Mam

Last updated: 2020-03-02

Background

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

• Mam is spoken in Guatemala.

Phonology

Consonants

• /b/, /d/, /ɡ/, and /f/ appear in Spanish loanwords (B’aayil and Ajb’ee 2001, 17–18).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p ɓ	t tʼ			c cʼ	k kʼ	q qʼ	ʔ
Affricates		ts tsʼ	tʃ tʃʼ	ʈʂ ʈʂʼ
Fricatives		s	ʃ	ʂ			χ
Nasals	m	n
Trills		r
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 Mam (B’aayil and Ajb’ee 2001, 6). Long vowels are represented by duplicate graphemes.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b’	/ɓ/
e	/e/
i	/i/
j	/χ/
k	/k/
k’	/kʼ/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
q	/q/
q’	/qʼ/
r	/r/
s	/s/
t	/t/
t’	/tʼ/
u	/u/
w	/w/
x	/ʂ/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
ch’	/tʃʼ/
ky	/c/
ky’	/cʼ/
tx	/ʈʂ/
tx’	/ʈʂʼ/
tz	/ts/
tz’	/tsʼ/
xh; ẍ	/ʃ/

Lenition Rules

• /tʼ/ tends to vary freely with /ɗ/ (B’aayil and Ajb’ee 2001, 11).

Misc. Rules

• In some dialects of Mam, the palatalized stop and ejective are the result of predictable palatalization (B’aayil and Ajb’ee 2001, 10).
• A phonetic glottal stop occurs preceding word-initial vowels (ibid.).
• /n/ assimilates (not always) in place to following consonants (B’aayil and Ajb’ee 2001, 15).

References

B’aayil, Eduardo Gustavo Pérez Vaíl, and Odilio Jiménez Ajb’ee. 2001. Ttxoolil Qyool Mam: Gramática Mam. CHOLSAMAJ.