Talk:K’iche’ language

Renaming to "K'iche"

Given that the K'iche Academy of Languages in Guatemala favors "K'iche'" rather than "Quiché," shouldn't Wikipedia follow suit? It, of course, makes sense to use the latter in the introductory sentence but most linguistic work done on the language will use the spelling "K'iche'" and for consistency, it makes sense to me for Wikipedians to go along with this. Interlingua 23:44, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, the language and the people are well-known to non-linguists because of the Popol Vuh, and the name has been spelled "Quiché" in English literature for so long that one may consider it as "the" English name of the language. Just as the article on "Portuguese" is named "Portuguese", in spite of what the Portuguese Literary Academy has determined.
Moreover, "Quiché" has got a standard English pronunciation too (I don't know whether it matches the native one, but that is not the point), and readers who have a minimal familiarity with Spanish will know how to pronounce that word; whereas the apostrophe in "K'iche" is likely to leave them confused.
So my opinion is that it is better to consider "Quiché" to be the English name of the language (and therefore the article's name per Wikipedia rules), at least for the time being.
In fact, I see that the article still considers Tedlock's edition as the de facto standard, even though he calls them "Quiché" and does not use the official spelling. I will try to add a reference to Sam Colop's K'iche-only edition, but I suspect that Tedlock's will continue being the de facto standard for most non-Quiché-speaking people.
Fortunately Wikipedia's redirect mechanism reduces this sort of question to a mere issue of internal efficiency and editor's conenience. So it makes little difference, really.
All the best, Jorge Stolfi 03:19, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

On the other other hand, Interlingua rather has a point, and there is an increasing (and quite deliberate) trend among researchers who produce the materials we'd be referencing to use the orthography for Mayan languages as has been standardised since the late 1980s by the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala. And I think the more apt comparison would be with the way we mostly nowadays in english refer to Mumbai (not Bombay ) and Beijing (not Peking ), changes which have found acceptance not that much longer than the proposed standard K'iche has been on the table. Some further, minor points, the reader would indeed be mislead if they attempted to pronounce the name as in the dish, it would be easier to dab from the food and it's easier to type directly for those not used to accented chars. I think the case for renaming is good, and bears consideration.--cjllw | TALK 08:30, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Please, if you're going to rename it, make it K'iche', with the apostrophe (glottal stop) at the end. This is missing in most mentions on this page, including in the title. It's never missing, as far as I can tell, in references to the language elsewhere. — MikeG (talk) 03:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to Jorge Stolfi, CJLL, and MikeG for civil, productive conversations on this topic. I haven't been here in a while and was pleased to see that the main article had been renamed (with the addition of the final glottal stop, which I had omitted as MikeG pointed out). Although Jorge Stolfi made very good points, I think renaming the article K'iche' (with the requisite redirects) makes sense. Interlingua ^{talk email} 02:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Move proposal (Aug 2006)

An article rename is proposed for this page and a number of other Mayan language articles. Please see and comment at the centralised discussion for these at Talk:Mayan languages.--cjllw | TALK 05:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The requested move to K'iche' language has now been completed, per consensus reached at talk:Mayan languages.--cjllw | TALK 00:41, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Phonemes

Most dialects of K'iche' have 5 short and 5 long vowels, according to the dialect survey done by OKMA (though all the distinctions are no longer represented in ALMG orthography), and I've never seen any description of the language that includes the velar nasal. Unless I hear otherwise, I'll fix the vowel and consonant charts to reflect these discrepancies. — MikeG (talk) 17:58, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The velar nasal is only found in the Nahualá dialect. It shouldn't be here without mentioning that most dialects lack it.Maunus 18:56, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there a source for the claim that Nahualá K'iche' has a velar nasal? I find it quite hard to believe. Dvelleman (talk) 15:45, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

It was quite a few years ago I wrote that, and I remember reading that Nahualá K'iche' retained reflexes of Proto-Mayan verla nasal - but I can't remember where. I used Nora England's "Autonomia de los Idiomas Mayas: Historia e identidad" for a lot of the historical information, but whether that is where I got the Nahualá information I don't remember. It could also be from some of Kaufman's work. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:10, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I can find some mention that Nahuala is conservative and retains length contrast and an h phoneme, but the verlar nasal is not mentioned. I don't have access to Sapon right now. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:21, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I've got a copy of Sapon, but it doesn't mention any dialects with phonemic /ŋ/. As I understand it, Proto-Mayan */ŋ/ went to K'iche' /χ/ across the board, in all dialects. Dvelleman (talk) 05:44, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

It turns out the piece of information was first inserted into the page on Nahualá by an anonymous user in 2006[1] I must have simply thought it was interesting and copied it here without verifying it. Sloppy me.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Total number of k'iche' speakers

Currently this article mentions a total of 1,000,000 K'iche' speakers, without any reference of source or year. According to the official 2002 census the total number of K'iche' people is 1,270,953. (see: http://www.ine.gob.gt/Nesstar/Censo2002/survey0/dataSet/dataFiles/dataFile1/var26.html ) However, this number is closer to 2,000,000 according to http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=gt So, it seems important to at least cite a reference and year when it comes to numbers, especially if they are politically sensitive. It would also be a good idea to include a note mentioning these different estimates. Arjuno 02:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I don't suppose we'd be able to find any two independent sources agreeing with one another, so would be best in that case to cite all those considered halfway reliable that there are, to indicate a range of sorts. --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC)