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.
Classification
Chʼortiʼ can be called a living "Rosetta Stone" of Mayan languages. Chʼortiʼ is an important tool for interpreting the contents of Maya glyphic writings, some of which are not yet fully understood. For several years, many linguists and anthropologists expected to grasp the Chʼortiʼ culture and language by studying its words and expressions. Chʼortiʼ is spoken mainly in and around Jocotán and Camotán, Chiquimula department, Guatemala, as well as in adjacent areas of parts of western Honduras near the Copán Ruins. Because the Classic Mayan language was ancestral to the modern Chʼorti, it can be used to decipher the ancient language. These three descendants are still spoken today. Chʼortiʼ and Chʼolti are two sub-branches belonging to Eastern Chʼolan; Chʼolti is, however, already extinct.
There are some debates among scholars about how Chʼolan should be classified. John Robertson considered the direct ancestor of colonial Chʼoltiʼ to be the language of the Mayan script (also known as Mayan Glyphs). The language of the Mayan Glyphs is described as 'Classic Chʼoltiʼan' by John Robertson, David Stuart, and Stephen Houston. The language of the Mayan script is thus the ancestor of Chʼortiʼ. The relationship is shown in the chart below.
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, two 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.
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.
Phonology and orthography
The Chʼortiʼ have their own standard way of writing their language. However, inaccurate ways to represent phonemes led to some variation among recent publications.
Vowel clusters
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Characters used
!Sometimes also used
!IPA symbol
!Chʼortiʼ pronunciation
|-
|aa
|ā, aꞏ, a꞉
|a
|Like regular a but held longer
|-
|ee
|ē, eꞏ, e꞉
|e
|Like e only held longer
|-
|ii
|ī, iꞏ, i꞉
|i
|Like i only held longer
|-
|oo
|ō, oꞏ, o꞉
|o
|Like o only held longer
|-
|uu
|ū, uꞏ, u꞉
|u
|Like u only held longer
|}
When two vowels are put together in Chʼortiʼ, the second vowel always takes precedence and then is always followed by a glottal stop. Chʼortiʼ does not have long vowels. According to historians, long vowels occur in Classical Mayan, but have been lost in modern Chʼortiʼ.
In Chʼortiʼ, aa or a꞉ is used as aʼ or Aʼ; this pattern occurs with all vowel clusters including eʼ, Iʼ, oʼ and uʼ.
Some examples of words with vowel clusters are꞉
- Jaʼx [xaʔʃ] = Her, ella
- Weʼr [weʔr] = meat, carne
- Bʼiʼx [pʼiʔʃ] = seed, semilla
- Tunoʼron [tunoʔɾon] = everyone, todos
- Kuʼm [kuʔm] = egg, huevo
Morphology
Verb inflection
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Verb Inflections in Chʼortiʼ
|-
! colspan="2" |
! Ergative<br />(Set A)
! Absolutive<br />(Set B)
! Subjective<br />(Set C)
|-
! rowspan="2" | 1st<br />person
!
| in-/ni-
| -en
| in-
|-
!
| ka-
| -on
| ka-
|-
! rowspan="2" | 2nd<br />person
!
| a-
| -et
| i-
|-
!
| i-
| -ox
| ix-
|-
! rowspan="2" | 3rd<br />person
!
| u-
| -Ø
| a-
|-
!
| u-...-obʼ
| -obʼ
| aʼ...-obʼ
|}
Examples of inflected verbs from Isidro González's stories (John Fought, 1972):
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Verb Inflection Examples
|-
! Uninflected Verb
! Inflected Verb
|-
|
|
|-
|
|
|-
|
|
|-
|
|
|}
Syntax
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.
Chʼortiʼ tripartite pronominal system (data from Hull 2005)
Basic word order
In the Chʼortiʼ 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, meaning verb-object-subject. The following rules apply VSO, SVO, SOV, OVS, OSV.
In most of the Chʼortiʼ 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).