Jakaltek language

The Jakaltek language (also called Poptí or Jakalteco) is a Mayan language of Guatemala spoken by around 90,000 Jakaltek people in the department of Huehuetenango and the adjoining part of Chiapas in southern Mexico. The name Poptí for the language is used by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala and the Guatemalan Congress.

The Jacaltec language has a verb–subject–object syntax. Like many Native American languages, Jacaltec has a lot of complex agglutinative morphology and uses ergative–absolutive case alignment. It is divided in two dialects, Eastern and Western Jakalteko. "Eastern and Western Jakalteko understand each other's spoken languages, but not written text."^[1]

Owing to Jacaltec's dissimilarity with Indo-European languages, the reasonably healthy linguistic population and the relative ease of access to Guatemala, Jacaltec has become a favorite of students of linguistic typology.

The Eastern Jacaltec language includes the following phonemes: a /a/, b /ɓ/, c/qu /k/, c'/q'u /kʼ/, ch /tʃ/, ch' /tʃʼ/, e /e/, i /i/, j /h/, k /q/, k' /qʼ/, l /l/, m /m/, n /n/, n̈/ŋ /ŋ/, o /o/, p /p/, r /r/, s /s/, t /t/, t' /tʼ/, tx /tʂ/, tx' /tʂʼ/, tz /ts/, tz' /tsʼ/, u /u/, w /w/, x /ʃ/, ẍ /ʂ/, y /j/, and ' /ʔ/.

Eastern Jacaltec is one of the few languages besides the Malagasy language of Madagascar to make use of an n-trema character in its alphabet. In both languages, the n-trema represents a velar nasal consonant [ŋ] (like "ng" in "bang").

Jakaltek-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEVFS, broadcasting from Las Margaritas, Chiapas.

References

1. ^ Gordon, Raymond G, ed. "Jakalteko, Western." Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th ed. Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2005. 254. Print.

External links

• Rosetta Project – Jacalteco (Eastern) page