Quiché language

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Quiché (K'iche ')

Spoken in

Guatemala
speaker 2,000,000
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2 ( B ) myn (all Maya) ( T ) -

The Quiché language (Spanish) or K'iche ' (own name) is the language of the Quiché indigenous people in Guatemala and the most widely spoken Mayan language with over 2 million speakers .

distribution

Spoken Quiché language (Wikitongues project)

The Quiché-language area includes large parts of the highlands of Guatemala, especially in the Quiché department , as well as in Totonicapán , Sololá and Quetzaltenango . It is the most widely spoken indigenous language in Guatemala and one of the indigenous languages ​​in America with the largest number of speakers. Aside from a few remote areas, most Quiché speakers also have some command of Spanish .

Quiché has quite a few different dialects, which some experts, especially the Summer Linguistic Institute ( SIL International ) consider to be their own languages. The Central Quiché variant makes up the largest number of speakers and is also preferred in the media and in schools. Some other significant dialects are West-Central Quiché, San-Andrés-Quiché, Joyabaj-Quiché, East-Quiché, Nahualá-Quiché, and Cunén-Quiché. Although quiché has no official status in Guatemala, it is now taught in some schools and used on the radio. So far, however, only a few people can read and write Quiché, both at the same time according to SIL information only 20,000 people (about 1%), and a further 20,000 can only read it.

In the 2002 census, 890,596 (8.7%) said K'iche 'was the mother tongue; 1,270,953 (11.3%) called themselves K'iche ' . SIL International, on the other hand, gives 1.9 million speakers for Central Quiché alone, together with other, smaller Quiché variants well over 2 million.

Old literary tradition

The best-known work that was handed down in Quiché, albeit in Latin script, is the Popol Vuh ( Popol Wuj in today's Quiché spelling).

Before the Conquista , Quiché was written using the Maya script .

Phonology

Vowels

[a] Unrounded open front tongue vowel a
[ɛ] Unrounded, half-open front tongue vowel e
[i] Unrounded closed front tongue vowel i
[O] Rounded, semi-closed back vowel O
[u] Rounded closed back vowel u

Consonants

  Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
  easy ejective easy ejective easy ejective easy ejective easy ejective easy
Plosives p  [p] b '  [ɓ] t   [t] t '  [t']   k  [k] k '  [k'] q  [q] q '  [q']  '   [ʔ]
Affricates   ts  [ʦ] ts '  [ʦ'] ch  [ʧʰ] ch '  [ʧ']          
Fricatives   s  [s] x  [ʃ]   j  [χ] h  [h]
Nasals   m  [m]   n  [n]        
Liquids   l  [l]  r  [r]        
Half vowels       y  [j]   w  [w]    

orthography

From the colonial period until well into the 20th century , different spellings based on Spanish were used for all Maya languages . Father Ximénez also used a fundamentally Spanish orthography when fixing the Popol Wuj in writing. A generally recognized writing standard has only been in place in Guatemala for a few years, which is established by the ALMG (Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala) . This orthography agrees in essential parts (sound value of the letters k and q as well as apostrophe 'for ejectives ) with the official alphabets for Quechua and Aymara in South America.

The first sentence of Popol Wuj in different spellings:
Father Ximénez Are v xe tzíh varal Quíche ubí.
ALMG orthography Are 'uxe' ojer tziij waral K'iche 'ub'i'.
(Spanish translation by Ximénez) First it is the principio de las antíguas hístorías aquí en el quiché.
(English translation by Tedlock) This is the beginning of the ancient word, here in the place called Quiché.
(unofficial German translation) "This is the beginning of the old tale here in the place called Quiché."

Syntax and morphology

Quiché is (like Mayathan ) an SPO ( subject - predicate - object ) language, while many other Maya languages ​​are PSO languages. However, the word order is not fixed, so that the PSO sequence is often used.

Phonetic peculiarities

While adults in most of the world's languages ​​raise their pitch when they speak to young children, Quiché speakers drop their pitch in this case. The reason for this is seen in the fact that in the Quiché, speaking with a high pitch is mainly used when addressing people with a higher status.

Nahualá quiché

The Quiché variant of Nahualá is characterized by the preservation of some very primitive linguistic features of Proto-Maya . This includes in particular the distinction between five long (aa, ee, ii, oo, uu) and five short vowels (a, e, i, o, u). According to this pronunciation, the name of the language is K'ichee ' and not K'iche' . Furthermore, the phonemes [h] and [N] have remained in Nahualá Quiché, both of which appear only at the end of the word and almost only after short vowels. However, [N] only occurs in a few words.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ethnologue.com: quc (K'iche ', Central)
  2. ↑ XI Censo Nacional de Población y VI de Habitación (Censo 2002) - Idioma o lengua en que aprendió a hablar . Instituto Nacional de Estadística. 2002. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved on December 22, 2009.
  3. ↑ XI Censo Nacional de Población y VI de Habitación (Censo 2002) - Pertenencia de grupo étnico . Instituto Nacional de Estadística. 2002. Archived from the original on February 22, 2011. Retrieved on December 22, 2009.

literature

  • Johannes Friedrich : Short grammar of the old Quiché language in Popol Vuh. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Commissioned by Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1955 (= Academy of Sciences and Literature. Treatises of the humanities and social sciences class. Born 1955, No. 4).

Web links