unds. To learn them, one must hear them spoken by those to the
manner-born.

Dr. Otto Stoll, who recently made a careful study of the Cakchiquel when
in Guatemala, says of Parra's characters:--

"The four new signs added to the European alphabet, by some of the old
writers on Cakchiquel (Parra, Flores), viz: [t], [c], [c,], [c]h, are
but phonetic modifications of four corresponding signs of the common
alphabet. So we get four pairs of sounds, namely:--

c and [c];
k and [t]
ch and [c]h
tz and [c,]

forming two series of consonants, the former of which represents the
common letters, and the latter their respective "cut letters," which may
be described as being pronounced with a shorter and more explosive sound
than the corresponding common letter, and separated by a short pause
from the preceding or following vowel."[51-1]

The late Dr. Berendt illustrated the phonetic value of such "cut"
letters, by the example of two English words where the same letter
terminates one word and begins the next, and each is clearly but rapidly
pronounced, thus, the [t] is pronounced like two gutteral[TN-6] _ks_ in
"brea_k_ _k_ettle;" the [c] like the two _cs_ in "magic candle,"[TN-7]
etc.

There would appear to have been other "cut" letters in the old dialects
of Cakchiquel, as in Guzman we find the _pp_ and _thth_, as in the Maya,
but later writers dropped them.

I may dispense with a discussion of the literature of the Cakchiquel
language, having treated that subject so lately as last year, in the
introduction to the _Grammar of the Cakchiquel_, which I then translated
and edited for the American Philosophical Society. As will be seen by
reference to that work, it is quite extensive, and much of it has been
preserved. I have examined seven dictionaries of the tongue, all quite
comprehensive; manuscript copies of all are in the United States. None
of these, however, has been published; and we must look forward to the
dictionary now preparing by Dr. Stoll, of Zurich, as probably the first
to see the light.

The Maya race, in nearly all its branches, showed its intellectual
superiority by the eagerness with which it turned to literary pursuits,
as soon as some of its members had learned the alphabet. I have brought
forward some striking testimony to this in Yucatan,[52-1] and there is
even more in Central America. The old historians frequently refer to the
histories of their own nations, written out by members of the