Misplaced Pages

#801198

110-637: Kaqchikel is taught in public schools through Guatemala's intercultural bilingual education programs . Kaqchikel is spoken by the indigenous Maya in Central Guatemala. The Mayan civilization dates back to the Pre-classic period (2000 BC to 300 AD). Geographically, the Maya expanded from Mexico , Belize and Guatemala . This changed between 900 AD and when the Spanish arrived. Their settlement moved west and into

220-416: A fricative and a stop , with the stop always to the inside of its partner. Kaqchikel is a moderately synthetic language with fusional affixes. It has a strong system of affixation , including both suffixes and prefixes. These attach to both nouns and verbs; prefixes are exclusively inflective , whereas suffixes can be inflective or derivational . Inflective prefixes are quite short, often composed of

330-528: A spectrogram . The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity , and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time. The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies, while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen in

440-532: A 1986-1991 study, indigenous students enrolled in the bilingual program improved their academic performance. PRONEBI benefits girls in particular; although indigenous boys in PRONEBI schools performed as well as non-PRONEBI boys, PRONEBI girls outperformed non-PRONEBI girls. Within the program, results varied between complete and incomplete schools; students at complete PRONEBI schools received higher test scores than students at incomplete schools. Spanish proficiency by

550-402: A 20th-century educational reform effort intended to promote the country's cultural diversity. The programs merge Mayan language and culture with Spanish language and Ladino culture, a shift from the assimilation policy of educational programs promoting Spanish literacy which reduce the use of indigenous languages. During the 20th century, education reform evolved from castilianization and

660-428: A back vowel, the more intense is the rounding. However, in some languages, roundedness is independent from backness, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages ( Estonian has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with a rounding distinction for front vowels and /u/ ), and Vietnamese with back unrounded vowels. Nonetheless, even in those languages there

770-404: A direct mapping of tongue position." Nonetheless, the concept that vowel qualities are determined primarily by tongue position and lip rounding continues to be used in pedagogy, as it provides an intuitive explanation of how vowels are distinguished. Theoretically, vowel height refers to the vertical position of either the tongue or the jaw (depending on the model) relative to either the roof of

880-602: A few other groups of words which do not fall neatly into any of the above categories. These groups are articles, pronouns, numbers, affectives, and words used for measurement. All of these types of words function differently in Kaqchikel, and so they are considered to belong to different word classes. Kaqchikel shows agreement with the subject and object of a verb. Nouns also show agreement with their possessors. The agreement pattern of Kaqchikel follows an ergative-absolutive pattern . This affects both nouns and verbs. The functions of

990-517: A formal school environment. The Bilingual Castilianization Program was intended to address issues of bilingual education which were not resolved through castilianization, particularly the limited Spanish proficiency of indigenous children. The development of the program coincided with the Constitution of 1966 (which made Spanish the national language) and the Education Law, which required Spanish as

1100-402: A glottal stop, although this is not always reflected in standard orthography or in the phonological realization of a word. While two CVC syllables often occur next to each other in the same word, consonant clusters in a single syllable are relatively uncommon. When these do occur, they are normally at the beginnings or ends of words and consist of either two continuants , a sonorant and a stop, or

1210-615: A group of roots which cannot function as words on their own; in combination with affixes they are used to describe relationships of position and location. In English, these words would fall into other categories, namely adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, both transitive and intransitive. The minor classes or particles are words that do not take affixes; they mostly function in adverbial roles, and include such things as interrogative particles, affirmative/negative words, markers of time and location, conjunctions, prepositions and demonstratives. In addition to these officially recognized classes, there are

SECTION 10

#1732844282802

1320-662: A language's writing system , particularly if the language uses an alphabet . In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet , the letters ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , ⟨y⟩ , ⟨w⟩ and sometimes others can all be used to represent vowels. However, not all of these letters represent the vowels in all languages that use this writing, or even consistently within one language. Some of them, especially ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ , are also used to represent approximant consonants . Moreover,

1430-417: A lesser extent [ɨ, ɘ, ɜ, æ] , etc.), can be secondarily qualified as close or open, as in the traditional conception, but this refers to jaw rather than tongue position. In addition, rather than there being a unitary category of back vowels, the regrouping posits raised vowels , where the body of the tongue approaches the velum ( [u, o, ɨ ], etc.), and retracted vowels , where the root of the tongue approaches

1540-495: A means of giving the Mayan languages a status equal to Spanish. The seven measures to encourage Mayan-language use as a cultural right are "constitutional recognition; bilingual education and Mayan language education; the use of Mayan languages in government services in Mayan communities; informing the indigenous peoples of their rights; training bilingual judges and interpreters; fostering appreciation of indigenous languages; and promoting

1650-728: A missionary in Guatemala. Today, the Mayan language of Kaqchikel is being revitalized and several Mayans are using education as a way to restore their language and culture. In 1986 the Academy of the Mayan Languages of Guatemala (ALMG) standardized an alphabet for the Mayan languages, which started a new movement for linguistic conversation. Literacy rates in Kaqchikel are low. Literacy campaigns are usually conducted in Spanish, and promote Spanish. In fact, most Mayan people are more literate in Spanish than they are in their native tongue. However, this

1760-477: A narrower constriction of the vocal tract than vowels, and so may be considered consonants on that basis. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic /l/ in table or the syllabic nasals in button and rhythm . The traditional view of vowel production, reflected for example in the terminology and presentation of the International Phonetic Alphabet ,

1870-410: A national priority. Intercultural bilingual education programs in Guatemala have received criticism and support from Mayan activists, indigenous communities and international scholars and activists. Guatemala was described as a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual country in the Constitution of 1985, which recognizes the right to cultural identity (Article 58) and says that bilingual instruction

1980-405: A portion of their community-service time teaching adult-literacy classes. Language lessons included individual and group recitation of Spanish texts and the copying of Mayan language and Spanish texts. The program, which originally served Ixil speakers, later extended to rural communities of Guatemala's four major indigenous languages: Kʼicheʼ , Kaqchikel , Qʼeqchiʼ , and Mam . The program

2090-436: A positive attitude toward work, discipline, community spirit and respect. Bridging the academic development of the student at school and at home presents more challenges, especially when parents are monolingual Mayan-language speakers. If their children learn Spanish at PRONEBI schools, though, Mayan parents generally view the program positively. PRONEBI has received praise and criticism nationally and internationally. Although

2200-421: A result of differences in prosody . The most important prosodic variables are pitch ( fundamental frequency ), loudness ( intensity ) and length ( duration ). However, the features of prosody are usually considered to apply not to the vowel itself, but to the syllable in which the vowel occurs. In other words, the domain of prosody is the syllable, not the segment (vowel or consonant). We can list briefly

2310-461: A simple plot of F1 against F2. In fact, this kind of plot of F1 against F2 has been used by analysts to show the quality of the vowels in a wide range of languages, including RP, the Queen's English, American English, Singapore English, Brunei English, North Frisian, Turkish Kabardian, and various indigenous Australian languages. R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values. Rounding

SECTION 20

#1732844282802

2420-403: A single phenomenon and posit instead three independent features of rounded (endolabial), compressed (exolabial), and unrounded. The lip position of unrounded vowels may also be classified separately as spread and neutral (neither rounded nor spread). Others distinguish compressed rounded vowels, in which the corners of the mouth are drawn together, from compressed unrounded vowels, in which

2530-588: A single sound and never consisting of more than three; suffixes can be longer than this. Because of the synthetic-fusional nature of Kaqchikel, it is difficult to discuss the language's morphology and syntax as two separate entities; they are very robustly intertwined. Kaqchikel has 6 major word classes and several minor classes, referred to collectively as "particles." The major word classes are groups of bases or roots that can take affixes. These classes are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and positionals. Positionals in this language are

2640-475: A sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) does not always match the phonological definition (i.e. a sound that forms the peak of a syllable). The approximants [j] and [w] illustrate this: both are without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur at the onset of syllables (e.g. in "yet" and "wet") which suggests that phonologically they are consonants. A similar debate arises over whether

2750-405: A tendency to more strongly lower close vowels and more strongly center back vowels. The pronunciation of the vowels spelt with o and u varies between [ɤ] and [o] for ⟨o⟩, and [ɯ] and [u] for ⟨u⟩. This roundness ambiguity for the back vowel phonemes is a trait found in many Mayan languages, such as Tzotzil and Mam. These vowel sounds may be pronounced as either rounded or unrounded depending on

2860-440: A two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower ( /ˈflaʊər/ ) phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters ⟨ow⟩ ) and a monophthong (represented by the letters ⟨er⟩ ). Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic sense. The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in

2970-668: A vowel might be represented by a letter usually reserved for consonants, or a combination of letters, particularly where one letter represents several sounds at once, or vice versa; examples from English include ⟨igh⟩ in "thigh" and ⟨x⟩ in "x-ray". In addition, extensions of the Latin alphabet have such independent vowel letters as ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , ⟨ü⟩ , ⟨å⟩ , ⟨æ⟩ , and ⟨ø⟩ . The phonetic values vary considerably by language, and some languages use ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩ for

3080-433: A word like bird in a rhotic dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/ . The American linguist Kenneth Pike (1943) suggested the terms " vocoid " for a phonetic vowel and "vowel" for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology, [j] and [w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels. However, Maddieson and Emmory (1985) demonstrated from a range of languages that semivowels are produced with

3190-463: Is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract . Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant . Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length) . They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone , intonation and stress . The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to

3300-676: Is a member of the Mayan language family . Mayan languages fall under the Proto- Mayan language family. This family is broken into four branches: Western, Eastern, Yucatecan, and Huastecan. Kaqchikel falls under the Qichean and Quichean Proper. Quichean Proper breaks down into four new languages: Kaqchikel, Tzʼutujil, Kʼicheʼ, and Achi. Tzʼutujil is the closest dialect to Kaqchikel. Mayan languages are spoken throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. In Joseph Greenberg 's Amerind hypothesis, Kaqchikel

3410-427: Is an exolabial (compressed) back vowel, and sounds quite different from an English endolabial /u/ . Swedish and Norwegian are the only two known languages in which the feature is contrastive; they have both exo- and endo-labial close front vowels and close central vowels , respectively. In many phonetic treatments, both are considered types of rounding, but some phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of

Kaqchikel language - Misplaced Pages Continue

3520-503: Is changing due to the movement to promote Mayan language literacy. Kaqchikel is being taught in public schools such as Guatemala's intercultural bilingual education programs. United States universities also offer programs that give the opportunity to learn Kaqchikel, such as Tulane University and the University of Kansas . The Kaqchikel language is spoken in the following municipalities ( Variación Dialectal en Kaqchikel, 2000 ). Kaqchikel

3630-536: Is classified as a member of the Penutian stock, in the Mayan branch of the Mexican family within that stock. However, this hypothesis has been largely discounted by modern linguists. Greenberg's hypothesis has received significant amounts of negative criticism from many important linguists ever since it was first published in 1987. In Greenberg's etymological dictionary of Amerind, Kaqchikel words are found in 5 entries. Four of

3740-482: Is disputed to have phonemic voiceless vowels but no language is confirmed to have them phonemically. Modal voice , creaky voice , and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, they co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language , vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In such cases, it can be unclear whether it

3850-437: Is generally realized by a decrease of F2 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are. In addition to variation in vowel quality as described above, vowels vary as

3960-438: Is highly unusual in contrasting true mid vowels with both close-mid and open-mid vowels, without any additional parameters such as length, roundness or ATR. The front vowels, /i ɪ e e̞ ɛ/ , along with open /a/ , make a six-way height distinction; this holds even for the nasal vowels. A few varieties of German have been reported to have five contrastive vowel heights that are independent of length or other parameters. For example,

4070-400: Is known to contrast more than three degrees of backness nor is there a language that contrasts front with near-front vowels nor back with near-back ones. Although some English dialects have vowels at five degrees of backness, there is no known language that distinguishes five degrees of backness without additional differences in height or rounding. Roundedness is named after the rounding of

4180-578: Is low, consistent with the tongue being positioned towards the back of the mouth. The International Phonetic Alphabet defines five degrees of vowel backness (sorted according to backness, with the top-most one being the front-most back and the bottom-most being the back-most): To them may be added front-central and back-central, corresponding to the vertical lines separating central from front and back vowel spaces in several IPA diagrams. However, front-central and back-central may also be used as terms synonymous with near-front and near-back . No language

4290-414: Is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters ⟨a⟩ ⟨e⟩ ⟨i⟩ ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ can represent

4400-416: Is one of articulatory features that determine a vowel's quality as distinguishing it from other vowels. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height (vertical dimension), tongue backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip articulation). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on

4510-523: Is preferable in regions with large indigenous populations. Guatemalans identify as mestizo , European and Mayan; its population is 59 percent mestizo and European and 40 percent Mayan. Spanish is the official language of Guatemala, with 60 percent of the population speaking the language. Speakers of Amerindian languages constitute 40 percent of the population, and the government officially recognizes 23 Amerindian languages. Education policy distinguishes between Mayan and Ladino education, but does not address

Kaqchikel language - Misplaced Pages Continue

4620-456: Is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast . The combination of phonetic cues (phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex . Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense vowels vs. lax vowels . This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this. Unlike

4730-471: Is usually some phonetic correlation between rounding and backness: front rounded vowels tend to be more front-central than front, and back unrounded vowels tend to be more back-central than back. Thus, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their position in formant space. Different kinds of labialization are possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels

4840-522: The achin man ri the bʼojoy pot X-u-pax-ij ri achin ri bʼojoy COMPL-3S.ERG-break-tr the man the pot 'The man broke the pot' [ DP   Ru-tzʼeʼ 3S . ERG -dog [ NP   a CL Xwan] Juan x-u-kʼux Intercultural bilingual education in Guatemala Intercultural bilingual education in Guatemala was begun as part of

4950-528: The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, which have been analyzed as four vowel heights (close, close-mid, mid, open-mid) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, along with an open vowel for a fifth height: /i e ɛ̝ ɛ/, /y ø œ̝ œ/, /u o ɔ̝ ɔ/, /a/ . Apart from the aforementioned Kensiu language , no other language is known to contrast more than four degrees of vowel height. The parameter of vowel height appears to be

5060-621: The Khoisan languages . They might be called epiglottalized since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis. The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords. The terms pharyngealized , epiglottalized , strident , and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably. Rhotic vowels are

5170-467: The Tzʼutujiles . Instead, their hopes to become stronger were defeated when de Alvarado turned against them and destroyed their capital, which was a part of the Spanish mass extermination plans of the indigenous. This plan decreased the number of Kaqchikel speakers, as they were required to then speak Spanish. In the 1920s, William Cameron Townsend devised the first alphabet for Kaqchikel while working as

5280-426: The ergative agreement include marking not only subjects of transitive verbs , but also possessors of nouns. There are two main sets of allomorphs for the ergative agreement markers, which are prefixed to the noun or verb they modify. One set is used before roots beginning in a consonant, and the other before those beginning with a vowel. These forms below are found when the ergative marks the possessor of nouns. When

5390-708: The velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. Polish and Portuguese also contrast nasal and oral vowels. Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages have only voiced vowels, but several Native American languages , such as Cheyenne and Totonac , have both voiced and devoiced vowels in complementary distribution. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and in Quebec French , vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced. Keres

5500-783: The "R-colored vowels" of American English and a few other languages. Some languages, such as English and Russian, have what are called 'reduced', 'weak' or 'obscure' vowels in some unstressed positions. These do not correspond one-to-one with the vowel sounds that occur in stressed position (so-called 'full' vowels), and they tend to be mid-centralized in comparison, as well as having reduced rounding or spreading. The IPA has long provided two letters for obscure vowels, mid ⟨ ə ⟩ and lower ⟨ ɐ ⟩, neither of which are defined for rounding. Dialects of English may have up to four phonemic reduced vowels: /ɐ/ , /ə/ , and higher unrounded /ᵻ/ and rounded /ᵿ/ . (The non-IPA letters ⟨ ᵻ ⟩ and ⟨ ᵿ ⟩ may be used for

5610-460: The 1940s, Mayan cultural and linguistic diversity was regarded as an "Indian problem"; bilingual education programs sought to educate native Mayan-language speakers in their first language to facilitate future Spanish literacy. Central to these bilingual education programs was the objective of eventually transitioning Mayan-language speakers to Spanish. The development and institutionalization of intercultural bilingual education programs coincided with

SECTION 50

#1732844282802

5720-671: The 1965 Bilingual Castilianization Program to the 1980 National Bilingual Education Project. Each program aimed to increase Spanish fluency. In 1985, the Constitution legalized bilingual education and the Ministry of Education formed the Programa Nacional de Educación Bilingüe (PRONEBI). PRONEBI developed from the 1980–1984 National Bilingual Education Project, and aimed to provide bilingual education for rural indigenous children. PRONEBI differed from previous education programs in recognizing

5830-522: The 36-year Guatemalan Civil War . The peace accords, signed in December 1996, ended the war which had displaced the Mayan population. The 1996 peace accords were in part the country's renewed commitment to sustaining Mayan culture, and the revitalization of the Mayan language was centrally to the new political and cultural discourse. One of the five sets of peace accords, "The Accords on the Identity and Rights of

5940-565: The Amerind etymological dictionary serves to highlight the problems with the hypothesis more than it helps Greenberg's cause. In the charts below, each of the Kaqchikel phonemes is represented by the character or set of characters that denote it in the standard orthography developed by the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG) and sanctioned by the Guatemalan government. Where different,

6050-472: The Indigenous Peoples", devotes one of its three sections to Mayan rights. Signed on March 31, 1995, this agreement divides Mayan rights into "Cultural Rights" and "Civil, Political, Social and Economic Rights". In "Cultural Rights", language is included in the broader concept of culture. This section enumerates measures which would elevate the status of Mayan languages, with bilingual education listed as

6160-469: The Kʼicheʼ, Kaqchikel, Qʼeqchi and Mam language communities, PRONEBI's five-year goal was to provide bilingual education in 800 schools. Half of them, known as "complete schools", would establish a bilingual curriculum for preschool through fourth grade. After the fourth year of schooling, students would follow a monolingual Spanish curriculum. The other 400 schools, known as "incomplete schools", would offer only

6270-549: The National Bilingual Education Program (PRONEBI) was established by the Ministry of Education with Government Accord No. 1093-84. In cooperation with the Ministry of Education Directorate of Rural Social Education, PRONEBI has improved intercultural bilingual programs. International funding has enabled it to develop educational programs and supply schools with resources, such as bilingual textbooks and trained bilingual teachers. For its first five years, PRONEBI

6380-412: The accompanying spectrogram: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant. The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies, while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear in the spectrogram, where the front vowel [i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels,

6490-411: The case of tʼ , kʼ , chʼ , and tzʼ and implosive in the case of bʼ and qʼ . Only a certain number of syllable types occur in Kaqchikel. The most common syllable types are CV (consonant-vowel) and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant). V (vowel only) or VC (vowel-consonant) syllables are not allowed phonetically; a syllable that is conceived of as beginning with a vowel will begin in pronunciation with

6600-498: The consonant [j] , e.g., initial ⟨i⟩ in Italian or Romanian and initial ⟨y⟩ in English. In the original Latin alphabet, there was no written distinction between ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩ , and the letter represented the approximant [w] and the vowels [u] and [ʊ] . In Modern Welsh , ⟨w⟩ represents these same sounds. There

6710-424: The corresponding symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet appears in brackets. The dialect used in this example is that of Xenacoj. Kaqchikel dialects differ somewhat in their vowel inventories. Each dialect has a set of five tense vowels and either one, two, four, or five lax vowels. The chart below shows all the possible vowels that can occur in dialects of Kaqchikel. Although the dialect of Sololá uses

SECTION 60

#1732844282802

6820-554: The cost of bilingual resources for classrooms, a lack of bilingual teachers and linguistic variation among the Mayan languages and their dialects. According to PRONEBI, language is central to cultural identity. Its mission is "to strengthen Mayan ethnic identity, and to promote the integral and harmonious development of the Indian population with the linguistic context of a plural Guatemalan society so that it may respond to its own authentic needs and legitimate interests". Initially focusing on

6930-413: The development of neologisms , using Mayan-language lexicons to express foreign concepts. However, some Mayan intellectuals and activists believe that PRONEBI is not sufficiently representative of Mayan identity. Critiques of the educational program are often related to implementation obstacles. Two criticisms are the disparities in the amount of resources available to speakers of each Mayan language and

7040-620: The education of the Xinca (whose languages are nearly extinct) or the Garífuna (who speak Garífuna ). Guatemala is one of a number of Latin American countries (including Bolivia , Ecuador , Peru , Nicaragua and Mexico ) whose governments have implemented intercultural, bilingual education reform. In Guatemala, Spanish and the Mayan languages are tied to ethnic and cultural identity and rooted historically in colonization and nation-building. During

7150-584: The effect of prosody on the vowel component of a syllable. A vowel sound whose quality does not change throughout the vowel is called a monophthong . Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong , and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong . All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types:

7260-485: The end of the fourth year of school suggests further academic success, since a solid foundation in Spanish gives students an advantage in the monolingual Spanish curriculum following the fourth year of school. Long-term projections suggest that bilingual education may improve economic opportunities for indigenous Guatemalans and reduce the income disparity between the country's indigenous and non-indigenous populations. World Bank projections suggest that PRONEBI, by reducing

7370-411: The entries are unremarkable; but the fifth uses two words, a-ĉin and iŝ-tan , as examples of a protoword *tʼina / tʼana / tʼuna , meaning "son/child/daughter" despite the fact that a-ĉin was already used in the dictionary to mean "elder". This is an example of a commonly cited flaw in the work, which is that Greenberg reaches too far in search of evidence. In general, the documentation of Kaqchikel in

7480-427: The ergative forms are being used to denote the subject of a transitive verb, some of the forms differ. Before consonants, first person singular nu- becomes in- and third person singular ru- becomes u- . Before vowels, first person singular w- becomes inw- , third person singular u- becomes ur- , first person plural qa- becomes w- , and third person plural ki- becomes kiw- . The third person singular of

7590-426: The ergative is variable in its phonology, and the initial /r/ is often omitted, with variability among the different dialects of Kaqchikel. Absolutive agreement has three functions: its marks the subject of an intransitive verb , the subject of a non-verbal predicate, and the object of a transitive verb. Unlike ergative agreement, it has only one set of forms, which are used before both consonants and vowels. Note that

7700-568: The features are concomitant in some varieties of English. In most Germanic languages , lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables . Therefore, they are also known as checked vowels , whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable. Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa, the Pacific Northwest , and scattered other languages such as Modern Mongolian . The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles

7810-406: The final silent ⟨e⟩ , as in mate . Lax vowels occur in words without the silent ⟨e⟩ , such as mat . In American English , lax vowels [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ʌ, æ] do not appear in stressed open syllables. In traditional grammar, long vowels vs. short vowels are more commonly used, compared to tense and lax . The two sets of terms are used interchangeably by some because

7920-399: The fourth edition, he changed to adopt a simple plot of F1 against F2, and this simple plot of F1 against F2 was maintained for the fifth (and final) edition of the book. Katrina Hayward compares the two types of plots and concludes that plotting of F1 against F2 – F1 "is not very satisfactory because of its effect on the placing of the central vowels", so she also recommends use of

8030-580: The high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.) In the third edition of his textbook, Peter Ladefoged recommended using plots of F1 against F2 – F1 to represent vowel quality. However, in

8140-558: The highlands of Guatemala. Archaeological evidence shows suggestions of Kaqchikel living in Iximcheʼ , which today is located near Tecpán Guatemala . In 1523, the Spaniards left Mexico and headed towards Guatemala. This crusade was led by Pedro de Alvarado . His first victory was over the Kʼiche , which led him towards the Kaqchikel capital. The Kaqchikel joined forces with de Alvarado, to take over

8250-478: The inaccessibility of rural areas made it impossible to fully enforce this policy, the government maintained its policy of castilianization until the mid-20th century. Castilianization was introduced as a formal program in rural areas before 1940, educating students in a pre-primary grade (itself known as "Castilianization") and first grade. Castilianization was intended as a preparatory year in which oral Spanish would be taught and indigenous children could acclimate to

8360-435: The indigenous women, have no formal education. Indigenous men have transitioned more easily to bilingualism than indigenous women. After Guatemala became independent in 1821, its government adopted a policy of assimilation for the country's indigenous peoples. The national language was Spanish, and the government proposed teaching Spanish to the indigenous population to develop national unity. Although limited resources and

8470-416: The language of instruction and allowed indigenous-language use only to further Spanish literacy. The Bilingual Castilianization Program capitalized on this clause, beginning school for Mayan children one year early to improve literacy in the mother language and provide simultaneous instruction in Spanish. Instead of employing teachers, the program enlisted bilingual "promoters" who taught children part-time as

8580-442: The latter to avoid confusion with the clearly defined values of IPA letters like ⟨ ɨ ⟩ and ⟨ ɵ ⟩, which are also seen, since the IPA only provides for two reduced vowels.) The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants , acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on

8690-495: The lips are compressed but the corners remain apart as in spread vowels. The conception of the tongue moving in two directions, high–low and front–back, is not supported by articulatory evidence and does not clarify how articulation affects vowel quality. Vowels may instead be characterized by the three directions of movement of the tongue from its neutral position: front (forward), raised (upward and back), and retracted (downward and back). Front vowels ( [i, e, ɛ] and, to

8800-413: The lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known as endolabial rounding because the insides of the lips are visible, whereas in mid to high rounded front vowels the lips are generally "compressed" with the margins of the lips pulled in and drawn towards each other, a phenomenon known as exolabial rounding. However, not all languages follow that pattern. Japanese /u/ , for example,

8910-401: The lips in some vowels. Because lip rounding is easily visible, vowels may be commonly identified as rounded based on the articulation of the lips. Acoustically, rounded vowels are identified chiefly by a decrease in F2, although F1 is also slightly decreased. In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels rather than a distinctive feature. Usually, the higher

9020-413: The maximal ten-vowel system with all the vowels except schwa /ə/ , the dialects of San Juan Sacatepéquez and San Andrés Semetabaj only use the five tense vowels and schwa. There is a variance in the pronunciation of the lax vowels across the dialects. Some dialects lower the given vowel, others center the vowel but do not lower it. The Xenacoj dialect used here both centers and lowers the vowels with

9130-419: The mouth or the aperture of the jaw . In practice, however, it refers to the first formant (lowest resonance of the voice), abbreviated F1, which is associated with the height of the tongue. There are two terms commonly applied to refer to two degrees of vowel height: in close vowels , also known as high vowels , such as [i] and [u] , the first formant is consistent with the tongue being positioned close to

9240-602: The officialization of indigenous languages." The peace accords mandate bilingual education, diverging from early attempts at indigenous assimilation into a dominant society by explicitly promoting Mayan-language education. Factors related to geographical location, ethnicity, and gender create great disparity in the educational opportunities available to Guatemalan children and their academic success. Statistics suggest that where schoolchildren live may partially determine their economic opportunities, since rural illiteracy rates are much higher than those in cities. Although 40 percent of

9350-412: The other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages , e.g. English ), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish ) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way. One may distinguish the English tense vs. lax vowels roughly, with its spelling. Tense vowels usually occur in words with

9460-446: The palate, high in the mouth, whereas in open vowels , also known as low vowels , such as [a] , F1 is consistent with the jaw being open and the tongue being positioned low in the mouth. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value: the higher the frequency of the first formant, the lower (more open) the vowel. In John Esling 's usage, where fronted vowels are distinguished in height by

9570-609: The pharynx ( [ɑ, ɔ] , etc.): Membership in these categories is scalar, with the mid-central vowels being marginal to any category. Nasalization occurs when air escapes through the nose. Vowels are often nasalised under the influence of neighbouring nasal consonants, as in English hand [hæ̃nd] . Nasalised vowels , however, should not be confused with nasal vowels . The latter refers to vowels that are distinct from their oral counterparts, as in French /ɑ/ vs. /ɑ̃/ . In nasal vowels ,

9680-429: The population identifies as indigenous, only 50 percent of indigenous children are enrolled in school; two-thirds of non-indigenous children are enrolled. Among adults, the average educational level of an indigenous worker is 1.6 years; a non-indigenous worker averages five years of schooling. Within the indigenous population, educational levels of men and women vary greatly: half the indigenous men, and three-quarters of

9790-448: The position of the jaw rather than the tongue, only the terms 'open' and 'close' are used, as 'high' and 'low' refer to the position of the tongue. The International Phonetic Alphabet has letters for six degrees of vowel height for full vowels (plus the reduced mid vowel [ə] ), but it is extremely unusual for a language to distinguish this many degrees without other attributes. The IPA letters distinguish (sorted according to height, with

9900-572: The preschool curriculum. PRONEBI's Section of Curricular Development designs and distributes bilingual resources for students and teachers. Early assessments of PRONEBI's bilingual programs indicated that the programs were consistent with Guatemalan public policy and focused on strengthening native-language skills in the early school years to accelerate Spanish language acquisition in later years. Bilingual education programs have reduced repetition and dropout rates and improved students' performance in reading, writing, mathematics and Spanish. According to

10010-407: The primary cross-linguistic feature of vowels in that all spoken languages that have been researched till now use height as a contrastive feature. No other parameter, even backness or rounding (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages have vertical vowel systems in which at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels. Vowel backness is named for the position of

10120-420: The program is part of the Ministry of Education, it has been criticized for being "too Mayan". Although PRONEBI attempts to prevent the use of Spanish loanwords (Hispanicisms) in bilingual classrooms, bilingual teachers often express concepts which do not exist in the Mayan languages (like "flashlight" or "numerator") with Spanish loanwords. PRONEBI aims to retain the "purity" of the Mayan languages by encouraging

10230-547: The remaining third. For the pre-primary year of castilianization through the second grade, the project provided materials for all academic subjects in Kʼicheʼ , Kaqchikel , Qʼeqchiʼ , and Mam . There were ten pilot schools for each of the four languages. The pilot schools, chosen at random, were matched with control schools so the project could be assessed. Pilot-school evaluations indicated higher scores in academic subjects, higher promotion rates and lower dropout rates. In 1984,

10340-443: The repetition rate, may reduce the cost of education in Guatemala. However, increased costs of implementing bilingual education programs, especially as PRONEBI expands to more rural areas and less-widely-spoken languages, may offset that savings. Mayan parents recognize the value of Spanish literacy for their children, especially since Spanish-language skills increase job opportunities. Parents also remember when Spanish-language use

10450-554: The right. There are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928. Peter Ladefoged has said that "early phoneticians... thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, but they were not. They were actually describing formant frequencies." (See below.) The IPA Handbook concedes that "the vowel quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction and not

10560-482: The scheduled time. The program was opposed by parents, who said that their children were sent to school to learn Spanish. The Bilingual Castilianization Program provided bilingual promoters and resources to only 20 percent of eligible children. Evaluations indicated improved academic performance of indigenous students as a result of the program, but their Spanish skills were insufficient for success in monolingual Spanish schools. The National Bilingual Education Project

10670-424: The speakers preference, and both are considered native-like. Like other Mayan languages, Kaqchikel does not distinguish voiced and voiceless stops and affricates , instead distinguishing plain and glottalized stops and affricates. The plain stops and affricates are usually voiceless and are aspirated at the ends of words and unaspirated elsewhere. The glottalized stops and affricates are usually ejective in

10780-638: The standardization of a Mayan alphabet which is not representative of the entire Mayan-language family. Critics have said that bilingual resources still marginalize the Mayan worldview (tacitly or overtly), perpetuating European ethnocentrism . Proponents of the program say that PRONEBI restores social value to Mayan languages and culture. In some cases, intercultural bilingual education for children may motivate adults in indigenous communities to begin (or continue) indigenous-language learning informally or through Mayan revitalization organizations. Vowel Legend: unrounded  •  rounded A vowel

10890-532: The tense-lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. Those vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract. Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages like Sedang and the Tungusic languages . Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root but is acoustically distinct. A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in the Northeast Caucasian languages and

11000-470: The third person singular is unmarked. In some dialects, an epenthetic vowel is inserted between a marker of the incompletive or potential states and the base, in the space which would be occupied by the absolutive prefix. However, this is not an allophone of the absolutive third person singular marker, but rather a phonetic addition which is not related to the case marking system. Also, it is important to note that marking of subjects and objects occurs only on

11110-410: The tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. As with vowel height, however, it is defined by a formant of the voice, in this case the second, F2, not by the position of the tongue. In front vowels, such as [i] , the frequency of F2 is relatively high, which generally corresponds to a position of the tongue forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as [u] , F2

11220-483: The top-most one being the highest and the bottom-most being the lowest): The letters ⟨ e, ø, ɘ, ɵ, ɤ, o ⟩ are defined as close-mid but are commonly used for true mid vowels . If more precision is required, true mid vowels may be written with a lowering or raising diacritic: ⟨ e̞, ɘ̞, ø̞, ɵ̞, ɤ̞, o̞ ⟩ or ⟨ ɛ̝ œ̝ ɜ̝ ɞ̝ ʌ̝ ɔ̝ ⟩. The Kensiu language , spoken in Malaysia and Thailand,

11330-508: The value of Mayan culture and language in Guatemala's multicultural and multilingual society, and has played a major role in institutionalizing intercultural bilingual education. In 2005 there were bilingual programs in Qʼeqchiʼ , Achiʼ , Kaqchikel , Chʼortiʼ, Poqomam, Mam , Qʼanjobʼal , Garifuna , Mopán, Kʼicheʼ, Tzʼutujil and Xinka, and the Ministry of Education's Strategic Plan for Education 2012-2016 has made bilingual, intercultural education

11440-483: The verb, not on any nouns which may fill those roles as constituents. Agreement can take the place of pronouns, thus the language has pro-drop . Kaqchikel has a word order in which the head of a phrase usually comes before any other element of the phrase. The following sentences show examples of the order of sentences, determiner phrases (DP), noun phrases (NP), prepositional phrases (PP), and quantifier phrases (QP): X-u-pax-ij COMPL - 3S . ERG -break-tr ri

11550-443: The voice). In English, the word vowel is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them ( ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , and sometimes ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ ). There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological . The phonetic definition of "vowel" (i.e.

11660-412: The vowel sound in hit is a monophthong /ɪ/ , the vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong /ɔɪ/ , and the vowel sounds of flower , /aʊər/ , form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on the dialect. In phonology , diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into distinct phonemes . For example, the vowel sounds in

11770-401: Was a pilot program testing the effectiveness of an extended bilingual education program in primary schools. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been working with the government of Guatemala since 1979, provided some funding for the project. The project cost over $ 3 million; a USAID grant covered two-thirds of the cost, and the Guatemalan government covered

11880-438: Was compulsory in formal education. At the same time, they have minimal expectations for their children: that they learn arithmetic and Spanish-language skills (reading, writing and listening). The educational system may be considered "extra", an accessory of the community education received through the family. This community education includes values and principles that may (or may not) be taught at school, including gender roles,

11990-404: Was designed to assimilate and acculturate Mayan children, but logistical problems arose related to the language abilities and dialects of the bilingual promoters. Some bilingual promoters spoke a dialect which was unintelligible to their students, and they resorted to Spanish. Others believed that students needed as much access to Spanish as possible, and used the language in the classroom before

12100-416: Was financed by a loan of $ 10.2 million and a grant of $ 3.3 million from USAID and $ 25 million from the Guatemalan government. Although implementation of the bilingual education programs varies by region and the availability of resources, PRONEBI's education model provides parallel instruction in Spanish and a Mayan language from the pre-primary level through fourth grade. PRONEBI has faced obstacles, including

#801198