Qʼanjobʼal

Last updated: 2019-11-01

Background

Language family: Mayan / Kanjobalan-Chujean / Kanjobalan / Kanjobal-Jacaltec

• Qʼanjobʼal is spoken in the Huehuetenango and Quiché departments of Guatemala.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p ɓ	t tʼ				k kʼ	q qʼ	ʔ
Affricates		ts tsʼ	tʃ tʃʼ	tʂ tʂʼ
Fricatives		s	ʃ	ʂ		x
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w	l			j
Note: Phonemes that have the diacritic (ʼ) are ejectives. The bilabial stop on the right is an implosive.

Vowels

• In general, vowel length and vowel nasalization are not contrastive features (Lichtman et al. 2010, 13).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b’	/ɓ/
e	/e/
h		represents the absence of a glottal stop before a vowel word-initially (Lichtman et al. 2010, 3)
i	/i/
j	/x/
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	/ʂ/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
ch’	/tʃʼ/
tx	/tʂ/
tx’	/tʂʼ/
tz	/ts/
tz’	/tsʼ/
xh	/ʃ/
Orthographic Variation
ẍ	/ʃ/
c	/k/
c’	/kʼ/
b	/ɓ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Qʼanjobʼal follow the order of (C)(C)V(C) (Toledo 2017, 535).

Lenition Rules

• Stops tend to become voiced and spirantize between voiced stops (Lichtman et al. 2010, 18).
• Nasals and vowels word-finally tend to be deleted (Lichtman et al. 2010, 20). Word-medial vowels may also be deleted.
• /t/ (word-finally) and /ɓ/ (word and syllable-finally) tend to delete (ibid.).
• Word-initial glottal stops tend to be elided in fast speech (Lichtman et al. 2010, 3).

Misc. Rules

• /w/ fricates, becoming [β] preceding front vowels (Toledo 2017, 534).
• Vowels in word-initial positions are preceded by a glottal stop (Lichtman et al. 2010, 3).
• Consonant gemination does not occur (Lichtman et al. 2010, 19).

References

Lichtman, Karen, Shawn Chang, Jennifer Cramer, Claudia Crespo del Rio, Amanda Huensch, Alexandra Morales, and Jill Hallett. 2010. “IPA Illustration of Q’anjob’al.” Studies in the Linguistic Sciences: Illinois Working Papers, 1–23.

Toledo, Eladio Mateo. 2017. “The Mayan Languages.” In, edited by Judish Aissen, Nora C. England, and Roberto Zavala Maldonado, 533–69. Routledge.