prayers for Mass and the celebration of sacraments into Tzotzil and Tzeltal. The translations include "the prayers used for Mass, marriage, baptisms, confirmations, confessions, ordinations and the anointing of the sick ... Bishop Arizmendi said Oct. 6 that the texts, which took approximately eight years to translate, would be used in his diocese and the neighboring Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutierrez. Mass has been celebrated in the diocese in recent years with the assistance of translators – except during homilies – Bishop Arizmendi said in an article in the newspaper La Jornada. Phonology The phonology of Tzeltal is quite straightforward with a common vowel inventory and a typical consonant inventory for Mayan languages. Some phonological processes do occur, however, including assimilation, epenthesis, lenition and reduplication. Vowels Tzeltal has 5 vowels: Whether vowel length is phonemic distinctive in Tzeltal is debatable. Consonants Tzeltal has 21 consonants, including the glottal stop. Though Tzeltal does not have a standardized orthography, the bracketed letters in the chart below represent one orthography heavily derivative of Spanish: [pʼ] has three allophones: at the end of a word: early, sapʼ [sapʼ] [] between vowels: many, tzopʼol [t͡sʰoʔbol] everywhere else: road, pʼe [be] However, in the Oxchuc (central) dialect, the ejective [pʼ] does not exist, having been replaced by the phone [b]. Phonemic charts representing this dialect would include [b] but not [pʼ]. In this dialect, suffixes carrying b often may be realized as [m]. In the initial position of a suffix following a consonant, it is realized as the true stop [b], but in the postvocalic position it is preceded by a glottal stop, such that chabek ('wax') sounds like chaʼbek. When [ʼb] is found in the final position, it can be pronounced as [ʼm], or even disappear completely; thus cheb ('two') could sound like cheʼb, cheʼm, or even cheʼ. [w] has two allophones: when it is the first member of a CC-consonant cluster, or if it is at the end of a word: seed, awlil [ʔaβlil] everywhere else: I feared, ziwon [siwon] Note, however, that it can be interchangeably [w] or [β] in the beginning of a word, as in older sister, wix [wiʃ] ~ [βiʃ]. Phonological processes When a vowel is found in the context [_ʔC], the vowel is pronounced with creaky voice. Contraction may occur with consecutive identical phonemes, either at a word- or morpheme-boundary. For example, the word /ta aʼtel/ ("at work") may be