Talk:Qʼeqchiʼ language

Spelling of the language/article title

Is there some reason this hasn't been moved to Q'eqchi' (with the apostrophe/glottal stop at the end)? — MikeG (talk) 21:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

No reason, other than likely oversight; thanks for picking up. page is now moved to Q'eqchi' , though should probably be further moved to Q'eqchi' language as and when a separate article on the people themselves is developed.--cjllw | TALK 01:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Q'eqchi' language template

If you are a native speaker of Q'eqchi' then you can help translate this template into your own language:

kekThis user is a native speaker of Q'eqchi'.

Edit

--Amazonien (talk) 22:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Added "history" section

but it probably needs editing. Homunq (talk) 03:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Orthography

The phonology table headers mention the ALMG orthography before it's discussed. So I've

1. split most of the Orthography section into four subsections, with minimal rewriting:
   1. the early systems, now chronologically reordered to the top
   2. the SIL system
   3. the current (ALMG) system
   4. the table comparing two brief texts in SIL and ALMG orthographies
2. added a link from the phonology table header to the ALMG subsection

In passing, I noticed and corrected a wikiformat error that broke the link to the Ethnologue entry and labeled it just "entry". (Someone used a pipe instead of a space in the external link. I've done that, or the reverse, I don't know how many times, and can only hope I caught them all.)

I should know that although I am a linguistic researcher, I know nothing specific about the Q'eqchi' language or its orthography, and in the minimal rewriting that I've done here I have assumed the likeliest meaning for one or two ambiguous expressions in the original. --Thnidu (talk) 02:24, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

PS: Only two in current use? One of the External Links

K'EQCHI 2012 Maya Atinabal re li Poyanam K'eqchî sâ li Tenamit Guatemala ut Belize / Mayan language for the K'eqchî people in Guatemala and Belize

doesn't look like either the ALMG or SIL system. --Thnidu (talk) 02:29, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Consonants

The consonant table had a "Disambiguation needed" template because one of the column headers was "Alveolar affricate": unlike the other columns, and quite non-standardly, specifying a type of articulation (affricate) as well as a place (alveolar). Fixing this required considerable editing of the table, which I have done, though I have not changed any of its content (only the arrangement).

I also relabeled the bottom row from

(loans from Spanish)

to

Plosive (loans from Spanish)

and moved it up to right under the [native] "Plosive" row. And I moved the nasals down below all the obstruents, as is customary. --Thnidu (talk) 02:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Several revisions (5/17/16)

Hi everyone, I'm going to be making several substantial revisions to this page, to be completed within the next few days:

• Substantially rebuild the notes/references/bibliography
  • Create a Bibliography section which will contain journal articles and grammars (soon to be) cited in this article as well as some major dictionaries.
  • Rebuild the references to the works in the bibliography to use shortened footnote format.
• In the Intro:
  • Adding a few more common spellings of the name of the language in the first sentence.
• In the Distribution section:
  • Deleting the enumeration of the towns studied in Xtz'ilb'al Rix Li Aatinak Sa' Q'eqchi': Informe de Variación Dialectal en Q'eqchi (2007) which I believe does not centrally address the question of distribution.
  • Adding some data on Q'eqchi' distribution from the Atlas Lingüístico de Guatemala (2003)
• Several revisions of the phonology section:
  • Adding footnote citations
  • In the consonant phoneme chart:
    • Removing the ALMG orthography from the consonant phoneme chart, to be replaced by a phoneme-to-grapheme match-up chart in the ALMG subsection of the orthographies section.
    • Combining the alveopalatal and postalveolar columns under Alveo-palatal (see Stewart's 1980 grammar or Tzoc Choc's 2004 grammar)
    • Adding a note on the disagreement on the /ɓ/ phoneme between descriptions (Stewart 1980 and Tzoc Choc 2004 vs. Caz Cho 2007)
    • Correcting the uvular fricative (currently represented as velar) (See Stewart 1980, Tzoc Choc 2004, Caz Cho 2007)
    • Adding /h/ (See Stewart 1980, Tzoc Choc 2004, Caz Cho 2007)
  • adding another exception to word-final stress (Stewart 1980)
• Adding "Grammar" Section!
  • Adding Morphology section. The descriptions and data I plan on adding to this section focus on pronominal affixes.
  • Adding Syntax section with examples and description of basic word order.
• In the Orthographies section:
  • A few slight corrections to the ALMG subsection
  • As noted above, adding a chart to the ALMG subsection which matches up each ALMG grapheme

Thank you! Balamcoatl (talk) 21:02, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Additional Issues while Editing

Stewart (1980) says something quite different about the dialect areas of Q'eqchi' than what is written currently in the article. I will change it to conform to what Stewart says about the two dialect groups, based on Kaufman (1976:64), although I can't retrieve which Kaufman work he is referring to. Feel free to edit accordingly if you have more information on the subject, of course. Balamcoatl (talk) 18:02, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

I want to add the important fact that the SIL orthography, as used in Aprendamos kekchí, was the authorized alphabet of the Ministry of Education through the government agency, the Insituto Indigenista Nacional (IIN). Balamcoatl (talk) 18:36, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Possession of loan words

In the case of ab'oon, artal and asuukr, the possessed forms lack the glotal stop: in'ab'oon, in'artal, in'asuukr. Cmp. Sam Juárez 1997. Is this on purpose or just an oversight? You can actually hear the glotal stop when speaking. Compare this with intransitive verbs like aatinak -> nin'aatinak. No q'eqchi' syllable starts with a vowel and it is just an orthographic convention to not write the glotal stop at the beginning of a word. Once it receives a non-prevocalic prefix, the glotal stop must be written again.

It is also a bit strong to call the form in'asuukr correct and the form wasuukr wrong. It is true that one hears a lot more often in'asuukr than wasuukr, but the latter is also used. On which ground has it been decided that one is wrong and the other right?

Hello! I took that example (and many of the others) directly from Stewart (1980), which had no written glottal stop. (Stewart was using the PLFM orthography if that is relevant.) I don't know what grounds he used to decide, or what exactly his methods were, but he did deem inasuukr grammatical and wasuukr ungrammatical. It might be that Stewart was mistaken. I don't have enough experience with the language myself to know. Is there also a possibility that it is dialect variation? Stewart's grammar focused on a relatively small area around Cobán. Thank you, I'm glad you spotted this! Balamcoatl (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Re: Comparison of the two major orthographies

Hi, native speaker here. There are various errors in the examples in the section "Comparison of the two major orthographies".

The verb "not to be there" is "maakʼaʼ" and not "maakʼa". Compare inkʼaʼ and kʼaʼru.

The word is "muhebʼaal" and not "muhebʼal". The suffix -bʼaal indicates place, while -bʼal is used to form the infinitive of base-derived transitive verbs.

The word is "kʼicheʼbʼaal" and not "kiʼchebal". Kʼicheʼ literally means "many trees" and the letter "b" (instead of "bʼ") doesn't even exist in Qʼeqchiʼ.

The word "laa muhebʼaal" is written separated while "aakiʼchebal" is written together. Either one writes all possessive prefixes together or all separated. The standard way taught in school is to write them together, hence: "laamuhebʼaal aakʼicheʼbʼaal".

"Petén" is simply "Peten" without an accent.

The examples should read:

Maakʼaʼ ta chinkʼul saʼ laamuhebʼaal aakʼicheʼbʼaal.

[there-is-nothing] [maybe] [may-I-receive] [in] [the-your-dark-place] [your-forest-place]

Maacʼaʼ ta chincʼul saʼ laamuhebʼaal aaqʼuicheʼbʼaal.

Yo chi amaqʼink laj Kachil Peten.

Yo chi amakʼinc laj Cachil Peten.

Thanks for your kind attention.

191.98.195.249 (talk) 17:12, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Hola

Holaa 207.172.118.168 (talk) 05:21, 20 October 2022 (UTC)