#kaqchikel

[folkfashion]

Kaqchikel Maya girl, Guatemala, by Freddy CosiGuá

[divinum-pacis]

Women hold palm bouquets waiting for a Palm Sunday procession in the Kaqchikel indigenous community of San Pedro Sacatepequez, Guatemala, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

[graph100]

i have this little pocketbook of kaqchikel poetry and like. holy shit i wish every book was like this

[best-non-english-word-torunament]

Round four: Rub'eyna'oj vs многоꙮчитїй, mnogoočitii

(poll at the end)

Rub'eyna'oj (Kaqchikel)

[ɾuɓejnaʔox]

Translation: cognition (lit. "your internal wisdom")

Kaqchikel or Caqchikel Maya is a Mayan language spoken by 411 000 people in Guatemala. It is a threatened language and one reason is that some parents choose to speak Spanish in the home so that their children can start school with Spanish as a first language, which means that the language doesn’t get passed down to the next generation in all families. This is a common reason languages become endangered. Kaqchikel uses many glottalised sounds, which means that some sounds are partly articulated with the vocal folds. This sounds a bit like a pop of air. English only has the glottal stop [ʔ], which is the sound of the little pause in the middle of uh-oh, when the vocal folds close entirely and cuts off air. Kaqchikel on the other hand, also has sounds like glottalised k or glottalised ts.

Motivation: This word did not exist in historical Kaqchikel but was created as an intentional neologism (among many others) in order to prevent the necessity of Spanish in Maya communities. "Your internal wisdom" is a beautiful way to think about cognition and thoughts in general.

многоꙮчитїй, mnogoočitii (Old Church Slavonic)

IPA not found

Translation: many-eyed

Old Church Slavonic is an extinct language that belonged to the Slavic branch of Indo-European languages. It’s closest related to today’s Macedonian and Bulgarian, but was standardised based on the dialect of Slavs living near 9th century Thessaloniki in today’s Greece by missionaries, who translated Christian literature so they could convert people easier. Old Church Slavonic was then used as the liturgical language of various Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches. A later version of the language called Church Slavonic is still in use in churches today.

Motivation: This particular instance of the word appears once in a manuscript from around 1429. It is the book of psalms, and the word is used in the phrase "серафими многоꙮчитїй," to mean "many-eyed seraphim," as in an angel. the "ꙮ", or multiocular o, is one of my favorite Unicode symbols and also symbols in general. In the next version of Unicode it's going to be updated, because it doesn't even have enough eyes as the original manuscript gave it! Looking past the ꙮ fixation, though, I'm a fan of angels and angelic imagery, as well as eye imagery. A single word for "many-eyed" is really cool to me, since I don't recall there being one in English. It's a useful phrase for more than just angels, like spiders, molluscs...

Which is the best word?

Rub'eyna'oj

многоꙮчитїй, mnogoočitii

Voting ended onSep 22, 2023

[wakandaiscoming]

María Mercedes Coroy será parte de la película ‘Wakanda Forever’ de Marvel

El anuncio fue dado a conocer luego de que Marvel estrenara el adelanto de ‘Wakanda Forever’ en la San Diego Comic-Con 2022.

Guatemalan actress Maria Mercedes Coroy will play Namor's mother in Wakanda Forever.

This is notable because her previous films have been in the Kaqchikel language, which is part of the Mayan languages family. (It's not really correct to say someone speaks "Mayan", I don't think--please correct me if I am wrong. There are lots of offshoots and dialects and it's still very much multiple living languages.)

[springtimestudies]

Let’s make some basic sentences in Kaqchikel! To start, here’s one that many of us in the langblr community might actually need to say :)

Rïn in tijoxel. - I am a student.

Now let’s break it down word by word:

Rïn - I

In - (I) am

Tijoxel - a student

The main thing to note here is that “in” can be used either with “rïn” or on its own, without losing any meaning. So, we just as easily could have simplified the original sentence as “In tijoxel” and it still would have translated as “I am a student.” Both versions are correct, but adding the “rïn” gives the sentence a bit more emphasis.

Now that we know the basics, here’s the full set of personal pronouns in Kaqchikel:

Rïn - I (can also be yïn, depending on the dialect)

Rat - you

Rija’ - he/she/it

Röj - we

Rïx - y’all

Rije’ - they

Notice that unlike many other languages, Kaqchikel personal pronouns don’t distinguish gender, so “he,” “she,” or any other third-person singular pronouns would all be translated as “rija’.”

Now, to use them in a sentence we need the “to be” words for the rest of the pronouns:

(Rïn) in - I am

(Rat) at - you are

(Rija’) - he/she is

(Röj) oj - we are

(Rïx) ix - y’all are

(Rije’) e - they are

This are super easy to memorize, as each “to be” word is derived from its personal pronoun- “in” sounds a lot like “rïn,” “at” like “rat,” etc.

Another important thing to note is that the “to be” morpheme is eliminated in the third person singular. That would be like if instead of saying in English “She is a teacher” we said “She a teacher.”

Now that we have the basic pronouns and “to be” words down, let’s make some simple sentences!

Let’s start with the word tijoxel (student) and its plural, tijoxela’ (students).

Rïn in tijoxel - I am a student

Rat at tijoxel - You are a student

Rija’ tijoxel* - He/she is a student

Röj oj tijoxela’ - We are students

Rïx ix tijoxela’ - Y’all are students

Rije’ e tijoxela’ - They are students

*note the implied “to be” in the third person singular sentence!

Adjectives are even simpler than nouns- they only have one form, and it encompasses both singular and plural meanings! Let’s practice some sentences with the word juwi’ (smart):

Rïn in juwi’. - I am smart

Röj oj juwi’. - We are smart

Of course, you can substitute a name for a pronoun where appropriate:

Mary juwi’.

Leila y* Alex e tijoxela’.

*the Kaqchikel word “y” means “and” (an example of linguistic borrowing from Spanish!)

Here’s some other words you can use to make practice sentences:

Beautiful - jeb’ël

Tired - kosnäq

Teacher - tijonel

Teachers - tijonela’

Rabbit - umül

Rabbits - umuli’

Disclaimer that I’ve only been studying Kaqchikel for one semester, so I am by no means an expert! Any native speakers or more advanced learners please let me know if you see any mistakes!!

The image in the header is part of a scarf made by María Filomena Hernández Zamora, a Kaqchikel artist and founder of a weaving cooperative in Sacatepéquez.

[sacredwhores]

Jayro Bustamante - Ixcanul (2015)

[allthingslinguistic]

The many languages missing from the internet

English and a handful of other languages dominate the internet, but this is leaving indigenous cultures without a voice online. Now they are fighting back.

An article in BBC Future about linguistic representation on the internet. 

The Kaqchikel Mayan community from Guatemala includes more than half a million speakers. Miguel Ángel Oxlaj Kumez is part of it and was one of the organisers of the first Latin American Festival of Indigenous Languages on the Internet, held in 2019.

“When I get on the internet I find more than 90% of the content in English and hence a significant percentage in Spanish and other languages,” he says. “So what I have to do is to move to another language, and that favours the displacement of my own language.”

“It discredits my own language, because – as it is not on the internet – then it is not valid, then it does not work, therefore why am I going to continue learning it? Why am I going to teach it to my children if, when I turn on the internet or television, I cannot find it there?”

Oxlaj Kumez is working with other activists to create a version of Wikipedia in Kaqchikel Mayan, as well as a translated version of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. His dream is to be able to have a “digital life in my own language, and when I decide to move to another language that it will be my decision”.

He is not the only one with that dream. In 2003, Unesco adopted a recommendation to promote the use of multilingualism online. Ever since, the organisation has been pushing for universality on the internet, with a special focus on indigenous languages.

Read the whole thing.