Akatek language
language
Akatek is a Mayan language spoken by the Akateko people primarily in the Huehuetenango Department, Guatemala in and around the municipalities of Concepción Huista, Nentón, San Miguel Acatán, San Rafael La Independencia and San Sebastián Coatán. A number of speakers also live in Chiapas, Mexico. It is a living language with 58,600 speakers in 1998, of which 48,500 live in Guatemala and the remaining in Mexico. Alternate spellings for the language include Akatec, Akateko, and Akateco.
Akateko stems from the Q'anjob'alan branch, making it closely related to Q’anjob’al and Chuj.
History
Akateko was regarded as a dialect of the Qʼanjobʼal language until the 1970s, when linguists realized that it has a distinct grammar from that of Qʼanjobʼal. That it has been thought a dialect of Qʼanjobʼal is reflected in the many names Akateko has had through time. One of its primary names before it was named Akateko was Ti Western Qʼanjobʼal, but it has also been called Conob and various names including Qʼanjobʼal and the municipality where it is spoken.
Phonology
Vowels
Akatek has 5 vowels:
Vowel length is distinctive, so one can say that the total number of vowels is 10. These long vowels are a unique and recent sound change from Q'anjob'al.
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This entry incorporates text from “Akatek language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.