| Also Known As: West Central Quiche,Southwestern Quiché,Cantel Quiché
Description:
West Central Quiché (K'iche') is a Mayan language spoken by approximately 250,000 people in the western highlands of Guatemala. It is sometimes considered a dialect of a larger Quiché language, as many forms of Quiché are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. The Quichéan languages are the most widely-spoken indigenous language group in Guatemala, with approximately one million native speakers.
A table of the phoneme inventory of West Central Quiché is provided below, as transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Selected allophones have been included in parentheses.
Like other Quichéan languages, West Central Quiché has both plain voiceless stops and affricates p /p/, t /t/, tz /ts/, ch /tʃ/, k /k/, and q /q/ and their glottalized counterparts b’ /ɓ/, t’ /t’/, tz’ /ts’/, ch’ /tʃ’/, k’ /k’/, and q’ /q’/. The glottalized bilabial stop is realized as a weak implosive, while the other glottalized consonants are realized as ejectives. The plain stops and affricates are typically aspirated, while their glottalized counterparts are not.
West Central Quiché has only voiceless fricatives and voiced approximants phonemically, with the exception of some marginal phonemes..... full article at Wikipedia |
