The Ch'ol (Chol) language is a member of the western branch of the Mayan language family used by the Ch'ol people in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and Campeche in Mexico. This language, together with Chontal, Ch'orti', and Ch'olti', constitute the Cholan language group. The Cholan branch of the Mayan languages is considered to be particularly conservative and Ch'ol along with its two closest relatives the Ch'orti' language of Guatemala and Honduras, and the Chontal Maya language of Tabasco are believed to be the modern languages that best reflect their relationship with the Classic Maya language. Ch'ol-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEXPUJ-AM, broadcasting from Xpujil, Campeche. Dialects There are two main dialects of Chʼol: Chʼol of Tila spoken by 43,870 people of whom 10,000 are monolinguals in the villages of Tila, Vicente Guerrero, Chivalito and Limar in Chiapas. Chʼol of Tumbalá spoken by 90,000 people of whom 30,000 are monolinguals in the villages of Tumbalá, Sabanilla, Misijá, Limar, Chivalita and Vicente Guerrero. Phonology Consonants There are 21 consonantal segments in Chʼol. Below is the consonant inventory of Chʼol. Corresponding orthography is presented in the angle brackets next to the IPA symbols. For the segments in the palatal column, [, ] are palatlized alveolar consonants, and [, ] are palato-alveolar affricates. Another property of the consonant inventory is that only the labial has a voiced segment [b], which corresponds to the voiced bilabial implosive [ɓ] in Proto-Mayan. Alveolar sounds [, ] are only heard as allophones of /, /. Vowels Chʼol has a six vowel system, as shown below in the vowel inventory. The vowel ä is a distinctive segment in Chʼol, as in other Chʼolan languages. According to Kaufman and Norman (1984), long vowels in the Proto-Mayan language merged with their short counterparts in Chʼolan languages, except for *aa (long) and *a (short). These segments went under a sound change, in which *aa became a and *a became ä. Syllable Structure ‭Chʼol can have CV, CVC, CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC as possible syllable structures. The most common ones are CV and CVC. Like many other Mayan languages, Chʼol does not allow onsetless syllables, which means words that appear to start with vowel in fact have a glottal stop as the onset. Although complex onsets and complex codas exist, the former only occur across morpheme boundaries, and the latter are limited to jC. Stress The main stres of