A characteristic feature of Yucatec Maya, like other Mayan languages, is the use of
ejective consonants: . Often referred to as
glottalized consonants, they are produced at the same place of oral articulation as their non-ejective stop counterparts: . However, the release of the lingual closure is preceded by a raising of the closed glottis to increase the air pressure in the space between the glottis and the point of closure, resulting in a release with a characteristic
popping sound. The sounds are written using an
apostrophe after the letter to distinguish them from the plain consonants (
tʼàan "speech" vs.
táan "forehead"). The apostrophes indicating the sounds were not common in written Maya until the 20th century but are now becoming more common. The Mayan
b is also glottalized, an implosive , and is sometimes written
bʼ, but that is becoming less common. Yucatec Maya is one of only three Mayan languages to have developed
tone, the others being
Uspantek and one dialect of
Tzotzil. Yucatec distinguishes short vowels and long vowels, indicated by single versus double letters (ii ee aa oo uu), and between high- and low-tone long vowels. High-tone vowels begin on a high pitch and fall in phrase-final position but rise elsewhere, sometimes without much vowel length. It is indicated in writing by an acute accent (íi ée áa óo úu). Low-tone vowels begin on a low pitch and are sustained in length; they are sometimes indicated in writing by a grave accent (ìi èe àa òo ùu), though the 2014
INALI orthography uses no accent. Also, Yucatec has contrastive laryngealization (
creaky voice) on long vowels, sometimes realized by means of a full intervocalic glottal stop and written as a long vowel with an apostrophe in the middle, as in the plural suffix
-oʼob.
Consonants Some sources describe the plain consonants as aspirated, but Victoria Bricker states "[s]tops that are not glottalized are articulated with lung air without aspiration as in English spill, skill, still."
Vowels In terms of vowel quality, Yucatec Maya has a straightforward five vowel system: For each of these five vowel qualities, the language contrasts four distinct vowel "shapes", i.e. combinations of
vowel length,
tone, and
phonation. In the standard orthography first adopted in 1984, vowel length is indicated by digraphs (e.g. "aa" for IPA ). In fast-paced speech, the glottalized long vowels may be pronounced the same as the plain long high vowels, so in such contexts
ka’an 'sky' sounds the same as
káan 'when?'.
Stress Mayan words are typically stressed on the earliest syllable with a long vowel. If there is no long vowel, then the last syllable is stressed. Borrowings from other languages such as Spanish or Nahuatl are often stressed as in the original languages.
Debuccalization An important
morphophonological process in Yucatec Maya is the
dissimilation of identical consonants next to each other by
debuccalizing to avoid
geminate consonants. If a word ends in one of the
glottalized plosives /pʼ tʼ kʼ ɓ/ and is followed by an identical consonant, the final consonant may dispose of its
point of articulation and become the glottal stop /ʔ/. This may also happen before another plosive inside a common idiomatic phrase or
compound word. Examples: ~ 'Yucatec Maya' (literally, "flat speech"), and
náak’- (a prefix meaning 'nearby') +
káan 'sky' gives 'palate, roof the mouth' (so literally "nearby-sky"). Meanwhile, if the final consonant is one of the other consonants, it debuccalizes to /h/:
nak 'to stop sth' +
-kúuns (a
causative suffix) gives
nahkúuns 'to support sb/sth' (cf. the
homophones
nah, possessed form
nahil, 'house'; and
nah, possessed form
nah, 'obligation'),
náach’ 'far' +
-chah (an
inchoative suffix) gives
náahchah 'to become distant'. This change in the final consonant is often reflected in orthographies, so can appear as
maya’ t’àan, ''maya t'aan'', etc.
Acquisition Phonology acquisition is received idiosyncratically. If a child seems to have severe difficulties with affricates and sibilants, another might have no difficulties with them while having significant problems with sensitivity to semantic content, unlike the former child. There seems to be no incremental development in phonology patterns. Monolingual children learning the language have shown acquisition of aspiration and deobstruentization but difficulty with sibilants and affricates, and other children show the reverse. Also, some children have been observed fronting palatoalveolars, others retract lamino-alveolars, and still others retract both. ==Grammar==