Uspantek (Uspanteco, Uspanteko, Uspantec) is a
Mayan language of
Guatemala
Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
, closely related to
Kʼicheʼ. It is spoken in the
Uspantán and
Playa Grande Ixcán
Playa Grande ("Big beach") is the administrative centre of the Municipalities of Guatemala, municipality of Ixcán in the Guatemalan Departments of Guatemala, department of Quiché Department, El Quiché.
Native Mayan languages spoken in the ar ...
''municipios'', in the Department
El Quiché
EL, El or el may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Fictional entities
* El, a character from the manga series ''Shugo Chara!'' by Peach-Pit
* Eleven (''Stranger Things'') (El), a fictional character in the TV series ''Stranger Things''
* El, fami ...
.
[ ] It is also one of only three Mayan languages to have developed contrastive tone
Tone may refer to:
Visual arts and color-related
* Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory
* Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color
* Toning (coin), color change in coins
* ...
(the others being Yukatek and one dialect of Tzotzil). It distinguishes between vowels with high tone and vowels with low tone.
Phonology
Consonants
There are 24 consonants in Uspantek including the glottal stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
.[Telma Angelina, et al. 2007.]
Vowels
There are 5 vowels in Uspantek and they contrast in vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels.
On one hand, many ...
.
Tone
Uspantek has two phonemic tones: high and falling (Can Pixabaj 2007:39). In writing, the high tone is represented by an acute accent mark on the vowel (''ráqan'' 'my foot'), and the falling tone is represented by an acute accent mark on the first vowel followed by an unmarked vowel (''júun'' 'one').
The high tone occurs in penultimate syllables when the final syllable contains a short vowel. Additionally, it occurs the following contexts (Can Pixabaj 2007).
*Most possessive forms of inalienable nouns
*Bisyllabic single morphemes, especially those with short /a/ or /i/ in the final syllable
*Intransitive verbs with the suffix -''ik''
*Most words with three syllables
*Loanwords
The following types of words do not have tone.
*Words with CVʼC structure do not add tone to penultimate syllables when affixes are added.
*Monosyllabic words with long vowels that have no tone do not add tone to penultimate syllables when affixes are added.
The falling tone occurs in long vowels, and in the following contexts (Can Pixabaj 2007).
*Monosyllabic words
*Final syllable of a polysyllabic word
Phonotactics
The main types of syllable structures in Uspantek are CVC, CV, and CCVC (Can Pixabaj 2007:50).
References
Literature
*Can Pixabaj, Telma Angelina, et al. 2007. ''Gramática uspanteka kemiik yoloj li uspanteko'. Guatemala: Cholsamaj.
*Tuyuc Sucuc, Cecilio. 2001. ''Vocabulario uspanteko holyool Tzʼunun Kaabʼ'. Guatemala: Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, Comunidad Lingüística Uspanteka.
*Vicente Méndez, Miguel Angel. 2007. ''Diccionario bilingüe uspanteko-español holaj tzijbʼal li Uspanteko'. Guatemala: Cholsamaj.
External links
New Testament in Uspanteco
Agglutinative languages
Mayan languages
Indigenous languages of Central America
Mesoamerican languages
Languages of Guatemala
Tonal languages
{{Mayan-lang-stub