Q'eqchi' language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kekchi Q'eqchi' |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Guatemala, Belize | |
| Region: | Alta Verapaz, Petén | |
| Total speakers: | approx. 500,000 | |
| Language family: | Mayan Quichean-Mamean Greater Quichean Kekchi Kekchi |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | myn | |
| ISO 639-3: | kek | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Q'eqchi' language is spoken in Belize and Guatemala. Several Maya communities in the Toledo District in Belize use this language as their first language, while the majority of Mayas in Toledo speak Q'eqchi'. In Guatemala, Q'eqchi' is spoken in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Petén, Izabal, Salama, and El Quiché.
Q'eqchi' has traditionally been described as having two dialects — one spoken in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala and the surrounding areas; and an "eastern" dialect spoken everywhere elsewhere.
There are several orthographies for writing Q'eqchi', but only two are in widerspread use. One was developed by two Summer Insitute of Linguistics (SIL) field researchers (Francis Eachus and Ruth Carlson) in the 1960s. SIL bibliography for Eachus and Carlson. Though this orthography is no longer considered standard, it remains in circulation in large part due to the popularity of a few texts including the Protestant Bible produced by the SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translation Project, and a widely-used language learning workbook "Aprendamos Kekchi." A newer orthography was developed by the Proyecto Lingüistico Francisco Marroquin in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This orthograhy was later modified by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG), and is now considered the standard, official way to write Q'eqchi' (at least in Guatemala.)
In the current orthography there are 33 graphemes (letters), each of which is meant to correspond to a particular phoneme. These include separate vowels for long and short sounds, as well as glottal stops accompanying certain consonants.
[edit] Texts
1) Educational texts meant to teach people how to speak, read or write Q'eqchi'. This category includes materials such as dictionaries and grammars, as well as workbooks designed to be used in rural Guatemala schools in communities where the majority of the people are native speakers of Q'eqchi'.
2) Religious texts. The Protestant version of the Bible by Eachus and Carlson Bible mentioned above is probably the most widely available text in Q'eqchi'. In the last twenty years or so, the Roman Catholic Church has been one of the primary proponents of written Q'eqchi'. Various Catholic organizations are responsible for producing a number of texts, including the New Testament, Genesis and Exodus, and various instructional pamphlets. A songbook entitled Qanimaaq Xloq'al li Qaawa' 'We praise the Lord' is very popular among Catholics, has been in print for many years, and is updated with new songs regularly.
3) Non-instructive secular texts have also begun to appear in the last ten years or so, although they are few in number. The most ambitious of these works have been a free translation of the K'iche' text Popol Wuj ("Popol Vuh") by Rigoberto Baq Caal and a collection of Q'eqchi' folk tales. A number of government documents have also been translated into Q'eqchi', including the Guatemalan Constitution.
