K'iche'an Mayan Languages and Cultures

Some Poqomchi' Mayan communities in Guatemala actually practice traditional offering ceremonies. Through the mediation of a ritual specialist, they provide humans with an opportunity to submit requests to divine authorities for something they wish to obtain. The language used during this ritual communication differs from everyday Poqomchi' in certain lexical, grammatical and discursive respects. Based on primary fieldwork data, this paper discusses parallel syntactic constructions, the metaphorical use of certain lexemes, the functions of loanwords and the unexpected choice of tense/aspect/mood categories, among other features. In addition, this article presents morphologically annotated and translated textual extracts from three offering ceremonies, which may be useful for further studies on Poqomchi' ritual communication.

This dissertation describes two related phenomena in the syntax and semantics of K’ichee’ (Mayan), concentrating on the variety spoken in and around Nahualá.
The first phenomenon is focus, the special discourse status granted to constituents which provide new and important information. The second phenomenon is syntactic movement, which occurs in several different constructions in K’ichee’ — most relevantly, that of focus movement. Across languages, focused constituents are highlighted in one way or another; and in Mayan languages, this highlighting often takes the form of movement to a position immediately before the verb. But I show that the relationship between focus and movement in K’ichee’ is less straightforward than has previously been assumed. In particular, it is often possible for a focused constituent to remain in situ.
Having shown that focus in situ is possible, I turn to the question of when it occurs. I show that focus in situ follows an ergative/absolutive pattern: it is impossible for transi- tive subjects, but possible for all other constituent types. This pattern is compared to erga- tive/absolutive patterns found elsewhere in K’ichee’ grammar, and in other languages.

This paper draws on anthropological linguistics and food studies to examine how K'iche' Maya foodways are elucidated by the study of interactions between language and the materiality of food. The meaning and symbolism of food emerge from the diverse social and cultural settings in which people live. How people talk about food relates to how their cultural identities form around it, all of which become embedded in its physical substance. Thus, the conceptual development of food is inseparable from the structural development of language. In this sense, Indigenous languages in K'iche' communities highlight the importance of cultural meaning, spirituality, and agricultural practices that are interwoven with foodways. From this perspective, the conceptual and structural ties between food and language highlight their intrinsic relationship. By exploring this relationship, this paper examines how K'iche' Mayan language gives food culture a legacy of meanings that have persisted through time.

This paper discusses the semantic domain of irreality and the grammatical means of its expression in Q'eqchi', a Mayan language from Guatemala. Three morphosyntactic devices are examined in detail: the prefix t- from the tense/aspect/mood paradigm, the "status" suffix-q/-aq and some second-position clitics. Due to the significant structural and functional diversity of the irreality markers, it is argued that Q'eqchi' does not distinguish a morphologically homogeneous grammatical category of "reality status", traditionally postulated in some American indigenous languages. The respective semantic functions are not encompassed in a sole category, but are rather distributed among different grammatical and lexical items. However, the importance of the semantic domain of irreality in Q'eqchi' grammar should not be completely discarded. The morphosyntactic interconnection between certain grammatical elements (like the suffix-q/-aq, which is triggered on intransitive verbs by the prefix t-) and the diachronic semantic change of some clitics (for example, the enclitic ta changed its meaning from optative to counterfactual) are arranged according to semantic principles within the irreality domain.

Sexual encounters have received little attention in previous studies of the Popol Vuh. This article is a study of sexual connotations conveyed through figures of speech in four passages of the k’iche’ text. The figures of speech include metaphors, allusions, and double entendres, whose meanings are not evident at first glance. The present analysis is based on studies of the lexicon, combined with comparisons with parallel passages in other myths from Mesoamerica, and comparisons with ethnographic data compiled in modern communities. As noted in multiple studies around the world, literary figures in the Popol Vuh are based primarily on the links between sexuality with food. The identification of sexual contents in these passages opens a new perspective in the study of the Popol Vuh. Sixteenth-century Maya myths are consistent with other Mesoamerican myths, in which the primordial creative processes often involve genesic themes and sexual transgressions.

El libro “El espíritu del cerro” es una colección de cuentos de la tradición oral Poqomchi’ que fueron narrados por hablantes nativos de este idioma. El Poqomchi’ es un idioma maya que pertenece al subgrupo k’icheano y que se habla en Guatemala por más de 100 mil personas. Es uno de los idiomas mayas que hasta la fecha ha recibido una menor atención científica, por lo que la presente colección de textos es una valiosa contribución al estudio lingüístico de este idioma.
Los catorce cuentos incluidos en este libro fueron recopilados, analizados y traducidos por el Dr. Igor Vinogradov, lingüista ruso especializado en la gramática comparativa de lenguas mayas, durante sus estancias de investigación en el departamento de Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, en colaboración con hablantes nativos del Poqomchi’. Cada texto está acompañado con una traducción aproximada al español y un breve análisis morfológico que incluye la división en morfemas y adscribe a cada morfema un significado preliminar. De tal manera este libro pretende complementar los diccionarios y descripciones gramaticales del Poqomchi’, proporcionando material empírico que puede ser de utilidad para estudios sobre las lenguas mayas, las lenguas indígenas de América Latina y la tipología lingüística en general.
El libro “El espíritu del cerro” está dedicado a los lingüistas y a todas las personas que tienen interés en la estructura lingüística de los idiomas mayas y del Poqomchi’ en particular.

[English translation of: Matsumoto, Mallory E. 2015 La estela de Iximche' en el contexto de la revitalización lingüística y la recuperación jeroglífica en las comunidades mayas de Guatemala. Estudios de Cultura Maya 45:225-258. Please do not reproduce or cite without author's permission.]

ABSTRACT: The revival of the Mayan hieroglyphic script constitutes a dynamic component of the Maya movement in Guatemala and offers a rare opportunity to observe the reclamation of a dormant writing system. This study analyzes the hieroglyphic text on the recently erected stela at Iximche’, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, and proposes that it manifests various strategies used in revitalizing the modern Mayan languages and in the construction of a Pan-Maya identity. The acquisition and active use of the ancient script in the present in this and other media reflects the dynamic between the Pan-Maya identity and the distinctive identity of the Kaqchikel people. Furthermore, by reasserting an ancient monumental and scribal tradition, it affirms the cultural link experienced by the Maya peoples with the pre- Columbian past. The study of the revived script thus may also enhance our understanding of the role of writing in expressing, reinterpreting, and developing traditions and identities.

Guatemala es un pais de aproximadamente 7.5 millones de habitantes, de los cuales por lo menos el 70% posee como idioma materno una de las lenguas de origen "indoamericano" Sin embargo, el idioma oficial es el español y en el se escriben todas las leyes. Estas son uniformes y en su contra no puede argumentarse ignorancia, desuso, costumbre o práctica en contrario. Así se juzga por igual a un guatemalteco que desconoce por completo el español y a uno que no sabe que en Guatemala se hablan otras lenguas distintas de la traida por España.

Pre-Hispanic America's most celebrated literary monument, the Popol Wuj, was written in the 1550s, although our only copy is an early-eighteenth-century text by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez. We lack direct information about the Popol Wuj's authors. Some scholars have proposed that the indigenous scribe Diego Reinoso was its creator. However, Reinoso wrote another K'iche' document, the Título de Totonicapan, and a close examination of that text learns that he disapproved of the political faction represented in the Popol Wuj. Its advocates were a lineage called Nim Ch'okoj, Great Kinkajou. Dennis Tedlock has suggested that the Nim Ch'okoj were the Popol Wuj's composers. They introduce themselves at the end of the text as the Fathers and Mothers of the Word. A scrutiny of both documents and early Colonial papers reveals that, by the 1550s, a political conflict was under way between the two highest offices in the K'iche' power structure: the Keeper of the Mat and the Vice-Keeper of the Mat. The Popol Wuj seems to have supported the first faction, and the Título de Totonicapan supported the second faction.

In this paper I explore the phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, and the social situation of the Mayan Kaqchikel Language. I've tried to standardize sound inventories for appropriate contrasts across all dialects. Kaqchikel is spoken in south/central Guatemala across 4 different departments.

The December 13, 1977 New York Times article by Laurie Johnson giving a brief history on the whereabouts of the Grolier Codex since its exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York City in 1971.

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Grolier Codex.

En este trabajo se examina la relación entre la tradición oral y las repre-sentaciones de la historia y la coyuntura social entre los k'iche's del altiplano de Guatemala. Se muestra que la tradición oral consta de una gran diversidad de géne-ros con estructuras discursivas y fuerza ilocutiva. Se discuten las aparentes incon-sistencias entre narrativas y se demuestra que son expresión de disensos, debates y ansiedades en el seno de las comunidades frente a los cambios impuestos por la modernidad guatemalteca. En particular, se analizan historias de santos y " brujos " y las diferentes y contradictorias posturas que dramatizan frente a la expansión de la Acción Católica y de las iglesias pentecostales en los años cincuenta y sesenta del siglo pasado. Se muestra que la tradición oral es también modelo prescriptivo de la naciente prosa en idioma k'iche'. PalabRas clave: historia oral, discurso, religión, k'iche', Guatemala. abstRact: This paper examines the relationship between oral traditions and K'iche' representations of history and current social and cultural dilemmas in the Guate-malan highlands. I show that oral tradition include a great variety of genres with different discourse structures and illocutionary force. I discuss apparent inconsistencies among narratives and show that they embody dissent and anxieties in K'iche' communities in regard to changes provoked by Guatemala's violent modernity. In particular, I examine stories of patron saints and " witches " and the different stances vis-à-vis religious conversion that they dramatize after the expansion of Catholic Action and Pentecostal denominations in the 1950s and 1960s. Oral traditions are also prescriptive models for the emerging K'iche' narrative prose.

Based on the study of the recent development of the K'iche' Facebook platform and Microsoft Windows' K'iche' version, I discuss the conflict between Western and Maya language ideologies embodied in current translation practices in Guatemala. International corporations prefer hiring individual translators and consultants and avoid engaging the indigenous institutions charged with standardization and linguistic revitalization. The lack of community sanction for local corporate proxies leads to contestation of the translators' credentials and provokes community turmoil. It also highlights opposed community views of globalization and OF the best strategies to cope with the challenges and opportunities it affords. Finally, I examine the consequences for indigenous language revitalization of the current political economy of social media and corporate software. In this paper I examine the social impact of the incipient production of corporate software and social media platforms in K'ichee', a Mayan language spoken in the western highlands of Guatemala. I focus on the development of the currently available Facebook K'ichee' interface application and of the upcoming K'ichee' version of Microsoft Windows. Both involved the cooperation of K'ichee' speakers from the township of Nahualá in western Guatemala as well as non-local corporate intermediaries working on behalf of Facebook and Microsoft. This case study illustrates the strife provoked in indigenous communities by corporate software and social media translation strategies. Rather than partner with indigenous institutions charged with language revitalization, corporations like Facebook and Microsoft prefer translation agencies and unpaid volunteers without the collective sanction of their language communities. We will see that this commodification of the craft of translation into indigenous languages heightens tensions among community members having conflicting views about native language, identity and globalization. Germane to this debate is the tension between a view of language as a personal skill owned by individuals, on the one hand, and language as an inalienable, iconic practice belonging to the community that no one should appropriate, on the other. In Guatemala, indigenous institutions such as the K'ulb'il Yol Twitz Paxil, the Maya-run " Academy of the Mayan Languages of Guatemala " (ALMG) have stressed consensus as a strategy to minimize conflicts over standardization and revitalization policy. K'ichee' shows substantial dialectal variation and dialect stereotypes are important ethnic markers for its speakers. Glottonyms such as " K'ichee' " or " Kaqchikel " were introduced by the Spanish to unify mutually intelligible regional varieties under one name. 1 The introduction of mutual intelligibility as diagnostic criterion

INTRODUCCIÓN A LA TESIS. El objetivo principal de esta Tesis es indagar en la relación que tenían los eventos de nacimiento, toma de poder y muerte de los gobernantes de la ciudad clásica de Palenque con determinadas fechas de la cuenta de 260 días (Tzolk'in).
Esta tesis se divide en cinco capítulos. El primer capítulo, en el que se desarrolla el marco teórico, aborda los aspectos básicos de los calendarios mesoamericanos, su funcionamiento, características y los primeros estudios. Se mencionan los trabajos más básicos y clásicos con respecto al tema, enfatizando el estado actual de los estudios calendáricos. En el capítulo 2 se mencionan las fuentes primarias que explican la relación de ciertos días o fechas con determinados augurios en Mesoamérica y también se revisan algunas de las propuestas académicas que refieren tanto a la “manipulación” de textos históricos, como a la elección, preferencia o uso de fechas del Tzolk’in, entre los mayas clásicos. El capítulo 3, aborda los significados lingüísticos y las variantes gráficas de los números y los días del Tzolk’in, tomando esto como base para profundizar en el simbolismo de los mismos. El siguiente capítulo, el 4, revisa brevemente las etimologías y la iconografía de los términos relativos al nacimiento, toma de poder y muerte entre los mayas clásicos y también considera ejemplos del período colonial y reciente que sirven para establecer analogías y mejorar el marco de interpretación de la información que tenemos del Clásico. Finalmente, el capítulo 5 analiza las fechas de nacimiento, entronización y muerte (incluyendo numerales, días y trecenas), de los gobernantes clásicos de Palenque, enfatizando la información de 6 de ellos (los que tienen sus fechas completas) e indagando un poco en las vicisitudes políticas de la época.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE THESIS. The principal aim of this Thesis is to investigate the relationship that the events of birth, enthronement and death of the rulers of the classic city of Palenque had with certain dates of the 260-day count (Tzolk'in).

This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, in which the theoretical framework is developed, addresses the basic aspects of Mesoamerican calendars, their function, characteristics and the first academic studies. The most basic and classical works on the subject are mentioned, emphasizing the current state of calendrical studies. Chapter 2 mentions the primary sources that explain the relationship of certain days or dates with certain omens/fates in Mesoamerica and also reviews some of the academic proposals that refer to both the "manipulation" of historical texts, as well as the choice, preference or use of dates from the Tzolk'in, among the classic Maya. Chapter 3 deals with the linguistic meanings and the graphic variants of the numbers and the days of the Tzolk’in, taking this as a basis for deepening in their symbolism. The next chapter, 4, briefly reviews the etymologies and iconography of terms related to birth, power-taking (enthronement), and death among the classic Maya, and also considers examples from the colonial and recent periods that serve to establish analogies and improve the framework for interpretation of the information we have on the Classic monuments. Finally, chapter 5 analyzes the dates of birth, enthronement and death (including numerals, days and thirteen [trecenas]), of the classical rulers of Palenque, emphasizing the information of six of them (those of whom we have complete dates) and inquiring a little into the political vicissitudes of the time.

In this language we have a lot more than Montgomery says. This language was spoken for many thousand years before it was written and the writing system that we can follow in its evolution must have taken millennia to become fully developed and significant, and it must have develop slowly along with the architectural ability and the technology to provide surfaces where to write it, material media without which the written medium will never reach people several thousand years later. The Sumerian writing system took at least 5,000 years to emerge and it was rather simple when compared with the extreme intricacies of this written system. But saying that means that these Mayas are the descendants of people who must have arrived in the Americas a long time before the Clovis hypothesis that is maybe valid for northern American Indians but does not work for the highly sophisticated civilizations of Mesoamerica and Southern America. We have to come to another hypothesis that gave these people at least 15,000 years or more to devise their architecture, language and writing system, not to speak of their religions and of the cultivation of their god Maize, often know as Corn or Atole, T278, Tnn, T630, T630v and a few others all standing for /sa/.

Since the first serious attempts to reconstruct the history of the Postclassic Highland Maya of Guatemala, scholars have located their origins at the Gulf Coast (Carmack 1981, Fox 1987). In this view Maya groups like K’iche’, Kaqchikel or Tz’utujil, migrated along the Usumacinta corridor into the Highlands. Supposedly, there they had acquired their Mexican attributes and features.

To me, it was always hard to accept that we should look to the Gulf Coast for Mexican influences, when they were practically around the corner, on the Pacific Coast. Recent research has shown that the Pacific Coast is a much better place to look for our Mexican influences (Braswell 2001, 2002; Brown 1985; López Austin and López Luján 1999; Navarette 1996).

In my own investigation, I have come to similar conclusions. The Postclassic confederations like K’iche’, Kaqchikel or Tz’utujil, never migrated as a group; they only came into being in the Guatemalan Highlands themselves. These alliances were the result of movements and migrations that took place at the end of the Late Classic and beginning of the Postclassic.

They are, in fact, a blend of three groups: Pacific Coast people, Highland Maya and Petén Maya. In this paper we discuss the importance of the Classic Pacific Coast for the formation of the Postclassic confederations.

Drawing on modern ethnography, scholars often characterize ancient Maya religion as "covenants" involving human beings generating merit through ritual activity in order to repay a primordial debt to the gods. However, models based on modern ethnography alone would not allow us to recognize the impact on Maya religions of those Christian discourses of debt and merit that accompanied sixteenth-century colonization. This article attempts to historicize our understanding of indigenous Mesoamerican theologies by examining how early Colonial indigenous language texts describe moral and ritual obligations to the gods in terms of their societies' economies. The specific case study here compares two contemporaneous sixteenth-century K'iche' Maya texts: the Popol Wuj by traditionalist K'iche' elites and the Theologia Indorum by the Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. Comparison of these texts' use of exchange-related lexicon illustrates that the traditionalist theological discourse of the Popol Wuj, which emphasizes reciprocal obligations between different beings within an ontological hierarchy, came to exist alongside Christian K'iche' discourses with a more mercantile religious language of spiritual debt payment. It is argued that these results have potential implications for our assessment of ethnohistorical sources on indigenous theology from elsewhere throughout Mesoamerica as well.

Very little is known about the mass murders committed in the 1980s in Guatemala against the Maya people; even worse, the main perpetrators, including Efraín Ríos Montt, have escaped justice. Some sequences of these massacres, clearly characterised by the intention of exterminating some parts of the population, seem to be part of a genocidal practice, as shown by the works and performances of artists who keep the massacres memory alive.

Rewriting Maya Religion examines the earliest religious documents composed by missionaries and native authors in the Americas, including a reconstruction of the first original, explicit Christian theology written in the Americas—the nearly 900-page Theologia Indorum (Theology for [or of] the Indians), initially written in Mayan languages by Friar Domingo de Vico by 1554. This study traces how the first Dominican missionaries to the Maya repurposed native religious ideas, myths, and rhetoric in their efforts to translate a Christianity and how, in this wake, K’iche’ Maya elites began to write their own religious texts, like the Popol Vuh. This ethnohistory of religion critically reexamines the role and value of indigenous authority during the early decades of first contact between a Native American people and Christian missionaries.

https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/3705-rewriting-maya-religion

Los avances en el estudio de la escritura jeroglífica maya constituyen un componente dinámico del movimiento maya en Guatemala y ofrecen una gran oportunidad de observar la recuperación de una escritura dormida. Este estudio analiza el texto jeroglífico en la estela moderna recién erigida en Iximche’, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, y propone que ésta manifiesta varias estrategias de la revitalización de lenguas mayas modernas y de la construcción de una identidad panmaya. El aprendizaje y el uso activo de la escritura antigua en el presente, en éste y otros medios, reflejan la dinámica entre la identidad panmaya y la identidad peculiar del pueblo kaqchikel. Además, por retomar una tradición monumental y de escritura antigua, afirma el vínculo cultural sentido por el pueblo maya contemporáneo con su pasado precolombino. Con el estudio de esta recuperación se puede ampliar también nuestro entendimiento del papel de la escritura en cuanto a expresar, reinterpretar y desarrollar tradiciones e identidades.

The revival of the Mayan hieroglyphic script constitutes a dynamic component of the Maya Movement in Guatemala and offers a rare opportunity to observe the reclamation of a dormant writing system. This study analyzes the hieroglyphic text on the recently erected stela at Iximche’, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, and proposes that it manifests various strategies used in revitalizing the modern Mayan languages and in the construction of a Pan-Maya identity. The acquisition and active use of the ancient script in the present in this and other media reflects the dynamic between the Pan-Maya identity and the distinctive identity of the Kaqchikel people. Furthermore, by reasserting an ancient monumental and scribal tradition, it affirms the cultural link experienced by the Maya peoples with the pre-Columbian past. The study of the revived script thus may also enhance our understanding of the role of writing in expressing, reinterpreting, and developing traditions and identities.

Este artículo presenta una investigación del estado actual del bilingüismo k'iche'-español y las actitudes hacia ello en dos municipios guatemaltecos: uno ubicado cerca de un centro urbano de habla hispana y otro más alejado. El análisis presentado aquí es el resultado de una encuesta y entrevistas con 162 bilingües de estos municipios y demuestra patrones distintos hacia el uso de cada lengua en cada municipio. Además, los resultados de las actitudes en ambos municipios revelan actitudes muy positivas hacia el k'iche' y la cultura maya que representa, aunque estas actitudes van acompañadas con un lamento general de la pérdida percibida de estos. Sin embargo, hay diferencias significativas en las actitudes hacia el español y la cultura hispanohablante en Guatemala: mientras que los bilingües del municipio más alejado tienen actitudes más negativas hacia estos, los bilingües del municipio urbano tienden a tener actitudes positivas hacia el español, pero principalmente por razones económicas. Así, a pesar de las diferencias entre estos municipios en cuanto al uso y las actitudes hacia el español, los bilingües de este estudio indican que la lengua k'iche' sigue siendo un aspecto muy importante de su identidad como mayas contemporáneos de Guatemala.

Research on documents composed by Maya communities during the mid-sixteenth to seventeenth centuries has been largely limited to basic transcriptions, translations, and ethnohistorical analysis, particularly for those whose textual contents are political in nature. This analysis focuses instead on grammatical errors in a Spanish-language título from the K’iche’ Maya region of the western Guatemalan Highlands. I argue that the patterned gender and number disagreement indicates that the scribe was a native K’iche’ speaker who was not fully bilingual in Spanish. This case study illustrates the sociolinguistic potential of colonial-era indigenous sources when examined from a paleographic and linguistic perspective.