Kaqchikel language
| Kaqchikel | |
|---|---|
| Kaqchikel Ch'ab'äl | |
| Native to | Guatemala |
| Region | Central Highlands |
| Ethnicity | Kaqchikel |
|
Native speakers
|
(450,000 cited 1990–1998) |
|
Mayan
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | kaqc1270 |
The Kaqchikel, or Kaqchiquel, language (in modern orthography; formerly also spelled Cakchiquel or Cakchiquiel) is an indigenous Mesoamerican language and a member of the Quichean–Mamean branch of the Mayan languages family. It is spoken by the indigenous Kaqchikel people in central Guatemala. It is closely related to the K'iche' (Quiché) and Tz'utujil languages.
Kaqchikel is taught in public schools through Guatemala's intercultural bilingual education programs.
The Kaqchikel language is spoken in the following municipalities (Variación Dialectal en Kaqchikel, 2000).
Kaqchikel is a member of the Mayan language family.
In Joseph Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, Kaqchikel is classified as a member of the Penutian stock, in the Mayan branch of the Mexican family within that stock. However, this hypothesis has been largely discounted by modern linguists.
Greenberg's hypothesis has received significant amounts of negative criticism from many important linguists ever since it was first published in 1987. In Greenberg's etymological dictionary of Amerind, Kaqchikel words are found in 5 entries. Four of the entries are unremarkable; but the fifth uses two words, a-ĉin and iŝ-tan, as examples of a protophoneme *t'ina / t'ana / t'una, meaning "son/child/daughter" despite the fact that a-ĉin was already used in the dictionary to mean "elder". This is an example of a commonly cited flaw in the work, which is that Greenberg reaches too far in search of evidence. In general, the documentation of Kaqchikel in the Amerind etymological dictionary serves to highlight the problems with the hypothesis more than it helps Greenberg's cause.
In the charts below, each of the Kaqchikel phonemes is represented by the character or set of characters that denote it in the standard orthography developed by the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG) and sanctioned by the Guatemalan government. Where different, the corresponding symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet appears in brackets. The dialect used in this example is that of Xenacoj.
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