Brinton.] 358 [Jan. 4, 
historian Juarros says.* Nor do they seem to impress recent travelers of 
other nations more agreeably. One of the latest of these, an Englishman, 
writes : ‘‘When an Indian speaks, it is always in a high, unmusical tone ; 
the language is hideous, and sounds like a person speaking without any 
roof to his mouth.’’+ 
In the present work, as in most that have been written in or upon the Cak- 
chiquel, the phonetic basis is the Spanish alphabet. Of that alphabet the 
following letters are used with their Spanish values, a, b, c, ¢, ¢, i, 1, m, n, 
Oy Dy Gy Ty’ ty Ys Br 
The following are not employed : 
Gy hy Jy By bby. Mey 
The following are introduced, but with sounds differing from the 
Spanish ; 
h. This is always a decided rough breathing or forcible expiration, like 
the Spanish j, or the strong English h ; except when it follows c or q when 
it is pronounced as in the Spanish cha, che, &e, 
k. This has never the sound of ¢, but is arough palatal, the mouth being 
opened, and the tongue placed midway, between the upper and lower 
walls of the oral cavity, while the sound is forcibly expelled. 
». This letter whether as a consonant (v) or a vowel (wz) is pronounced 
separately, except when it is doubled as in vwh (wuh), book or paper, when 
the double vowel is very closely akin to the English w. The Spanish 
writers are by no means consistent in their orthography of the Cakchiquel, 
in distinguishing the vowel » and the consonant 0. 
‘a. In Cakchiquel and its associated dialects, this letter represents the 
sound of sh in the English words she, shove, etc. It is of very frequent 
occurrence in all of them. 
Besides the above, there are five sounds occurring in the Cakchiquel, 
Kiche and Tzutuhil, for which five special characters were invented or 
rathér adopted by the early missionary Francisco de la Parra, who died 
in Guatemala in 1560. They are the following: 
4464 6 % 
«He adds, “ y que con solo pronunciar con mas 6 menos fuerza las palabras mu- 
dan de significado.”’ Compendio de la Historia de la Ciudad de Guatemala. Per 
el Pr. Don Domingo Juarros, Tomo II, p. 36 (2d ed, Guatemala, 1857), 
+ Across Central America. By J.W. Boddam-Whetham, p. 264 (London, 1877). 
The particular dialect he refers to is the Kekchi of Coban in Vera Paz. 
