¡Kojtzijon Kaqchikel! Let's speak Kaqchikel!

I have been studying Kaqchikel, which is a language in the Mayan family and is spoken in Guatemala, in and around the capitol city.

It is a very interesting language, and I hope to expose more people to it by doing my exercises, and sharing the new words and phrases that I learn in this blog.

The text I am using is ¿La ütz awäch? by R. McKenna Brown, et al. You can buy through an online bookseller. ISBN 0-292-71460-2.

¿La ütz awäch? means "Are you well?" and would be like asking "How are you?" in English.

La introduces a yes/no question, ütz means good, and awäch literally means "your face". So literally this question means "Is your face good?".

Hmm. Some things just don't lend themselves to literal translations. Anyway, in response, one would say "Ütz, matyöx" (good, thanks).

How to pronounce these words? Let's see. If I don't otherwise specify, the sounds are like Spanish. So, for the sounds that require a comment here:

ü sounds like the 'u' in 'put' (as in 'put' your stuff away).
ä sounds like the mid-central lax vowel that linguists call a 'schwa' vowel, and looks like /ə/, though I hear it soundling more like a lax high front /i/ that rhymes with 'pit'.
ö sounds like a mid back rounded vowel /ɔ/ (like 'ball')
x sounds like 'sh' (as in hush)

For more about the language, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaqchikel_language

More laters!