This lesson will introduce us to pronunciation details in K’iche. We will take a look at the alphabet and listen to sample words.
Jas kab’an che ub’ixik le K’iche’ ch’ab’al (The sounds of K’iche)
This lesson will introduce the vowels and consonants of K’iche’. Most will not be challenging for a speaker of English or Spanish, as the reader will soon discover. The series of ejective consonants (b’, t’, k’, q’) will be a bit harder to articulate but with practice they can be mastered too. It should be noted that vowel length is important as several words as distinguished only by the length of their vocalic articulation (Ex. chäj “pine tree” and chaj “ashes”. Short vowels will be spelt with a dieresis diacritic as in chäj “pine tree”. We encourage the reader not to feel discouraged if her or his pronunciation is not like a native speaker’s. In this course we strive to develop communicational competence, not perfect articulation! Your pronunciation will improve as you continue to practice and engage native speakers. Read the text below, click on the examples, listen carefully and repeat them aloud until you feel comfortable with your pronunciation.
The sounds of K’iche’
Some features of K’iche’ consonants and vowels are quite different from those of Standard Indo-European languages. The most striking are a glottalized series of consonants as well as the presence of both short and long vowels. However, with practice and attention to native speakers’ pronunciation, none of these are difficult to master. Vowels are sometimes followed by a closure of the glottis (glottal stop) in which case they are followed by an apostrophe (‘).
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Figure 1. K’iche’ Consonants
Figure 2. K’iche’ Vowels
Consonants
/p/
/t/
/k/
/q/
/b’/
/t’/
/k’/
/q’/
/tz/
/ch/
/tz’/
/ch’/
/s/
/x/
/j/
/m/
/n/
/l/
/r/
/w/
/y/
Consonants borrowed from Spanish
In addition to the phonemes shown above, K’iche’ has borrowed some Spanish phonemes (b, f, d, g), which are restricted to Spanish loanwords such as the following:
Vowels
K’iche’ has a ten-vowel vocalic inventory, as seen in Fig. 2. Vowel length is phonemic. Short vowels are distinguished from long vowels by a two dot diacritic. Note that vowel length is important on stressed syllables only. Most K’iche’ dialects stress word-final syllables only, including the Nahuala dialect.
/ï/
/i/
/ü/
/u/
/ë/
/e/
/ö/
/o/
/ä/
/a/