Last Updated: 2019-09-12
Background
Language family: Mayan / Cholan-Tzeltalan / Cholan / Chorti
- Chʼortiʼ is spoken in eastern Guatemala, specifically within the Chiquimul and Zacapa departments and along the border with Honduras.
Phonology
Consonants
- There is some ambiguity around the phonemes /h/ and /x/. Sources indicate either as being represented by ⟨j⟩, but I have opted to follow Hull (2016) and Dugan (2013) in using /h/ (p. 7; p. 18).
- /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are said to appear in Spanish loanwords (Dugan 2013, 18).
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Bilabial
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Alveolar
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Postalveolar
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Palatal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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p ɓ
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t tʼ
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k kʼ
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ʔ
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Affricates
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ts tsʼ
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tʃ tʃʼ
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Fricatives
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s
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ʃ
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n
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Trills
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r
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Approximants
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l
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j
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w
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are plain and those on the right are ejective. The bilabial stop on the right is implosive.
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Vowels
- Vowel length is not necessarily contrastive in Chʼortiʼ. Although long vowels can arise in the environment where a glottal stop follows, it’s not obligatory (Wisdom 2019, 8). In fact, the glottal stop in such positions is pronounced lenis, often followed by rearticulation of the vowel (ibid.). Therefore, I will be treating all vowels (⟨a’⟩, ⟨e’⟩, ⟨i’⟩, ⟨o’⟩, ⟨u’⟩) as the vowel followed by a glottal stop.
- Vowel length is sometimes indicated by an accent mark over the vowel or by a postvocalic ⟨h⟩ (Fought 2012, 45). However, given that vowel length is not contrastive, such accented vowels will be transcribed as short vowels. In addition, the postvocalic ⟨h⟩ is purely used to separate segments, thus it has no phonemic realization (ibid.).
- Diphthongs are said to be present in Chʼortiʼ (Wisdom 2019, 10), which are always written with a vowel and a glide (Dugan 2013, 28). Dugan (2013) expresses the fact that they are largely uncommon in the language (p. 18); so, given this and the fact that there isn’t a wide consensus on the inventory, I have chosen not to include them in the analysis.
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Front
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Central
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Back
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High
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i
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u
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Mid
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e
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o
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Low
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a
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Alphabet
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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Comment
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a
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/a/
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b
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/b/
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b’
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/ɓ/
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d
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/d/
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e
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/e/
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g
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/ɡ/
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i
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/i/
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j
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/h/
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k
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/k/
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k’
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/kʼ/
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l
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/l/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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o
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/o/
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p
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/p/
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r
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/r/
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s
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/s/
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t
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/t/
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t’
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/tʼ/
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u
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/u/
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w
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/w/
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x
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/ʃ/
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y
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/j/
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’
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/ʔ/
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Digraph
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ch
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/tʃ/
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ch’
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/tʃʼ/
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tz
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/ts/
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tz’
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/tsʼ/
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Orthographic Variation
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c
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/k/
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/s/ in Spanish loanwords
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c’
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/kʼ/
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qu
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/k/
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q’u
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/kʼ/
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Lenition Rules
- /h/ is often deleted word-initially (Hull 2016, 8).
- Glottal stops are often unpronounced within the first syllable and word-finally (Hull 2016, 8–9).
Misc. Rules
- /l/ and /r/ often appear in free variation (Hull 2016, 7).
References
Dugan, James T. 2013. “The Grammar of Ch’orti’ Maya Folktales.” PhD thesis, New Orleans, LA: Tulane University.
Fought, John. 2012. “Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians.” In, edited by Munro S. Edmonson Victoria Reifler Bricker, 2:43–55. University of Texas Press.
Hull, Kerry M. 2016. A Dictionary of Ch’orti’ Mayan-Spanish-English. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.
Wisdom, Charles. 2019. “Typescript of Ch’orti’ Texts.”