Chʼortiʼ language
Mayan language spoken in Central America
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The Chʼortiʼ language (sometimes also Chorti) is a Mayan language, spoken by the indigenous Maya people who are also known as the Chʼortiʼ or Chʼortiʼ Maya. Chʼortiʼ is a direct descendant of the Classic Maya language in which many of the pre-Columbian inscriptions using the Maya script were written,[2] mostly between the years AD 250 and 850.[2]
Classification
Chʼortiʼ can be called a living "Rosetta Stone" of Mayan languages. Chʼortiʼ is an important tool for interpreting the contents of Maya glyphic writings, some of which are not yet fully understood. For several years, many linguists and anthropologists expected to grasp the Chʼortiʼ culture and language by studying its words and expressions.[3] Chʼortiʼ is spoken mainly in and around Jocotán and Camotán, Chiquimula department, Guatemala, as well as in adjacent areas of parts of western Honduras near the Copán Ruins.[4] Because the Classic Mayan language was ancestral to the modern Chʼorti, it can be used to decipher the ancient language.[2] Researchers realized that the ancient language's script was based more on phonetics than previously thought.[2]
The name Chʼortiʼ (with unglottalized ⟨ch⟩) means 'language of the corn farmers', a reference to the traditional agricultural activity of Chʼortiʼ families. It is one of the three modern descendants of the Chʼolan language, which constitute a sub-group of Mayan languages. The other two are Chontal and Chʼol.[5] These three descendants are still spoken today. Chʼortiʼ and Chʼolti are two sub-branches belonging to Eastern Chʼolan; Chʼolti is, however, already extinct.
There are some debates among scholars about how Chʼolan should be classified. John Robertson considered the direct ancestor of colonial Chʼoltiʼ to be the language of the Mayan script (also known as Mayan Glyphs). The language of the Mayan Glyphs is described as 'Classic Chʼoltiʼan' by John Robertson, David Stuart, and Stephen Houston. The language of the Mayan script is thus the ancestor of Chʼortiʼ. The relationship is shown in the chart below.[4]
Endangerment
The Chʼortiʼ people are descendants of the people who lived in and around Copán, one of the cultural capitals of the ancient Maya area. This covers parts of modern-day Honduras and Guatemala. Chʼorti is considered an endangered language as well as an endangered culture.
Geographic location
This region is the only region in the world that Chʼorti speakers can be found. Although the area is completely shaded in, the majority of speakers reside in Guatemala, while the rest are sparsely distributed throughout the rest of the area.[6]
Honduras
The government of Honduras has been trying to promote a uniform national language of Spanish, and therefore discourages the use and teaching of native languages such as Chʼorti. The Chʼortiʼ people in Honduras face homogenization and have to assimilate to their surroundings. The government has been clashing with the Chʼorti people over land disputes from the 1800s, which puts the people (and thus the language) at risk. In 1997, two prominent Chʼorti leaders were assassinated. This assassination is just one example of many cases where Chʼorti advocates have been harmed or killed. Every one of these killings reduces the number of Chʼorti speakers. As of right now, there are only 10 remaining native speakers in Honduras.[7]
Guatemala
The government of Guatemala has been more supportive of Chʼorti speakers and has promoted programs that encourage the learning and teaching of Chʼorti. The Chʼorti's in Guatemala wear traditional clothing, unlike their counterparts in Honduras, who wear modern-day clothing.[7] Currently there are about 55,250 Chʼorti speakers in Guatemala. Even though Guatemala has established Spanish as its official language, it supports the teaching of these native languages.
The majority of Chʼortiʼ live in the Chiquimula Department of Guatemala, approximately 52,000. The remaining 4,000 live in Copán, Honduras. The Kʼicheʼ Maya however, dominated the Chʼortiʼ dating back to the early fifteenth century. Warfare as well as disease devastated much of the Chʼortiʼ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of their land was lost to the Guatemalan government in the nineteenth century as well. More recently, 25 percent of the Guatemalan Chʼortiʼ went to the United States during the 1980s to escape political persecution.[8]
Phonology and orthography
The Chʼortiʼ have their own standard way of writing their language. However, inaccurate ways to represent phonemes led to some variation among recent publications.[9][10]
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m ⟨m⟩ | n ⟨n⟩ | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p ⟨p⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ | ʔ ⟨ʼ⟩ | |
| glottalic | ɓ ⟨bʼ⟩ | tʼ ⟨tʼ⟩ | kʼ ⟨kʼ⟩ | |||
| voiced[a] | (b ⟨b⟩) | (d ⟨d⟩) | (ɡ ⟨g⟩) | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | ts ⟨tz⟩ | tʃ ⟨ch⟩ | |||
| glottalic | tsʼ ⟨tzʼ⟩ | tʃʼ ⟨chʼ⟩ | ||||
| Fricative | s ⟨s⟩ | ʃ ⟨x⟩ | x ⟨j⟩[b] | h ⟨j⟩[b] | ||
| Trill | r ⟨r⟩ | |||||
| Approximant | l ⟨l⟩ | j ⟨y⟩ | w ⟨w⟩ | |||
The consonants of Chʼortiʼ include glottal stop [ʼ], b, bʼ, ch, chʼ, d, g, j, k, kʼ, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, tʼ, tz, tzʼ, w, x, y.
The ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are semivowels.
Vowels
The vowels consist of a, e, i, o, and u.[10]
Vowel clusters
| Characters used | Sometimes also used | IPA symbol | Chʼortiʼ pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| aa | ā, aꞏ, a꞉ | a | Like regular a but held longer |
| ee | ē, eꞏ, e꞉ | e | Like e only held longer |
| ii | ī, iꞏ, i꞉ | i | Like i only held longer |
| oo | ō, oꞏ, o꞉ | o | Like o only held longer |
| uu | ū, uꞏ, u꞉ | u | Like u only held longer |
When two vowels are put together in Chʼortiʼ, the second vowel always takes precedence and then is always followed by a glottal stop. Chʼortiʼ does not have long vowels. According to historians, long vowels occur in Classical Mayan, but have been lost in modern Chʼortiʼ.
In Chʼortiʼ, aa or a꞉ is used as aʼ or Aʼ; this pattern occurs with all vowel clusters including eʼ, Iʼ, oʼ and uʼ.
Some examples of words with vowel clusters are꞉
- Jaʼx [xaʔʃ] = Her, ella
- Weʼr [weʔr] = meat, carne
- Bʼiʼx [pʼiʔʃ] = seed, semilla
- Tunoʼron [tunoʔɾon] = everyone, todos
- Kuʼm [kuʔm] = egg, huevo [11]
Morphology
Verb inflection
| Ergative (Set A) |
Absolutive (Set B) |
Subjective (Set C) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person |
singular | in-/ni- | -en | in- |
| plural | ka- | -on | ka- | |
| 2nd person |
singular | a- | -et | i- |
| plural | i- | -ox | ix- | |
| 3rd person |
singular | u- | -Ø | a- |
| plural | u-...-obʼ | -obʼ | aʼ...-obʼ | |
Examples of inflected verbs from Isidro González's stories (John Fought, 1972):
| Uninflected Verb | Inflected Verb |
|---|---|
ixin "to go" |
ixinobʼ go-3B.PL "they went" |
ira “to see” |
uwira 3A-see-3B “he sees it” |
kojko “to guard” |
ukojkobʼ 3A-guard-3B.PL “they guard over it” |
ixin “to go” |
aʼxin 3C-go “he goes” |
Possessions
Tak is plural for women and children:
- ijchʼok-tak "little girls"
- max-tak "children, young ones, family" (max does not occur without -tak)
- ixik-tak "women"
These are the only instances encountered. It is worthy of notice that ixkaʼr "wife", chʼurkabʼ "baby" and ar "offspring" take -ob'.
obʼ is a general plural. The suffix can be found in nouns, verbs, adjectives, and participials.
Examples on possessives:
e
DEF.ART
mut-obʼ
bird-3PL
war
PROG
u-bʼax-i-obʼ
3A-pull up-THEM-3PL
ni-jinaj
1A.SG-maize plant
The birds are pulling my maize plant.
Yar-obʼ
small-3PL
bʼikʼit
small variety of
ruch
gourd container
And then come two little gourds,... (f330040)
Syntax
The aspectual system of Chʼortiʼ language changed to a tripartite pronominal system which comes with different morphemes used for the subject of transitive verbs, the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive completive verbs, and a third set of pronouns only used for the subject of incompletive intransitive verbs.[14]
Chʼortiʼ tripartite pronominal system (data from Hull 2005)
e
DEF.ART
sitzʼ
boy
u-buyi-Ø
3A-chop-3B
e
DEF.ART
siʼ
wood
'The boy chops the wood (into tiny pieces)'
intzaj
sweet
lokʼoy-Ø
go.out-3B
e
DEF.ART
peʼych
tomato
'The tomato turned out delicious'
e
DEF.ART
kʼin
sun
a-lokʼoy
3C-go.out
ta
PREP
ixner
going
kʼin
sun
'The sun sets in the west'
Basic word order
In the Chʼortiʼ language and other Mayan languages, the word order is commonly represented by the acronym VOS, meaning verb-object-subject. VSO, SVO, SOV, OVS, and OSV are also used.[15]
In most Chʼortiʼ phrases surrounding transitive verbs, the subject is first, followed by the verb and the object (SVO).[16]
Adjectives with attributive function
The adjective works as a modifier. Together with the noun, it forms a noun phrase that plays some syntactic role (object etc.).[15]
Predicative adjectives indicate the size, color or state:
E bʼikʼit
ADJECTIVE
The little
yurwobʼ
NOUN
chicks
chamobʼ
VERB
died
inchoni
VERB
I am selling
e yaxax
ADJECTIVE
green
pe'ych
NOUN
tomato
In the following sentence, the bold word is a preposition and the underlined one is a relational noun.[15]
E
The
chij
horse
numuy
passed
tu't
in.front.of
e
the
max-tak
child-PL
"The horse passed in front of the children"
Vocabulary
The following list contains examples of common words in the Chʼortiʼ language:
| English | Chʼortiʼ | English | Chʼortiʼ |
|---|---|---|---|
| big | nixiʼ | fire | kʼajkʼ |
| bird | mut | here | tara |
| cold | insis | what | tukʼa |
| dog | txʼiʼ | husband | noxibʼ |
| day | kʼin | man | winik' |
| beverage | uchʼe | moon | uj |
| earth | rum | mountain | witzir |
According to "A Dictionary of Chʼortiʼ Maya, Guatemala" by Kerry Hull, some words may be used as nouns (as shown above) or can double as a verb as well. For example "Witzir" can mean mountain as a noun, or 'to go uphill' as a verb.[9]