Classical Kʼicheʼ has been preserved in a number of historical Mesoamerican documents, lineage histories, missionary texts, and dictionaries.

The details of the phonology of Classical Kʼicheʼ are uncertain, since the Spanish-based writing system expressed it poorly, and one needs to use the most archaic modern dialects to reconstruct the likely pronunciation.

A probable phonemic inventory as preserved in archaic Kʼicheʼ dialects is:[1] Note that most of the glottalised stops are ejectives, but the labial one is implosive instead.

An inherited feature of Kʼicheʼ is phonemic vowel length, but today, some dialects do not preserve it and the orthography of Popol Vuh does not express it either.

The following table shows the differences and some similarities between the ways in which Kʼicheʼ phonemes are expressed in these two systems.

c (elsewhere) In addition, as common in the Spanish (and other Latin-based) orthographies of the time, the letter pairs i and j, u and v were treated as equivalent with respect to sound – both members could express either a vowel (/i/, /u/) or a semivowel (/j/, /w/), depending on context.

As indicated in the table, many of the special Kʼicheʼ phonemes, notably the ejectives, did have dedicated signs.

There was also a sign for /tʼ/, which may be rendered as ɧ, and /q/ could be expressed with k. However, the signs were used inconsistently or not at all in many manuscripts, and Father Francisco Ximénez, who was responsible for the writing down of the Popol Vuj, apparently failed to realise that they expressed special sounds in Kʼicheʼ.

[5] Some common phonological alternations result from the coalescence of adjacent vowels (chi- + -u > ch-u, V- + -on > -V-n) and the elision of word-final consonants of particles and function words phrase-internally (but not finally): (chik > chi).

Some notable differences are the existence of special future tense prefixes, the default VSO word order and the preservation of indigenous rather than borrowed Spanish forms for the higher numerals.

Alienable nouns do not require a possessive prefix, and some of them (such as designations of wild animals and plants, natural phenomena) normally don't have one.

Conversely, a noun that normally has no possessor can be transformed into an inalienable one by means of the suffix -Vl, which may also serve to emphasise the possession as in 'one's own N': u-chikop-il 'its animal(s)'.

[9] Certain inalienable nouns express spatial or abstract relations and thus function like prepositions: e.g. xeʼ 'root' – u-xeʼ N 'under N' (lit.

[11] However, certain adjectives have a special attributive form that ends in the suffix -V (nim-a cheʼ 'a big tree', in contrast to nim ri cheʼ 'the tree is big')[12] and appears only before consonant-initial words (cf.

[20] The tense-aspect prefixes are as follows: The vowels in parentheses appear only if the next morpheme begins in a consonant.

The status suffixes are:[21][22] (class 1) -u after roots containing /u/ -o or -u after roots containing /o/ or /u/[a] (class 2 transitive verb) Besides the absolute final position, the final forms may are also commonly used in front of complex or coordinated noun phrases, as well as in cases when a demonstrative pronoun referring to the noun phrase is placed in the beginning of the clause, or when an adverbial modifier not referenced with the particle wi is.

[28] medial final medial participle (-u) (-o, -u) There are as many as two kinds of antipassive verb forms, which cause the subject of a transitive verb to be in the absolutive case rather than the normal ergative – the absolute antipassive, which allows the omission of the object (x-∅-kʼat-on ri k-atiʼt 'their grandmother burnt [something]'), and the focus antipassive, which is used to emphasise the subject (xa ajkun x-∅-kʼam-ow-ik ri kʼuwal 'but the doctor took the jewel').

The stem-forming suffix -Vlaʼ- also seems to be replaced by -Vlo- before -n. The applicative construction with the suffix -ibʼe-j can also be described as an 'instrumental voice' changing the valency of the verb so as to make an instrumental adverbial modifier into a direct (absolutive) object: xa chʼut x-ki-kejbʼe-j r-ij ki-tinamit 'only with stakes did they fortify the outer side (lit.

Some common particles are the following:[36][19] or the fact that a locational expression has been fronted[38] If several of the above enclitics are combined, the order is ta(j) > chic > wi, na > others.

The numerals 1 jun and 10 lajuj lose their final consonants in bound form: ju-, laju-.

Numerals close to powers of twenty are expressed in a way that can be exemplified as follows: 381 = lit.

[44][45] The bound forms are also used in combinations with numeral classifiers, which are required with certain nouns: ox-chobʼ tinamit 'three cities'.

The following suffixes can be added to numerals: The default word order is VSO (with predicative adjectives also taking the place of the verb).

It should also be noted that it is relatively uncommon for one and the same sentence to contain expressions of both the subject and the object by separate words.

[47] If the fronted phrase is an adverbial modifier (most commonly a locational one), the verb may be followed by the particle wi.