Chol Ritual Language
with Terrence Lee Folmar, Heidi Altman, Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, and Bernardo Pérez Martínez
©1996 J. Kathryn Josserand and Nicholas A. Hopkins

The Linguistic Affiliation of Chol

Chol is a member of the Mayan family of languages, a family which currently has about 30 languages located in southern México, Belize and Guatemala (as well as sizeable refugee populations in the United States and elsewhere). Figure 1 presents a genetic tree model of the Mayan family, with dates of separation between branches. Within this family, Chol belongs to the Western branch (as opposed to the Huastecan, Yucatecan, and Eastern branches), and within Western Mayan, Chol belongs to the Greater Cholan subdivision (as opposed to the Greater Kanjobalan subdivision). The two components of Greater Cholan are Tzeltalan (Tzeltal and Tzotzil) and Cholan proper (Chol, Chontal and Chortí). Cholan proper includes a Western Cholan branch, consisting of Chontal and Chol, and an Eastern branch, consisting of Chortí (and its Colonial ancestor, Choltí).

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Within Chol itself, there are two major dialect areas, one including Tila and Sabanilla (and their lowland colonies), the other including Tumbalá and Salto de Agua (and their colonies). These are referred to in the literature as the Tila (or Western) dialect and the Tumbalá (or Eastern) dialect. There is a high degree of intelligibility between the varieties, but notable differences in lexicon and verbal tense-aspect marking occur. The origin of lowland agricultural colonies can usually be discerned from the local variety of Chol, although some dialect mixing has taken place in pioneer settlements.

The close relationship of Chol to the language transcribed in the Maya Classic Period hieroglyphic inscriptions (A.D. 300 to 900) was noted by J. Eric S. Thompson (1938, 1960: 16) and Sylvanus Morley (1946). More recently, linguistic analysis of the hieroglyphic texts has confirmed this relationship (Josserand 1995; Josserand, Schele and Hopkins 1985). Although the verbal morphology of Classic Cholan does not match exactly that reconstructed for proto-Cholan on the basis of comparison of modern languages (Kaufman and Norman 1984), the most recent models for hieroglyphic grammar are remarkably similar (Josserand 1995; Josserand and Hopkins, n.d.). The relatively few differences are to be expected if the 1000-year old written materials record the speech of an educated elite, while the modern languages derive from vernaculars.

Earlier stages of Cholan (Josserand 1975) were influenced by the Mixe-Zoquean languages associated with the Olmec civilization of the Gulf Coast to the west of the southern Maya lowlands. This influence is seen principally in loan words in Chol, and in religious concepts and sociopolitical patterns characteristic of Classic culture. By the beginning of the Classic period, Cholan Proper had become distinct from its closest relation, the immediate ancestor of Tzotzil and Tzeltal, located to the south of the Cholans, in the Chiapas highlands. During the Classic Period (A.D. 300 to 900), as Classic culture spread throughout the Maya world, loan words and other linguistic features spread from Cholan to all adjacent Mayan languages, especially to Yucatec, whose population the Chols had overrun when they entered the lowlands of the Peninsula during the Late Preclassic. Because of this intimate cultural and linguistic interaction, all varieties of Cholan reflect influence from Yucatecan Mayan languages, and most scholars accept some version of a model of bilingual Classic society, with Chol serving the functions of the High, or literary, language at most or all Classic sites. Despite its importance for understanding Classic Maya culture and deciphering the Classic inscriptions, there is still a need for basic documentation of Chol, especially for terminology related to cosmology and ritual spheres of action.

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