Symbols
73Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Poqomchi' alphabet
The letters Poqomchi' is written with, capital and small, in A–Z order. Poqomchi' itself counts ch, tz and the glottalized b' ch' k' q' t' tz' as single letters; you type them as two or three keys from this grid. D, F, G, V and Ñ appear only in Spanish names and loanwords.
The glottal mark
The apostrophe that makes b' ch' k' q' t' tz' and stands alone for the glottal stop. The ALMG prints the plain '; ʼ is the Unicode letter apostrophe; ’ is what phones and word processors put in automatically.
Punctuation
Poqomchi' texts in Guatemala follow Spanish punctuation, so questions and exclamations open upside down.
Where it's spoken
Guatemala: Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz. The quetzal is written with a plain Q (Q50), so there is no separate currency sign.
Maya numerals
Dots are ones, bars are fives, the shell is zero; Maya counting goes in twenties.
The Verapaces
Maize, the weaving of Poqomchi' huipiles, and the coffee grown on the Verapaz hills.
On the map
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The Poqomchi' alphabet: plain letters and the apostrophe
Poqomchi' (older spellings Pocomchí and Pokomchi) is a Maya language of central Guatemala, spoken in the hills of Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz. It is written in the unified alphabet that Guatemala made official for its Maya languages in 1987 and that the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) looks after, so each sound has one fixed spelling. No accented letter is needed: the whole language fits on an ordinary keyboard.
The standard alphabet has 34 signs: a, aa, b', ch, ch', e, ee, h, i, ii, j, k, k', l, m, n, o, oo, p, p', q, q', r, s, t, t', tz, tz', u, uu, w, x, y and the glottal stop '. The /p'/ phoneme occurs in western Poqomchi'. Ch and tz count as single letters, and so does every consonant with an apostrophe. C and Z do not stand alone in the Poqomchi' alphabet; they occur in ch and tz. H is a letter in its own right, while b' is a distinct alphabet sign. D, F, G, V and Ñ turn up only in Spanish names and loanwords, so the grid leaves them out.
How to pronounce Poqomchi' and its letters
The name itself holds the signature sounds. q is a k made further back in the throat, a sound English does not have; ch is as in English church; and the final ' is a glottal stop, the catch in the middle of uh-oh. An English speaker gets close with po-kom-CHEE ending in a short catch.
Elsewhere, x is the sh of English shoe, j is the throaty sound of Spanish j, w is the English w, and tz is the ts of cats. After ch k q t tz the apostrophe marks an ejective; western Poqomchi' also has p'. After b it marks an implosive bilabial consonant, not an ejective. The apostrophe is part of the spelling, so k and k' are as different as English k and g.
Which apostrophe to use in Poqomchi': ' ʼ or ’
Three characters look like the Poqomchi' apostrophe. The plain typewriter apostrophe ' is easy to type on common keyboards and widely used for typing; the ALMG's published grammar prints the apostrophe typographically as ’ . It remains a practical choice for school work, messages and search. The modifier letter apostrophe ʼ is the Unicode character meant for a glottal stop inside a word, so software keeps a word written with it in one piece; CLDR’s language-territory chart displays the name as Poqomchi' with U0027 APOSTROPHE. The curly ’ is really a closing quotation mark that phones and word processors swap in automatically.
All three read the same, but mixing them makes search and spell-check stumble: Poqomchi' and Poqomchi’ are two different strings to a computer, and most people searching leave the mark out and type poqomchi. Pick one and keep it; to keep the straight ', switch off "smart quotes" or "smart punctuation".
How to type the Poqomchi' apostrophe and ¿ ¡
The straight ' has its own key. On the Latin American layout common in Guatemala it sits to the right of 0, next to the ¿ ¡ key; on a US keyboard it is next to Enter; on phones it is on the punctuation page.
For the others: in Microsoft Word type 02BC and press AltX for ʼ; the curly ’ is Alt0146 on the Windows number pad and OptionShift] on a Mac. On a US keyboard ¿ is Alt0191 and ¡ Alt0161, or OptionShift? and Option1 on a Mac. In HTML the codes are ʼ for ʼ, ’ for ’, ¿ for ¿ and ¡ for ¡. Or copy them from the grid above.
Where the Poqomchi' language is spoken
CLDR estimates about 220,000 Poqomchi' speakers, all of them in Guatemala . The heartland is a belt of towns between Cobán and the Baja Verapaz cloud forest: Tactic, Tamahú, Tucurú, San Cristóbal Verapaz and Santa Cruz Verapaz in Alta Verapaz, and Purulhá in Baja Verapaz. Most speakers also use Spanish, and Poqomchi' texts follow Spanish punctuation, with questions and exclamations opening on ¿ and ¡. Guatemalan money is the quetzal, written with a plain Q before the amount, Q50.
Poqomchi' belongs to the K'iche'an branch of the Maya family, and its closest relative is Poqomam, spoken south of Guatemala City; the two are often called the Poqom languages. Its neighbours in the Verapaces are Q'eqchi' and Achi, and K'iche', Kaqchikel and Mam are written in the same alphabet; each has its own collection, as does Guatemala for the country's flag, food and other emoji.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyPoqomchi' Alphabet & Letters combos
10Worth knowing
- Poqomchi' needs no accented letter at all. Its hardest character to type is the apostrophe, and Unicode has a separate one, ʼ U02BC, made for exactly this job.
- The q in Poqomchi' is not a k: it is made at the very back of the mouth, at the uvula, and the language keeps it apart from k in words of its own.
- Poqomchi' and Poqomam come from one ancestral Poqom language; today they are spoken in two separate areas, the Verapaces in the north and the hills around Guatemala City in the south.
- The Maya numerals 𝋠 to 𝋳 entered Unicode only in 2018, in version 11.0, and few fonts draw them, so they may show as boxes on older systems.
Questions people ask
7What is the Poqomchi' alphabet?
The 34 alphabet signs are a, aa, b', ch, ch', e, ee, h, i, ii, j, k, k', l, m, n, o, oo, p, p', q, q', r, s, t, t', tz, tz', u, uu, w, x, y and the glottal stop '. There are no accented letters; long vowels are written doubled.
How do you pronounce Poqomchi'?
Roughly po-kom-CHEE with a short catch at the end; the q is made far back in the throat. The final ' is a glottal stop, as in the middle of uh-oh.
Is Pocomchí the same as Poqomchi'?
Yes. Pocomchí and Pokomchi are older spellings of the same language; Poqomchi' is the official spelling of Guatemala's unified Maya alphabet of 1987.
Where is Poqomchi' spoken?
In Guatemala, in Alta Verapaz (Tactic, Tamahú, Tucurú, San Cristóbal Verapaz, Santa Cruz Verapaz) and Baja Verapaz (Purulhá). CLDR estimates about 220,000 speakers.
What does the apostrophe mean in Poqomchi' words?
After ch, k, q, t or tz it marks an ejective consonant; western Poqomchi' also has p'. After b it marks an implosive bilabial consonant. On its own, it marks a glottal stop. The apostrophe is part of the spelling, so leaving it out can change the word.
Which apostrophe should I use for Poqomchi': ' or ʼ?
The plain ' is easy to type on common keyboards and widely used for typing; ALMG’s published grammar prints the apostrophe typographically as ’ , while the plain form remains a practical default for search. ʼ is the Unicode letter apostrophe, better where software splits text into words. The curly ’ is what phones insert automatically. Whichever you pick, use it throughout.
Is Poqomchi' a Maya language?
Yes. It is one of the Maya languages officially recognised in Guatemala, in the K'iche'an branch, closest to Poqomam.
