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1¡Ütz atpetik! 1 Welcome! INTRODUCTION Welcome to ¿La ütz awäch?, a gateway to learning about the Kaqchikel Maya language and its speakers. ¿La ütz awäch? is the first of its kind, a practical method to get you communicating in Kaqchikel quickly and effectively. You are about to embark on a stimulating journey, one perhaps you didn’t think possible, that of learning a Mayan language. You may have thought that a Mayan language was just too complicated and difficult to learn, but with this book and a few other resources, some time, effort, practice and patience, you’ll be able to communicate in Kaqchikel! Of course, learning Kaqchikel is not exactly like learning Spanish or French, languages that enjoy a wealth of teaching and learning resources, including abundant materials, trained teachers, and formal learning programs. In Kaqchikel, you will find a small (but growing!) number of written texts and native speakers with expertise in teaching their language to others. Many associate learning another language with fear and frustration. This is partly due to unrealistic expectations. We can never replicate the ease and perfection with which we learned our native language as children and that language will likely influence how we express ourselves in another. We may also expect a new language to be similar to our own, and not appreciate differences. To learn another language well, we have to be open to the structural possibilities that a new language presents. When English speakers first hear Kaqchikel, they often remark on the unfamiliar sounds that make the language seem difficult to pronounce. However, most of the sounds of Kaqchikel are used in English (or something close enough), and the handful of new consonants can be mastered, like all things, with a bit of practice and patience. You’ll find an alphabet and pronunciation guide at the end of this section to get you started. No textbook can completely teach you a language, and ¿La ütz awäch? is no exception. A solid grasp of the language requires extended immersion and some linguistic expertise to compensate for the dearth of prepared materials. This book, however, can give you a very good start. THE KAQCHIKEL LANGUAGE Kaqchikel is one of the approximately thirty Mayan languages spoken in Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, and increasingly, in the United States. Like the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, et al) that evolved from a common Latin root, Mayan languages spring from a common source language (called Proto-Maya) believed to have been spoken in the northwest corner of Guatemala about four thousand years ago. Kaqchikel belongs to the K’ichee’ branch of Mayan languages (map 1), which also includes the K’ichee’ language, as well as Q’eqchi’ and Tz’utujil. 2 Map 1. The Branches of the Mayan Languages Family Of the twenty-one Mayan languages spoken today in Guatemala, Kaqchikel is one of the four “mayoritarios,” those largest in terms of number of speakers. Exact numbers are elusive, but Kaqchikel speakers number about a half million, living in that part of the central highlands between the capital, Guatemala City and Lake Atitlán. Kaqchikel belongs to the K’ichean branch of the Mayan language family tree (Map 1) and shares various degrees of intelligibility with its branchmates, K’ichee’, Poqomchi’ Q’eqchi’ and Tz’utujil (map 2). Kaqchikel enjoyed a brief reign during the early Colonial period as the Lengua Metropolitana for its wide usage as a language of evangelization and empire. Today the prominence of Kaqchikels in linguistics in particular and Maya cultural activism in general has led to its adoption in some circles as a Mayan lingua franca. Kaqchikel is spoken in forty-four municipios (municipalities) in the departments of Guatemala, Sacatepéquez, Chimaltenango, Sololá and Suchitepéquez (Maps 3 and 4). Table 1.1 compiles analyses by Cojtí and López (1990), Lolmay (1993) and Patal, et al (2000) of data collected under supervision of Terrence Kaufmann while at the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín and includes the classification of towns into the 10 dialect areas posited by Kaufmann. Like many Mayan towns, most Kaqchikel communities were founded after the conquest and named by the Spanish or the Nahuatl-speaking allies who accompanied them from Mexico. For that reason, many communities have both official names used in Spanish in Guatemala, and Kaqchikel names, also listed in the table, which are used in the language chapters of this book [3.15.218.254] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15...

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