Chʼortiʼ language

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The Chʼortiʼ language (sometimes also Chorti) is a Mayan language, spoken by the indigenous Maya people who are also known as the Chʼortiʼ or Chʼortiʼ Maya. Chʼortiʼ is a direct descendant of the Classic Maya language in which many of the pre-Columbian inscriptions using the Maya script were written.^[2] Chʼortiʼ is the modern version of the ancient Mayan language Chʼolan (which was actively used and most popular between the years of A.D 250 and 850).^[2]

Relationship to other Mayan languages[]

Chʼortiʼ can be called a living "Rosetta Stone" of Mayan languages. The Chʼortiʼ language is an important factor to comprehend the contents of Maya glyphic writings, some of which are not yet fully understood. Over several years, many linguists and anthropologists expected to realize the Chʼortiʼ culture and language by studying its words and expressions.^[3] Chʼortiʼ is spoken mainly in and around Jocotán and Camotán, Chiquimula department, Guatemala, as well as adjacent areas of parts of western Honduras near the Copán Ruins.^[4] Because the Classic Mayan language was ancestral to the modern Chʼorti, Chʼorti can be used to decipher the ancient language.^[2] For example, it was discovered that the Mayan language had distinct grammatical patterns, such as a consonant/vowel syllable aspect.^{[clarification needed]} Researchers realized that the ancient language was based more on phonetics than previously thought.^[2]

A map showing the present-day locations of the Mayan Languages. The colors of the language names shows closely related groups. The size of the name shows the relative number of speakers.

The name Chortiʼ (with unglottalized <ch>) means 'language of the corn farmers', which references to the traditional agricultural activity of the Chʼortiʼ families. The politicized spelling Chʼortiʼ was introduced later in an attempt to lessen associations between Chʼortiʼ speakers and stereotypical professions.^{[citation needed]}

Chʼortiʼ is one of the three modern descendants of Chʼolan language which is a sub-group of Mayan languages. Other two modern descendants are Chontal and Chʼol.^[5] These three descendants are still spoken by people. Chʼortiʼ language and Chʼolti language are two sub-branches belong to the Eastern Chʼolan. And Chʼolti language is already extinct today.

Actually there are some debates among the scholars how the Chʼolan language should be classified. John Robertson considered the direct ancestor of colonial Chʼoltiʼ is the language of the Mayan script (also known as Mayan Glyphs). The language of the Mayan Glyphs is realized as 'Classic Chʼoltiʼan' by John Robertson, David Stuart, and Stephen Houston. And then the language of the Mayan script in turn becomes the ancestor of Chʼortiʼ. The relationship shows as the chart below.^[4]

Language Endangerment[]

The Chʼortiʼ people are descendants of the people who lived in and around Copán, one of the cultural capitals of the ancient Maya area. This covers parts of modern-day Honduras and Guatemala. Chʼorti is considered an endangered language as well as an endangered culture.

Geographic location of Chʼortiʼ speakers[]

This region is the only region in the world that Chʼorti speakers can be found. Although the area is completely shaded in, the majority of speakers reside in Guatemala, while the rest are sparsely distributed throughout the rest of the area.^[6]

Honduras[]

The government of Honduras has been trying to promote a uniform national language of Spanish, and therefore discourages the use and teaching of native languages such as Chʼorti. The Chʼortiʼ people in Honduras face homogenization and have to assimilate to their surroundings. The government has been clashing with the Chʼorti people over land disputes from the 1800s, which puts the people (and thus the language) at risk. In 1997, 2 prominent Chʼorti leaders were assassinated. This assassination is just one example of many cases where Chʼorti advocates have been harmed or killed. Every one of these killings reduces the number of Chʼorti speakers. As of right now, there are only 10 remaining native speakers in Honduras.^[7]

Guatemala[]

The government of Guatemala has been more supportive of Chʼorti speakers and has promoted programs that encourage the learning and teaching of Chʼorti. The Chʼorti's in Guatemala wear traditional clothing, unlike their counterparts in Honduras, who wear modern-day clothing.^[7] Currently there are about 55,250 Chʼorti speakers in Guatemala. Even though Guatemala has established Spanish as its official language, it supports the teaching of these native languages.

Ethnonyms: Cholotí, Chorté, Chortí[]

The majority of Chʼortiʼ live in the Chiquimula Department of Guatemala, approximately 52,000. The remaining 4,000 live in Copán, Honduras. Traditionally, the highland Maya Indian people were dependent on maize and beans. The Kʼicheʼ Maya however, dominated the Chʼortiʼ dating back to the early fifteenth century. Warfare as well as disease devastated much of the Chʼortiʼ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of their land was lost to the Guatemalan government in the nineteenth century as well. More recently, 25 percent of the Guatemalan Chʼortiʼ went to the United States during the 1980s to escape political persecution.^[8]

Phonology and orthography[]

The Chʼortiʼ have their own standard way of writing their language. However, the inaccurate ways to represent phoneme led to some variations among all of the publications recently.^[9][10]

Consonants[]

The consonants of Chʼortiʼ include glottal stop [ʼ], b, bʼ, ch, chʼ, d, g, j, k, kʼ, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, tʼ, tz, tzʼ, w, x, y.

Instances of both /b/ and /d/ usually only appear in Spanish loan words. The j has two pronunciations, as either a voiceless velar fricative [x] or a voiceless glottal fricative [h]. Classic Mayan differentiated between the [x] and the [h]. This differentiation can be seen in some Ch’orti’ literature, such as with the texts by Wisdom. The <w> and <y> are semivowels.

The ordering of terms would be that the consonants follows after the non glottal versions. Besides, words with rearticulated root vowels follow after their corresponding short vowels.

Therefore, the order of presentation will be as follows: a, aʼ, b, bʼ, ch, chʼ, d, e, eʼ, g, i, iʼ, j, k, kʼ, l, m, n, o, oʼ, p, r, s, t, tʼ, tz, tzʼ, u, uʼ, w, x, y.

Vowels[]

The vowels consist of a, e, i, o, and u.^[10]

Vowel clusters[]

When two vowels are put together in Ch’orti’ the second vowel always takes precedence and then is always followed by a glottal stop. Ch’orti’ doesn’t have any long vowels. According to historians, long vowels occur in Classical Mayan, but have been lost in modern Ch’orti’.

In Ch'orti' language, aa or a: is used as a’ or A’, we can see this pattern with all vowel clusters including e’, I’, o’ and u’.

Some examples of words with vowel clusters are:

• Ja’x [xa ʔʃ] = Her, ella
• We’r [weʔr] = meat, carne  
• B’i’x [p’iʔʃ] = seed, semilla
• Tuno’ron [tu.’noʔ.o.’ɾon] = everyone, todos
• Ku’m [kuʔm] = egg, huevo ^[11]

Word order[]

The aspectual system of Chʼortiʼ language changed to a tripartite pronominal system which comes with different morphemes used for the subject of transitive verbs, the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive completive verbs, and a third set of pronouns only used for the subject of incompletive intransitive verbs.^[12]

Chʼortiʼ tripartite pronominal system (data from Hull 2005)

Transitive

Intransitive completive

Intransitive incompletive

Basic word order

In the Ch'orti language and other Mayan sentences it always starts with verbs but also there are agents or patients added and in which they are commonly represented by the acronym VOS, and it stands for Verb, Object and Subject. The following rules apply VSO, SVO, SOV,OVS, OSV.^[13]

In most of the Ch’orti' language there are phrases surrounding transitive verbs and they are order subject first (first-most) and it’s followed by the verb then the object (SVO).^[14]

Verb object subject ^[13]

"Grandma sells vegetables"

Adjectives with attributive function

The adjective works together with the nouns as a modifier formed with a noun phrase that plays some syntactic role, object etc.^[13]

Predicative adjective indicate the size, color or state

Ch'orti has many other different forms, in the following sentence the words that appear to be bold is a preposition and underline one is a relational noun.^[13]

Common words[]

The following list contains examples of common words in the Chʼortiʼ language:

^[15]

Morphology[]

Verb inflection[]

Possessions[]

Tak is plural for women and children’

• ijch'ok-tak "little girls"
• max-tak "children, young ones, family" (max does not occur without -tak)
• ixik-tak "women"

These are the only instances encountered. It is worthy of notice that ixka'r "wife", ch'urkab' "baby" and ar "offspring" take -ob'.

ob' is a general plural. The suffix can be found in nouns, verbs, adjectives, and participials. Here are some examples:

^[16]

Copan[]

The communities of Copan are populated by "farmers with indigenous tradition", essentially, agricultural laborers known as the Chʼortiʼ. Illiteracy rates in these communities fall between 92 and 100 percent, infant mortality rates of 60 percent, and life expectancy being 49 years for men and 55 years for women. A conflict that has effected the Copan area immensely is land tenure. Originally, Chʼortiʼs used communal land and owned individual plots. Shortly after the Spanish conquest, the land and people became Spanish property. The land was then used in the system (farmers rent land in return for payment of a proportion of the harvest obtained). This system was stable for hundreds of years, until the Honduran government signed Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1991. This organization was established to protect and benefit indigenous communities such as the Chʼortiʼ by improving access to land, health, and housing as well as other basic necessities. The murder of Chʼortiʼ leader in April 1997 sparked another conflict, resulting in the government signing an agreement with the Chʼortiʼ organization (CONICHH) offering 2,000 ha of land in Copan.^[17]

References[]

External links[]

• Online version of Wisdom's Chorti Dictionary (1950)
• Oral Histories of the Chʼortiʼ Maya (2011)
• Mayan Languages Collection of John Fought at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, containing several hundred recordings of Chʼortiʼ made between 1964 and 1967 in Guatemala, field notes and photographs.
• Information about Ch'orti' language

• https://web.archive.org/web/20120708050908/http://www10.gencat.cat/pres_casa_llengues/AppJava/frontend/llengues_detall.jsp?id=1000&idioma=5