än ruq'utun "she makes her food"), -tzakon "cook in a pot" (intransitive), -k'ilin "toast, sear (chiles, on the comal)", -sël "slice", -chayuj "strain", -tzij "light (a fire)" (xutzij ri q'aq' "she lit the fire"), -chüp "put out (a fire)", -ch'är si' "split firewood", -su' "wipe, dry (dishes)".

The milpa and its year#

The cornfield is awän, a word that also means "planted corn". The farmer is tikonel (from -tik "plant"). The main stages have their own names, and several are verbs in their own right (see "The milpa" in the Vocabulary bank). A seasonal text:

Culture note: making milpa. Planting corn together with beans and squash is one of the oldest farming systems in the Americas, and in the Kaqchikel highlands it is still mostly men's work, done with a hoe and a planting stick on small plots, often in stages shared among fathers, sons, and neighbors. The cycle begins at the end of the dry season with clearing and planting, continues through the rains with weeding, hoeing, and mounding, and ends with the harvest of dried ears, which are stored on the cob and shelled as needed. Many families combine a milpa with wage work or trade, and even households with very little land keep a few rows, because growing one's own corn is a matter of identity as well as food. Preparing that corn into tortillas is, by long custom, women's work, and both activities are social: people talk, joke, and tell stories while they do them. When you are a guest, showing interest in someone's awän or praising the wäy is always the right move.

The house, room by room#

"House" has two forms: the plain noun jay and the possessed stem -ochoch: wochoch "my house", awochoch, rochoch, qochoch, iwochoch, kochoch (Chapter 4). Several rooms are named with jay as the second element and -b'äl nouns or body-part nouns as the first: warab'äl jay "bedroom" (sleeping-place house), ruwa' jay "patio" (face of the house), raqän jay "corridor" (leg of the house), ruchi' jay "doorway" (mouth of the house), ruwi' jay "roof" (head of the house). Others are compounds or single words: nimajay "main room" (big house), rute' q'aq' "kitchen", wayb'äl "dining room; restaurant", tuj "sweatbath", xan "wall". The full list, with furniture, is in the Vocabulary bank under "The house".

Describing a house is an exercise in existence and location (Chapter 5) and in positional statives (Chapter 18: Positionals): k'o "there is", e k'o "there are", and the words for sitting, lying, standing, and hanging, plus the locative relational nouns pa ruwi' "on top of", chuxe' "under", chuwäch "in front of", chirij "behind", chupam "inside".

Notice how ri rochoch ri ma Kawoq "the house of Kawoq" is built: possessed noun first, then the possessor (Chapter 4). And notice that k'o is singular and e k'o plural, but low-animacy nouns like läq and b'ojo'y take neither a plural suffix nor obligatory e: k'iy läq "many plates" (Chapter 7).

kotz'-öl        jun  tz'i'   chi-u-xe'        ri  ch'atal
lie-POSITIONAL  one  dog     at-3sA-under     the table
"a dog is lying under the table"

Chores: who does what#

Household work vocabulary comes in pairs: a root transitive (-mës "sweep something", -ch'äj "wash something", -kem "weave something", -tik "plant something") and an antipassive intransitive in -on (-meson, -ch'ajon, -kemon, -tikon) used when you name the activity without an object (Chapter 17: Voice: Passive, Antipassive, and Focus). "I sweep the patio" is transitive; "I sweep" (that's what I do) is intransitive. Here is one pair fully segmented:

n-Ø-in-mës            ruwa'  jay        y-i-meson
INCOMPL-3sB-1sA-sweep  face   house      INCOMPL-1sB-sweep.ANTIP
"I sweep the patio"                      "I sweep"

The pattern is regular across the chore verbs:

Now the full chore list, with the verb class marked, because the class tells you which prefixes to use:

A short dialogue. Ana asks xta Ixchel about the household:

ANA: ¿Achike nib'än pa jay?
What do you all do at home?

IXCHEL: Konojel yojsamäj. Rin yimeson, yich'ajon, ninsu' ri taq läq.
We all work. I sweep, I do the washing, I dry the dishes.

ANA: ¿Chuqa' ri axib'al?
And your brother?

IXCHEL: Ri a Tz'ikin k'o pa Chiq'a'l, xa ja ri' töq npe, nuk'äm pe ya' chuqa' nuch'är ri si'.
Tz'ikin is in Comalapa, but when he comes, he brings water and splits the firewood.

ANA: ¿Achike nub'än ri ate'?
What does your mother do?

IXCHEL: Nub'än ri q'utu'n, nupön wäy, k'a ri' nkemon. Ri nutata' ntikon, nuk'iytisaj ri chikopi'.
She cooks, makes tortillas, and then she weaves. My father farms and raises the animals.

ANA: ¿La yitikir yatinto'? ¿Achike ninb'än?
Can I help? What shall I do?

IXCHEL: Tamesa' ruwa' jay, k'a ri' tanuk'u' ri si'.
Sweep the patio, then stack the firewood.

The imperatives at the end follow Chapter 13: tamesa' (root -mës, so -a' is added, and the lax ë tenses to e), tanuk'u' (root -nük', suffix -u' by vowel harmony, ü tenses to u).

Culture note: market day. Most highland towns have one or two market days a week, when the plaza and the streets around it fill with stalls from before dawn until early afternoon. Tecpán's big market is on Thursday. Sellers come from many towns, each known for something (textiles from one place, onions or pottery from another), and a good many of them speak two or three Mayan languages to serve their customers. The market is where Kaqchikel is most alive in public: prices, jokes, greetings, and gossip all go on in the language. For a learner it is the best classroom there is. Go early, greet the sellers (Chapter 2: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk), ask ¿Janipe' rajil?, and buy something small.

Patterns at a glance#

Market phrases

Flavor: adjective and noun

Liking

Meals, house, locating, chores

Vocabulary#

This chapter meets more words than any other, so the bank comes in two layers. The first table is the core: the words the dialogues, texts, and exercises of this chapter actually run on, and the ones later chapters assume. Learn these to mastery. Everything else lives in the reference tables below it, split by theme: read them, raid them when you need a word, but do not try to memorize them in one pass. A market vocabulary is acquired the way it is used, one shopping trip at a time.

Reference: the full pantry, and the rest of the market#

Everything below is for browsing and looking up, theme by theme; the "core" marks in the Notes column flag the items that also appear in the table above or return in later chapters.

Market

Staples and foods

Fruits and vegetables

Animals

Flavors and eating

Kitchen and table

The milpa

The house

Chores

Usage and dialect notes#

• k'ayb'äl / k'ayib'äl. Both are heard; the shorter form is typical of the central towns. The word covers "market", "shop", and "store" alike; a "market day" is simply k'ayb'äl plus the day.
• janipe' / jampe / jaru. All mean "how much, how many"; jampe also means "when" in many towns, so context matters. The answer to a price question is a bare number with manq'uq', or number plus rajil.
• Money. You will hear the Spanish words for quetzal and for cents alongside manq'uq' and pwäq. Use manq'uq' when speaking Kaqchikel; no one will misunderstand the Spanish.
• ruwäch che'. Literally "tree fruit", so strictly speaking a pineapple is not one; in practice speakers use it for fruit in general.
• ki' is both "sweet" and "tasty, delicious", as in many languages. simil is a stronger "delicious, exquisite", the word for praising well-made food. tzäy "salty" is also written tz'äy.
• Plural animals. Only a handful of animal words take a plural suffix (tz'ikina', umuli', utiwa', b'alami', chikopi', koti'). Dogs, cats, cows, horses, pigs do not: oxi' tz'i' "three dogs". Verb agreement, however, is plural: ye'etz'an ri tz'i' "the dogs play".
• Hospitality formulas. Kawa', Matyöx, Matyöx chi nuway are fixed. Learn them as chunks.
• Spelling of xot / xo't. The comal appears as xot in the glossary and xo't in some texts; the pronunciation has a final glottal for many speakers.
• wayb'äl. The same word serves for "dining room" and "restaurant": a place for eating.

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. Mixing up -wa' and -tij. "Eat" with no object is -wa' (intransitive, Set B subject): yiwa'. "Eat something" is -tij (transitive, Set A subject): nintij wäy. This is the most common learner error in this area.
2. Saying nim rajil for "expensive". Prices are jotöl "high" or qasan "lowered", the positional words of Chapter 18; "big price" is not idiomatic.
3. Using the transitive verb when you only name the activity. "I sweep (that's my job)" is yimeson, not ninmës; keep ninmës for "I sweep it".
4. Pluralizing low-animacy nouns with -a' / -i'. "Many plates" is k'iy läq, not a suffixed form; the number word or taq does the work.
5. Forgetting the directional pe in "give me": taya' pe chwe, "hand it over here to me".
6. Translating "there are four chairs" with a bare k'o. Countable visible objects in a group take e k'o: e k'o kaji' ch'akät.

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter applied the grammar of Chapters 3 through 22 to the market, the kitchen, the field, and the house, and gave you the words to live there. Chapter 24: People, Work, Body, and Feelings does the same for family, jobs, clothing, the body, and emotions, and Chapter 25: Reading Real Kaqchikel takes you into authentic texts where this everyday vocabulary appears in stories and ceremonial speech.