Background

Language Family: Mayan / Quichean-Mamean / Greater Quichean / Quichean / Quiche-Achi

Rabinal Achi’ is spoken in Guatemala. It is one of two dialects of Achi. The other dialect is known as Cubulco.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p ɓ	t tʼ			k kʼ	q qʼ	ʔ
Affricates		ts tsʼ	tʃ tʃʼ
Fricatives		s	ʃ				h
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w	l		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are plain and those on the right are ejectives. The labial stop on the right is an implosive.

Vowels

Vowel length is contrastive in Rabinal Achi’ (Pellicer 2005, 15). Long vowels are indicated by duplicate vowel graphemes.
- All the literature pertaining to the language suggests the marking of vowel length; however, the output of the Crúbadán corpus (only 33 accounts reflecting vowel length) makes this suspect.
- Unlike the languages in the Western branch of Proto-Mayan that have neutralized vowel length, languages in the Eastern branch (including Achi) have not (England and Baird 2017).
- I have chosen to categorize this language as compromised, given the suspect nature of the vowel length marking.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b; b’	/ɓ/
e	/e/
i	/i/
j	/h/
k	/k/
k’	/kʼ/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
q	/q/
q’	/qʼ/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
t’	/tʼ/
u	/u/
w	/w/
x	/ʃ/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
ch’	/tʃʼ/
tz	/ts/
tz’	/tsʼ/

Misc. Rules

Voiceless stops are aspirated word-finally and following consonants (Solares 2008, 18–20).
Phonetic glottal stops precede vowels in word-initial positions (Solares 2008, 21).

References

England, Nora C., and Brandon O. Baird. 2017. “The Mayan Languages.” In, edited by Judith Aissen, Nora C. England, and Roberto Zavala Maldonado. Routledge.

Pellicer, Sergio Navarrete. 2005. Los Significados de La Música: La Marimba Maya Achí de Guatemala. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropoligía Social.

Solares, Emilsa. 2008. “Gramática Del Idioma Achi.”

Rabinal Achi’