Chapter 1: Sounds and Spelling

Starting point#

Here is a short greeting exchange. Read it aloud several times, following the notes below it, and listen for the sounds this chapter describes; the grammar comes later, in Chapter 2: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk.

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 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 tenser, slightly held b. Do not exaggerate the inward pull; many speakers barely make it, and tension and timing matter more.

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, whose words both have a native-speaker recording in the app: play them back to back until you can hear the difference, and only then try to say them.

Where a pair has no recording, use one you can hear as your model: qulaj teaches you where q is made, kaj puts a plain k in the same frame, and recording your own voice lets you check the rest.

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:

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". Three 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. A tense vowel in a final syllable simply stays tense: ya' "water" keeps its a in ruya' "its water". One more regularity: a vowel directly before a glottal stop is always tense, which is why ya', tz'i' and juyu' have plain vowels. Together these two rules make much of the later grammar look regular rather than arbitrary.

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 stretch their last syllable; see Chapter 2), 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. So the convention is: write the glottal stop where it belongs to a word's own shape, inside it or at its end, and never at the start. When a prefix attaches to a vowel-initial word, the stop sometimes resurfaces and sometimes does not; Chapter 10: Intransitive Verbs in the Incompletive shows when.

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. Clusters beginning with x- are pronounced as written; after some other prefixes speakers slip in a brief helping vowel, which Chapter 10 explains.

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 usually rise at the end, or rise and then drop sharply: ¿La ütz awäch? "Are you well?" With the question particle la the rise is optional, and many speakers let such a question fall like a statement (Chapter 20: Asking Questions). Without la, the rising tune is the only thing marking a question, so make it clear.

Greetings have a stylized melody of their own, stretching and stepping down on the last syllable; Chapter 2 teaches it along with the greetings themselves. Otherwise Kaqchikel intonation will feel familiar.

Dialects: one language, many accents#

This book follows the speech of the central highlands around Tecpán and Comalapa, which also anchors the written standard. Most variation between towns is in the vowels. ä is the one lax vowel every town keeps, but each gives it its own color, from the e of "bet" in Comalapa to a vowel English does not have in Tecpán; the "cup" value taught above is a safe default understood everywhere. The other lax vowels are less robust, and ë is fully distinct only in San José Poaquil. Appendix D collects the differences you are most likely to hear. 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#

This text is for your mouth and ears; you will learn to build sentences like these later. Read it aloud line by line, slowly, checking every glottalized consonant, lax vowel and final devoiced w, y, l, r. Every word in it is in this chapter's vocabulary or the dialogue above, except a few small grammatical words that later chapters explain.

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, 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.
• Write every mark. The two dots and the apostrophe are letters: chaj and chäj, ya' and ya, tz'i' and tzi are different words, or no word at all. People drop them in texting and handwriting; a learner should not.
• Informal and older spelling. You will see q written as k or c, k' as "c'", and the glottal stop as a curly quote or a saltillo. Convert to the ALMG letters before looking a word up.

Looking back and ahead#

You now have the sounds and the spelling, and a first greeting exchange. Chapter 2: Greetings, Names, and Polite Talk turns the dialogue above into real conversation. The lax-vowel rule will pay off in every chapter from Chapter 4 on.