Pokom Maya and Their Colonial Dictionaries

Orthography

Waycan (1994:25-38) in his book Rukorb’aal Tz’ihb’anik Poqomam Q’orb’al describes a "unified alphabet" of the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala that has been declared official by the Government of Guatemala. It consists of 34 symbols, 24 corresponding to consonants and 10 to the vowels. Needless to say, the "Viana" dictionary, written in previous centuries, does not correspond to these rules.

Acuna (1991), who uses a more modern orthography, attempts to provide a modernized version of the Spanish to Poqom dictionary in his work. Guerra Marchan (1787) uses a colonial era system different from that of "Viana." The "Viana" itself, as it so states, uses different orthographies for different dialects. Thus that used for Amatitlán in the Valley of Guatemala differs from that used for the vocabulary of the Verapaz (see the initial entry under "b" for Pedro Moran’s comments regarding this). Thus the text provided in this report represents at least four different orthographies, of which that of the "Viana Dictionary" for the Verapaz is the predominant.

Given these inconsistencies and a certain lack of knowledge of the language, for I make no claim to fluency in Poqom, I felt that it would be better if I did not try to convert the "Viana" dictionary to a uniform orthography. Rather I felt that my emphasis should be in providing a well organized transcription that can be converted into the modern orthography by those fluent in the modern language. This is what I have presented in this report.

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