The Jacaltec (or Jakalteko or Popti') are a group of Maya Indians living in the Western Guatemala highlands and adjoining part of Chiapas and southern Mexico.

Jacaltec is also the name of their Maya language which is spoken by approximately 40,000 people, mainly in the Huehuetenango Department of Guatemala. It is known as Pobp’ al Ti’ to native speakers ("Jacaltec" is derived from the Nahuatl name for the people and their language). The Jacaltec language has a Verb Subject Object syntax. Like many Native American languages, Jacaltec has a lot of complex agglutinative morphology and uses ergative case. It is divided in two dialects, eastern and western Jacaltec, which are mutually intelligible in speech but not in writing.

Owing to Jacaltec's dissimilarity with Indo-European languages, the reasonably healthy linguistic population and the relative ease of access to Guatemala, Jacaltec has become a favorite of students of linguistic typology.

The Eastern Jacaltec language includes the following phonemes: a, b, c/qu, c'/q'u, ch, ch', e, i, j, k, k', l, m, n, ŋ, o, p, r, s, t, t', tx, tx', tz, tz', u, w, x, ẍ, y, and '.

Eastern Jacaltec is the only known language to make use of the n-diaeresis character. (unless one counts the use by the group Spinal Tap as a satire on the heavy metal umlaut). In Jacaltec the n-diaeresis represents a velar nasal consonant (ŋ).

Malagasy also uses the n-diaeresis character occasionally.

External links

• Guatemalan languages
• Rosetta Project – Jacalteco (Eastern) page