Chapter 29: Samaj - Work, Home, and Town

Starting point#

Saturday morning in Iximche'. a Tz'ikin is home from Chiq'a'l for the weekend. He and his father walk past the house of their neighbor, ma B'alam, where two masons are at work.

KAWOQ: Katzu' apo, nuk'ajol. Yesamäj chik ri e ka'i' ajtz'aq chuwäch rochoch ri ma B'alam. Jukumaj xe'apon wakami.
Look over there, son. The two masons are at work again in front of ma B'alam's house. They arrived early today.

TZ'IKIN: Iwïr k'a runaj chik xe'apon, roma nim jöb' xub'än. ¿Achike nkib'än wakami?
Yesterday they arrived late, because it rained hard. What are they doing today?

KAWOQ: Nkib'än jun k'ak'a' rupan jay. Xkib'än yan li'an ri ulew, xkitïk yan ri ruxatatil. Blok ri xan, lamina ri ruwi'. Man achi'el ta ojer.
They are adding a new room. They have already leveled the ground and set the posts. The walls are block, the roof is lamina. Not like in the old days.

TZ'IKIN: ¿Achike rub'anikil ri qochoch töq xab'än, tata?
What was our house like when you built it, father?

KAWOQ: Rik'in xan xqab'än, chuqa' k'im ri ruwi'. K'o chi xqatïk nab'ey ri ruxatatil, k'a ri' xqajotob'a' ri xan. Kow ri samaj, po ri jay xukoch' ri kab'raqän.
We built it with adobe, and the roof was thatch. We had to set the posts first, then raise the walls. The work was hard, but the house withstood the earthquake.

TZ'IKIN: ¿Achike roma nub'än jun k'ak'a' rupan jay ri ma B'alam?
Why is ma B'alam adding a room?

KAWOQ: Roma ri ruk'ajol, ri a Kaqche', k'o Pa Jotöl. Xeq'ax yan oxi' juna' töq xb'e el. Ronojel ik' nutäq pe pwäq, chuqa' ri ma B'alam numöl ruchi'. Wakami ntikïr nub'än ri jay.
Because his son, Kaqche', is in the States. Three years have passed since he left. Every month he sends money, and B'alam saves it. Now he can build the room.

TZ'IKIN: Ke ri' nkib'än kach'alal jujun nutijoxela' chuqa'. Jujun kitata' e k'o Pa Jotöl, jujun chik yesamäj pa Armita.
The families of some of my students do the same. Some of their fathers are in the States, others work in Guatemala City.

KAWOQ: ¿La ütz yesamäj ri atijoxela' pa tijob'äl?
Do your students work well at school?

TZ'IKIN: Ütz yesamäj, po chanin chanin nkib'än ronojel. Nkib'ij chwe: "Tijonel, xinb'anxtaj ri nusamaj!"
They work well, but they do everything in a rush. They tell me: "Teacher, I did my work in a flash!"

KAWOQ: ¿Xinb'anxtaj? ¿Achike ri'?
Xinb'anxtaj? What is that?

TZ'IKIN: "Chanin xinb'än." Ke ri' yetzijon ri aj Chiq'a'l: nkiya' jun -xta- chupam ri tzij.
"I did it quickly." That is how Comalapa people talk: they put a -xta- inside the word.

KAWOQ: Jeb'ël. Wakami jo' pa tinamit, nuk'ajol. K'o jun nutaqkil: k'o qak'as rik'in ri k'ayinel richin lamina, k'o chi nb'entojo'.
Nice. Now let's go into town, son. I have an errand: we owe the lamina seller, and I have to go pay it.

TZ'IKIN: Ütz k'a. Rin yib'e awik'in; ninwajo' nsokäx ri nuwi', roma nim chik.
All right. I'll go with you; I want to get my hair cut, because it's long now.

Every target of this chapter is already in play. The house talk: ajtz'aq "mason", rupan jay "room", ruxatatil "posts", xan "adobe, wall", k'im "thatch", lamina, blok, -jotob'a' "raise", -koch' "withstand". The time pair: jukumaj "early" and k'a runaj chik "late". The far-away son: k'o Pa Jotöl, nutäq pe pwäq "he sends money here", numöl ruchi' "he saves it up". The money errand: qak'as "our debt", nb'entojo' "I go pay it" (the go-and-do verb of Chapter 14 with -töj "pay"). And the new morphology: xinb'anxtaj "I did it in a flash".

How it works#

Building a house, then and now#

The sequel volume by our source's authors devotes a whole section to b'anonïk jay, house building, and the vocabulary splits neatly into two layers: the old materials and the new.

The old house was built from what the land gives. Its frame was a set of posts, xata't (possessed ruxatatil jay "the posts of the house"), cut from hard wood such as ukuy (the guachipilín tree) because it resists rot; people painted the posts and beams with q'olil, sticky pine resin, to protect them. The walls were xan "adobe" (sun-dried mud brick; the same word does duty for "wall", as you learned in Chapter 23), or in a poorer house patz'än "cornstalks" closed off with tz'aläm "planks". Walls and frame were lashed together with tz'ulu', reed cane. The roof was k'im, thatch grass, cut on mountain plots called setaj and carried down on someone's back; the paths were steep, and in the rain the carriers slipped (xejilijo'). Elders in the sequel's town of Junajpu' (Santa María de Jesús) remember those houses as cool in the heat, warm in the cold, dry in the rain, and, when the frame was well tied with cane, able to ride out an earthquake, kab'raqän.

The new house is built from what money buys. Walls of blok "cement block" or poron xan "fired brick" (literally "burned adobe"), a roof of lamina "corrugated metal sheet" or xot ruwi' jay "roof tiles" (the roof tile is a xot, the same clay word as the tortilla griddle), big panes of lemow "glass", a poured ruxe' jay "floor", walls plastered with xolon chun "mortar" (from chun "lime") and whitewashed (-chunaj) or painted (-aq'omaj ri jay, literally "to medicine the house").

The building itself is a sequence of verbs, and the sequence is fixed enough to learn as a list:

Notice -tïk "plant": posts are planted like a crop, and the phrase k'o chi natïk ütz ri ruxatatil "you have to set the posts well" carries the same respect for foundations as the milpa. Notice also that the whole list runs on bare second-person incompletives, the natural Kaqchikel register for instructions and procedures (compare the weaving instructions in the sequel, which are written exactly this way).

Old and new meet in people's mouths as a tense contrast you already own. The old way lives in the completive and in the passive of Chapter 17:

The new way lives in the incompletive and the perfect:

And the rooms are the ones you learned in Chapter 23: nimajay "main room", warab'äl jay "bedroom", rute' q'aq' "kitchen", ruwa jay "patio", ruchi' jay "doorway", ruwi' jay "roof". A well-off family in the sequel's building dialogue orders a house of seven rupan jay - kitchen, bedrooms, main room, side rooms, and a room just for studying - which tells you how the word works: rupan jay, literally "the inside of the house", is counted for each room.

The town at work#

Chapter 7 gave you the two machines that build worker words, and this chapter runs them at full speed. The suffix -el / -onel on a verb gives the doer: k'ayinel "vendor", tikonel "farmer", tijonel "teacher", sokanel "barber" (from -sokaj "cut hair"), t'isonel "tailor, seamstress", eleq'om "thief" (an old formation on -eleq'aj "steal"). The prefix aj- attaches to a thing or place and gives the person of that thing: ajtz'aq "mason" (one of construction), ajkem "weaver", ajtz'ib' "secretary, scribe" (one of writing), ajq'ij "day-keeper", ajch'ame'y "the one of the staff" (below). The sequel builds them freely: ch'ich'inel "driver" (one who runs a ch'ich' "vehicle"), and even ajtuk-tuk "tuk-tuk driver", from the little three-wheeled taxi whose Spanish-Guatemalan name Kaqchikel has happily swallowed.

Each worker has a place, usually a -b'äl noun or a jay compound:

Around the ruk'u'x tinamit "town center" cluster the public places: the k'ayb'äl, the Rochoch Ajaw "church", the k'astanib'äl "park", the etz'anib'äl "playing field", the wayb'äl jay "eatery", the warab'äl jay "hotel" (see the dialect notes: at home this same phrase is "bedroom"), and the q'atb'äl tzij "town hall".

Q'atb'äl tzij deserves unpacking: -q'ät is "cut", tzij is "word", so the town hall is "the place where the word is cut", where matters are decided; a q'atoy tzij "cutter of the word" is a mayor or judge, and the moloj ri'ïl q'atb'äl tzij is the town council. The most distinctive figure is the ajch'ame'y, literally "the one of the ch'ame'y", the staff of office. The staff is the visible sign of Maya civil-religious authority, and the word covers the whole range of offices its bearer may hold: constable, deputy mayor, cofradía elder, town elder. The sequel's account of local government is worth summarizing here, because the words make no sense without it. Before the invasion, Kaqchikel towns governed themselves: their own authorities settled disputes, married couples, and organized the town's work. Colonial and republican rule pushed that authority aside, and many towns ended up with two parallel governments, a ladino municipality and an indigenous one. Elections have been slowly reversing the balance: in a number of towns Kaqchikel men and women now run the municipality itself, and in some, Tz'olöj Ya' and Iximche' among them, the two halls have merged into one rochoch q'atb'äl tzij where the town's business is done in Kaqchikel.

One more piece of town vocabulary, learned best with its idiom: che' is "wood, tree", but pa che', "in the wood", means "in jail", a memory of the wooden stocks. The sequel's police stories use it constantly: Xk'wäx ri eleq'om pa che'. "The thief was taken to jail."

Money: paying, owing, borrowing, saving#

Work brings pwäq "money", counted in manq'uq' "quetzales" (Chapter 23), and money talk runs on a small set of nouns and verbs.

Price. Rajïl is "its price, its cost", always possessed: ¿Jampe rajïl re lamina re'? "How much does this lamina cost?" Jotöl rajïl "its price is high (it's expensive)", qasan rajïl "its price is lowered (it's cheap)" - both idioms use positional-perfect forms you know, "risen" and "lowered".

Paying. The verb is -töj "pay", the noun toj "payment, fine": Xintöj ri lamina. "I paid for the lamina." K'o chi natöj ri atoj. "You have to pay your fine."

Owing. A debt is k'as, and it is possessed by the one who owes: nuk'as "my debt", qak'as "our debt"; a debtor is ajk'as. The question every buyer asks at the end is:

¿Jampe qa-k'as (awik'in)?
how.much 1pA-debt (with-you)
"How much do we owe (you)?"

The sequel's market scene turns on exactly this question (a customer breaks a pot seller's wares and asks Jampe qak'as k'a?, draft, p. 95). The answer names a figure, and paying it is -töj: K'o juk'al wo'o' manq'uq' ik'as wik'in. - Ütz k'a, nqatöj. "You(pl) owe me twenty-five quetzales. - Fine, we'll pay it."

Borrowing and lending. One verb, -qäj, covers "borrow", "lend", and "rent"; the direction is read off the persons: Xinqäj jun ch'ich' chre ri ma B'alam. "I borrowed a truck from ma B'alam." ¿La yatikïr naqäj kan jub'a' pwäq chwe? Ninya' chik chawe pa jun ik'. "Can you lend me a little money? I'll give it back to you in a month."

Saving. The idiom is lovely: -möl ruchi' ri pwäq, "gather the mouth (the edge) of the money", to save up little by little. The sequel says of families with someone in the States:

Nikimöl ruchi' kipwaq jun wo'o', lajuj juna'. K'a ri' nkijotob'a' kochoch ch'anin.
"They save up their money for five or ten years. Then they put up their house quickly." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 103)

Note in passing the draft's spellings ch'anin and its unapostrophed chuqa elsewhere; our book writes chanin, chuqa'.

The bank. Pwaqb'äl jay, "money-place house", is the bank, and money is taken out with -elesaj plus the directional el: Xib'e pa pwaqb'äl jay; xinwelesaj el wok'al manq'uq'. "I went to the bank; I took out a hundred quetzales." Change handed back is ruk'exb'al (from -k'ëx "exchange"): Xutzolij ri nuk'exb'al chwe ri k'ayinel. "The vendor returned my change to me."

Errands like these are where the go-and-do verbs of Chapter 14 earn their keep: nb'entojo' ri qak'as "I go pay our debt", xb'erelesaj pwäq pa pwaqb'äl jay "she went to take out money at the bank", xeb'eloq'on pa k'ayb'äl "they went shopping at the market".

Quickly: the rapidity suffix -xta-#

Chapter 10 flagged this form in a footnote-sized dialect note; here it becomes a pattern you can use, because it is part of the everyday speech of the towns this book follows. In Chiq'a'l (San Juan Comalapa), where a Tz'ikin teaches, and in neighboring Pwaqil (San José Poaquil), a verb can take the suffix -xta- "quickly, in a flash" between the stem and a final consonant that marks the verb's transitivity: -n if the verb is intransitive, -j if it is transitive. The reference grammar in the sequel gives it half a page; its examples are precious because the pattern appears in no other published grammar. Here is one, taken apart:

Xelxtan ri xtän. "The girl left quickly." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 216)

x-Ø-el-xta-n          ri xtän
COMPL-3sB-leave-QUICK-ITR  the girl
"the girl left quickly"

And a transitive one, the draft's xuloqxtaj "he quickly bought it" (p. 216), from a sentence about grabbing an umbrella (ruparab'al) in the rain:

x-Ø-u-loq-xta-j
COMPL-3sB-3sA-buy-QUICK-TR
"he quickly bought it"

Three mechanical points, all visible in the attested forms:

1. The transitivity consonant. Intransitive -xtan: xelxtan "she left quickly", xojwaxtan "we ate quickly" (draft p. 217; the draft spells it xojwaxtän, with the regular laxing of a word-final syllable). Transitive -xtaj: xuloqxtaj "he quickly bought it", xkijaqxtaj "they opened it quickly" (draft p. 217).
2. The stem adjusts. Because the root is no longer word-final, its lax vowel tenses (jäq > jaqxtaj), and a root-final glottal element simplifies: the glottal stop of -wa' "eat" drops (waxtan), and the ejective of -löq' "buy" loses its catch (loqxtaj).
3. Any aspect. The suffix combines with incompletive, completive, and potential alike: nelxtan "she leaves quickly", xelxtan "she left quickly", xtelxtan "she will leave quickly" (the first and third are regular extrapolations from the stated rule; the corpus attests the completive).

With the rule stated, you can build forms for other root verbs, and this is exactly what a Tz'ikin hears in his classroom: xinb'anxtaj ri nusamaj "I did my work in a flash" (b'än > b'anxtaj), xwarxtan ri ne'y "the baby fell asleep quickly", xtzolinxtan "he came right back". Two cautions. First, the attested examples are all root verbs; whether Comalapa speakers put -xta- on derived -Vj verbs the corpus does not show, so do not build those. Second, the suffix is regional: in Iximche' or Tz'olöj Ya' say chanin (chanin xinb'än "I did it quickly") and simply recognize -xta- when Comalapa friends use it. That asymmetry, produce the plain form, understand the dialect form, is the normal condition of a real speaker, and this book will ask it of you more than once in Part II.

Again and again: the repetitive -(V)la'#

The second suffix is not regional at all; it runs right through the sequel's stories. Added to a transitive verb, -(V)la' says the action happened repeatedly, or was distributed over many objects or recipients, one after another. English needs a phrase ("kept asking", "greeted them one by one", "built house after house"); Kaqchikel needs three sounds.

The shape depends on the stem:

The grammar's own example is a classroom sentence, so it belongs to a Tz'ikin by right:

Xe'intola' ri tijoxela'. "I helped the students repeatedly." or "I helped a lot of students." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 217)

x-e-in-to-la'            ri tijoxela'
COMPL-3pB-1sA-help-REP    the students
"I helped the students one after another"

Both readings are live, and that ambiguity is the point: the suffix says the helping was multiple, and context decides whether the multiplicity lies in the times or in the students. More examples, built on the pattern:

The last one is straight from the sequel's own prose about the postwar years (draft, p. 140) and shows two useful details: the suffix sits before the reflexive ki' (Chapter 21), and the irrealis ta slips in between verb and reflexive, exactly where Chapter 19 predicts. Three restrictions to remember: the suffix belongs mainly to transitive verbs; it does not attach to verbs derived from positional roots (Chapter 18); and a -(V)la' verb stays a normal transitive, taking the full Set A and Set B machinery like any other.

Early and late: jukumaj and k'a runaj chik#

Chapter 9 gave you the pair jukumaj "early" and k'arunaj "late" in a single line; the sequel confirms both and writes the second as two words, k'a runaj, often reinforced with chik "already": k'a runaj chik, roughly "late by now, already late". One of its future-tense examples is exactly the sentence every working household needs:

Xtoqa k'a runaj chïk. "She'll arrive late." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 216)

The pair frames the working day, and combines freely with the verbs of motion and their directionals (Chapter 14):

Write it k'a runaj or k'arunaj as your materials do; it is one expression, and the k'a in it is the same "still, until" particle you know from k'a ri' "then" and k'a wakami "until now".

Leaving to work: Armita and Pa Jotöl#

Now the hardest part of the chapter, and the part most worth doing well, because it is the conversation Kaqchikel families are actually having. The sequel's essays and readings on q'axawinaqi' "migration" lay out the facts soberly. Farming families feel the squeeze first: when the rains fail or fall too hard, the harvest rots or withers, and a family that knows only farming has nothing to sell. Some look for work in the cities, Armita (Guatemala City), Pan Q'än (Antigua), B'oko' (Chimaltenango); some decide to leave the country, yeb'e Pa Jotöl "they go to the States". The readings name two roads there: with papers granted by the champomal "government", which most people never obtain, or without them, paying a utiw achin, a "coyote man" (the people-smuggler; utiw is the animal), whose price is counted in the tens of thousands of quetzales. The crossing, ri q'axanïk, is expensive and dangerous, and the family left behind worries: the verb is -k'uxlaj, "to carry someone on one's heart", which is both "worry about" and "miss". Money sent home, saved jun wo'o', lajuj juna' "for five or ten years", very often becomes a house; a good house is how a returned migrant marks what the years away were for.

The grammar of this talk is grammar you already own, which is why it belongs in this chapter as recycling rather than novelty:

The perfect for where life stands (Chapter 15):

Obligation and hard necessity (Chapter 16): K'o chi ninmöl ruchi' ri nupwaq. "I have to save up my money." K'o chi xub'än ka'i' samaj. "He had to work two jobs."

Sending and receiving with directionals (Chapter 14): from the family's side, money comes pe: Nutäq pe pwäq ronojel ik'. "He sends money (hither) every month." From the migrant's side, it goes el: Nintäq el pwäq chiwe. "I send money (thither) to you all."

Although gets a new word, the sequel's stape "although, even if": Stape k'ayew ri samaj, man nuqasaj ta ruk'u'x. "Although the work is hard, he does not lose heart." (The idiom -qasaj -k'u'x, "lower one's heart", is the sequel's phrase for giving up.)

Reading: Jun wuj richin a Kaqche'#

Ma B'alam shows ma Kawoq the letter his son sent from the States.

Loq'oläj nute', nutata':

¿La ütz iwäch? Rin ütz nuwäch, matyöx chi re ri Ajaw. Wawe' Pa Jotöl in k'o wi. Xeq'ax yan oxi' juna' töq xinel el pa qatinamit. Yisamäj kik'in ri ajtz'aq: yeqab'än nima'q taq jay. K'ayew ri samaj, po ütz rutojik. Ronojel ik' nintäq el jub'a' pwäq chiwe, chuqa' ninmöl ruchi' ri nupwaq wawe'. Yalan yixink'uxlaj. K'ayew ninna' ri k'aslem, roma näj k'o wi ri qatinamit. Stape k'ayew, man ninqasaj ta nuk'u'x. Pa kaji' juna' xkitzolin pe. Töq xkitzolin pe, xtinjotob'a' jun wochoch: blok ri xan, lamina ri ruwi', k'o ta jun rute' q'aq', ka'i' warab'äl jay, jun nimajay. Tichajij iwi'.

Ri ik'ajol, Kaqche'

Dear mother and father: How are you? I am well, thank God. I am here in the States. Three years have passed since I left our town. I work with the masons: we build big houses. The work is hard, but the pay is good. Every month I send a little money to you, and I save up my money here. I miss you very much. I find life hard, because our town is far away. Although it is hard, I do not lose heart. In four years I will come back. When I come back, I will put up a house of my own: block walls, a lamina roof, and may it have a kitchen, two bedrooms, and a main room. Take care of yourselves. Your son, Kaqche'

Patterns at a glance#

The rapidity suffix (Comalapa, Poaquil)

The repetitive-distributive suffix

Money phrases

Building a house

Vocabulary#

Reference: around the town#

Usage and dialect notes#

• -xta- is a badge of two towns. Produce it if your community does; otherwise say chanin. Comalapa and Poaquil speakers will understand your plain form, and you will understand their fast one. Do not extend -xta- to derived -Vj verbs; the attested pattern is on root verbs.
• warab'äl jay: bedroom or hotel? Our primary source, and Chapter 23, use warab'äl jay for "bedroom". The sequel's town vocabulary glosses the same phrase "hotel" (a sleeping-house for travelers) and uses bare warab'äl for the bedroom. Both make sense ("sleeping place"); context decides, and in a town-center conversation the hotel reading is the likely one.
• One clay word, two objects. Xot is the tortilla griddle and the roof tile; xot ruwi' jay "roof xot" disambiguates. Likewise xan is both the adobe brick and the wall built of it, and by extension walls generally, even of block.
• raqän jay. Chapter 23 gave raqän jay "corridor" from our primary source. In the sequel's building texts raqän ri jay, "the legs of the house", are its posts, alongside the more specific ruxatatil jay. Listen for which "leg" a speaker means.
• pa che' "in jail". Never "in the tree" in a town story. The phrase remembers the wooden stocks of colonial punishment.
• Job words have no gender. Ajtz'aq, ch'ich'inel, q'atoy tzij, sokanel apply to men and women alike; the sequel's authors make a point of it. Add ixöq or achin only if the distinction matters: jun ixöq ajtz'aq "a woman mason".
• A word to know and never use. In the sequel's street stories, learners meet ixto / ixta, a slur that some ladinos use for indigenous people; the story's whole point is the injustice of it. Recognize it, understand what has happened when you hear it, and do not repeat it.
• Spelling drift. The draft sequel writes wakamïn, ch'anin, chïk, k'a runaj chïk; this book writes wakami, chanin, chik, k'a runaj chik (Chapter 9's one-word k'arunaj is the same expression). When you quote a text, keep its spelling; when you write your own, be consistent.
• Money registers. For large sums, most speakers switch to Spanish numbers (Chapter 9); the vigesimal forms (wok'al manq'uq' "a hundred quetzales", lajk'al "two hundred") are alive in careful speech and in bargaining.

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. Do not double the "quickly": xinb'anxtaj already contains it; chanin xinb'anxtaj is redundant (though speakers do it for emphasis).
2. -(V)la' replaces the -j of a derived verb; keep both and you get a non-word (xuk'utujla'). And the suffix needs a transitive host: "they walked and walked" is not built with -la'.
3. K'as is possessed by the ower, not the owed: nuk'as awik'in "my debt to you" (literally "my debt with you").
4. -qäj works both directions; Xinqäj pwäq chre is "I borrowed money from him" (money to-him being the source), so give the sentence a context or add kan ("lend out") when you mean lending.
5. Rajïl never stands bare: ask ¿Jampe rajïl?, not ¿Jampe ajïl?.
6. The migrant's money comes pe and goes el depending on who is speaking; get the directional from the speaker's position, not from English "send".

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter is Part I working for a living: the agent nouns of Chapter 7 (Nouns: Plurals, People Words, and Word-Building) staff the town, the perfects of Chapter 15 (States, Results, and Ongoing Actions) tell its life stories, the go-and-do verbs of Chapter 14 (Directionals and Verbs of Motion) run its errands, k'o chi from Chapter 16 (Wanting, Liking, Needing, Being Able) drives its obligations, and the rooms and prices of Chapter 23 (Market, Food, and Home) get their bills paid. The two new suffixes, -xta- and -(V)la', are your first taste of morphology the standard references barely record, learned the way speakers learn it, from the towns that use it. The other chapters of Part II keep to the same bargain: one domain of Kaqchikel life at a time, with the grammar that domain actually runs on.