Editing Chʼol language (section)

=== Vowels ===
Chʼol has a six vowel system, as shown below in the vowel inventory.<ref>Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús. ''A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan Language''. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, 2011; p.41</ref>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
!
![[Front vowel|Front]]
![[Central vowel|Central]]
![[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
![[Close vowel|High]]
|{{IPA link|i}} {{angbr|i}}
|{{IPA link|ɨ}} {{angbr|ä}}
|{{IPA link|u}} {{angbr|u}}
|-
![[Mid vowel|Mid]]
|{{IPA link|e}} {{angbr|e}}
|
|{{IPA link|o}} {{angbr|o}}
|-
![[Low vowel|Low]]
|
|{{IPA link|a}} {{angbr|a}}
|
|}

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''.<ref>Kaufman, Terrence and William M. Norman. ''An outline of Proto-Cholan phonology, morphology and vocabulary. In Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, ed. by John Justeson and Lyle Campbell, 77-166''. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, Albany, 1984; p.85</ref>