#classical maya

[kiragecko]

Hola! Hope it's ok to ask how did you learn classic Maya?

That's super cool.

Gracias! The short answer is I read a lot of academic articles and books.

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The long answer starts with me designing OC kids for the X-Men and wanting them to use their parents' native languages when saying "mom", "dad", "aunt", etc. At the time, my interest in history was mostly reserved for architecture, though I was also getting into historical world fashion. I was in university at the time, still going full time but dealing with weekly panic attacks that kept getting worse.

I ended up switching to auditing university history courses and spending all my free time in the library, where I realized that I could take out piles of yellow, crackling grammars to help me improve my X-Men cheat-sheets - some languages made distinctions between talking TO someone, and talking about them! Or talking about your family member VS someone else's! Or change terms based on your gender!

I started reading about languages unrelated to comic books. I always need a project, so I made a little world where a bunch of people from different cultures in the 8th century ended up, and had them desperately trying to share enough knowledge to survive Canadian-like winters. I'd go to the semi-hidden section of the library devoted to onomastics (the study of given names, which was big in the 1800s but really isn't now), and try to find books that gave historical versions, so I could accurately name my characters. I discovered The Academy of St. Gabriel, an SCA site devoted to helping historical reenactors name their personas. I started reading translations of copperplates and papyri from the period for languages that didn't have handy lists, skimming for names.

I got REALLY into scripts (alphabets)! And since the Anishinaabe are understandably reticent to share wiigwaasabakoon with researchers, and quipu remain mostly untranslated, my options for New World scripts were limited. But Maya would have grabbed me even if it wasn't the main option. It's BEAUTIFUL!

It was also the first logosyllabic writing system I studied (what I did with Japanese doesn't count), and required a bit more of a commitment than learning the Angkorian Khmer or Arabic scripts had. I ended up making an academia dot edu account and bookmarking several blogs Maya linguists had, so I could find articles about specific glyphs. It's also a field that is growing rapidly, so I had to keep updating my knowledge as ideas about interpreting the glyphs evolved. That extra commitment led to a deeper connection to the language over some of the others I had studied. Classical Maya, Angkorian Khmer, and Mochica ended up becoming special interests, and my harddrive is full of downloaded articles on grammar and writing (and fashion! I still enjoy that).

I'm a stay-at-home parent of special needs kids. I've had a lot of spare time over the years that I couldn't do anything structured with: I was always on call to pick up my kids when they became to much for the school or whoever had agreed to give me a break. So I read about languages, and poured over VERY BAD QUALITY scans of rubbings¹ to figure out what Angkorian 'ḷ' actually looked like. I read articles by complete cranks, trying to "revolutionalize" the reading of Maya glyphs, each telling me that they've FINALLY translated the glyphs for ejective t and p syllables!

I learned classical Maya by having fun with the process.

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I talk a bit HERE about some of the resources I use. I'm not longer using academia dot edu due to ... the usual online stuff. (Sigh.)

Mostly, I just keep deciding to do something and then do enough research to be able to accomplish it badly. Usually, something interesting enough to inspire more research is discovered through this process. (Also, I hopefully learn enough to do it better the next time.)

I'd say something self-deprecating here about how I don't actually know anything and am just playing around, but I have read SO MANY ARTICLES BY CRANKS! I know more than they do.

You, too, can get to the point where you know more than the cranks if you find something that excites you enough!

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¹ A lot of the languages I study are mostly found carved into various materials. They are very worn and may not be readable to the naked eye. So people put big pieces of paper over them and then rub that paper with charcoal, leaving white spaces where areas were carved out. This can work very well. Or, if done poorly, it can be an almost unreadable recording of every scratch on the stone/copper. Then, when digitizing those rubbings, you can skillfully set the contrast to the setting that most allows the letters to pop, or you can create a black and white pixelated mess that obscures what's there and then save it at a resolution so low that each character is 4 pixels.

As SEAclassics, THE source for images of Angkorian Khmer inscriptions, says, "These images are scanned from a variety of sources [...] They are, by and large, atrocious." (Look at K3 and K6. That's what we're working with!)

[kiragecko]

The Tiger Poem in Classical Maya!

The Tiger He has destroyed his cage Yes Yes The tiger is out By Nael, Age 6

Literal translation:

he-destroyed his-captive-place the-jaguar yes-yes he-came.out the-jaguar his-writing master-Na'el man[of]-6-years

Transliteration:

ʔu-jomow ʔu-baaknal ʔu-balahm xt xt Joyoy ʔu-balahm ʔu-tz'ibaal Aj-Naʔel Aj-6-habiy

Character Transliteration (ALL CAPS are characters that stand for full words, lower case are syllabic):

ʔu-jo-mo-wa ʔu-ba-ki-NAL ʔu-BALAM-la-ma xa-ta-xa-ta jo-JOY-yi ʔu-BALAM-ma ʔu-tz'i-ba-li AJ-na-ʔe-le AJ-6-HAB-bi-ya

[Image shows the poem written in 2 columns of Maya glyph blocks. A diagram shows the reading order (which is complex). All the posts text is also included on the image.

End ID.]

[kiragecko]

faggotfuckery

hey op, when reading this, I can see the "compartments" but how do you know in which order the compartments have to be read?

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This is about my Maya translation of the Tiger Poem.

Blocks are read from the left-right and top-bottom. Reading them works a lot like reading comic books - a well designed text will guide the eye. In all blocks, you start at the top-left corner, and then go right or down depending on how the glyphs line up.

Examples:

In this block, the column of glyphs on the left are read first, top to bottom, and then the glyph¹ on the right. The top left glyph stops slightly higher than the top part of the right glyph, so they don't line up, but the left side all does, drawing the eye down.

In this block, the leftmost glyph is read, then the top-right. Finally, the bottom middle and bottom right are read. In this case, there are no glyphs below the first one, so going right is necessary. After the second glyph, the third glyph is straight down, and the forth glyph is in the bottom-right, so it has to be last.

In this block, the first glyph covers the entire top. The second glyph² covers the rest of the left side. The middle two are read top to bottom, and the final glyph touches the bottom right corner.

Sometimes, stacking the glyphs to make reading order clear can be difficult. When writing 'yes, yes', I varied the size of the glyphs so the two 'xa' glyphs on top didn't line up, and neither did the two 'ta's on the bottom. With other blocks, I sometimes had to change the number of glyphs, or use variant glyphs, so that the eye wasn't drawn the wrong way.

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¹ The scaled box and the shape on top are one glyph.)

² The line and dot with two curls is one glyph. The line indicates '5' and the dot '1', with the two curls being blank spaces.

[kiragecko]

It's Memeception in Maya Glyph form!

Young Man

Take the breadsticks

and run

I said

young man

Man door hand hook car

gun

Yeah, I like old memes.

This follows up The Tiger Poem, and The Demon Stoplight Poem. Original is by @plaid-n-converse in 2016.

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Literal translation:

you-take-it the-tamale¹ sir-youth (and) run-you

sir-youth said-I

the-man door hand

sir-youth said-I²

the-folded.over-dart³ canoe⁴ (blow)gun⁵

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Transliteration:

ʔa-ch'am-Ø ʔu-waj ʔu-ch'ok a‧n-eet

ʔaj-ch'ok che‧ʔ-een

ʔu-wi‧nik pa‧sil k'ab

ʔaj-ch'ok che‧ʔ-een

ʔu-pak-jul ju‧kuub pu'w

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Character Transliteration (ALL CAPS are characters that stand for full words, lower case are syllabic):

ʔa-ch'a-CH'AM-ma ʔu-wa-WAJ ʔAJ-ch'o[ko] ʔa-ne-ta

ʔAJ-ch'o-ko che-ʔe-na

ʔu-WINIK-ki pa-si-li K'AB

ʔAJ-ch'o[ko] che-ʔe-na

ʔu-pa-ka-ju-lu ju-ku-bi pu-wa

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Notes:

¹ 'waj' is the term for any food made with maize dough. I've seen it translated as 'tamale' by linguists, but the term seems to refer to a general category similarly to 'bread'

² To allow the translation to match YMCA meter, I added an extra 'I said, "Young man"' (only 2 of the last 6 words are a single syllable in Classical Maya)

³ 'jul' is a dart/spear/any other piercing tool (but not a needle). I felt a 'folded over/bent downwards piercing tool' fit 'hook' okay

⁴ 'jukuub' is 'canoe', and the closest analog for 'car' I could find

⁵ 'pu'w' is the term for 'blowgun', and has extended it's meaning to 'shotgun' in quite a few modern Maya languages

[kiragecko]

Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost

Translated into Mochica. Written with Maya glyphs. (Description in ALT.)

mo-ŋo ne-pe-te le-pe-ko ma-ŋa ʃa-ma-ke-mo-ño

mong-än nepät jepäko m-ang šam-kem moiñ

this-plural tree owner may-they recognize-d.be by.me

Whose woods these are I think I know.

ʔa-ta yu-nu-ru-ni-ki fe-lo-ko ɕu-ŋa-ne-ke

at iun-är-nik fe lok ssiung ān-ek

although village-of-in is located his house-in

His house is in the village though;

ʔa-yo-ŋo no-ta-fa no-ke-me pa-cha-me-ze-ta mo-ño mi-na-ŋa la-sa-ka

aiong änta f' nok-kem pa chäm esta moiñ, min ang lä-ssäk

by.him not is see-n.be have future.should not me, here is locate-d. being

He will not see me stopping here

me-ñe-ke-me to-po ko-cha-ŋa ɕu-ŋu ne-pe-te-na ka-na-ma

meiñ-kem-top kōcha-ng, ssiung netəp-än ak-näm

fill-ed.be-until fog-by, his tree-s watch-to

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Further information under the cut:

The Moche were a coastal civilization of northern Peru. They did not have snow, but I felt a cold fog building up had a similar feel. I don't think I had to fudge anything else in the translation itself.

Writing it, though!

The Moche were part of a trade network that stretched up to the Maya. Shells from Maya waters were an important status symbol. While they DIDN'T adopt Maya writing, it doesn't require TOO much alternative history to get them to do so. Plus, you know, I wanted to use Maya glyphs. So I did ;)

However, Mochica has an extra vowel, and a lot of different consonants from Maya. And the writing system is syllabic, so to write things with perfect accuracy I would have had to add a symbol for every single different consonant combined with 'ä', as well as six symbols for each new consonant. That's too much. I am slowly creating symbols for the consonants as I need them. This poem has 9:

fa - from 'fanu', 'dog'

fe - from 'fellu', 'duck'

ze - from 'senu', 'cranefly/fly' (ignore the spelling. How we spell Mochica words needs an entire post. Possibly more.)

ɕu/ɕo - from the Maya glyph for 'they/he/she', since it's usually used for 'ssio, ssiung', 'they/he/she, theirs/his/hers'

ru - from 'rūz', 'moat/canal'

ñe - from 'ñieš-', 'to trade/exchange'

ño - from the Maya glyph for 'man/person', used for the Mochica word 'ñofän', 'man/male'

ŋa - from 'iang', 'crab/shrimp' ('ng' isn't allowed at the beginning of Mochica words)

ŋo - from 'ong', 'carob tree/algorrobo'

ŋu - from the Maya glyph for 'spine/thorn/penis', used for the Mochica word 'ȷ̕ung-','to poke/sting/cut'

(I really like Moche crabs. Look at some of these dudes, before I needed to ink them!)

The extra vowel, 'ä', however, is probably a shwa ('ə'). Shwas are barely vowels. To see how wimpy a shwa is, try this:

say the words 'bigger' and 'middle' casually (not emphasizing them) and try to hear the vowel before the final 'r' and 'l'.

Like, it's SORT OF there. Linguists argue if those are syllabic consonants (consonants pretending to be vowels), or if they have tiny shwas.

Some languages have shwas that act like normal vowels, but both English and Mochica have ones that like to disappear. Some Mochica words can be pronounced with or without their shwas. Most Mochica shwas can disappear if a suffix is added to the word. And sometimes, other vowels turn into shwas when suffixes are added!

So I decided that shwas were dumb, and were going to be treated the same way that Maya writing treated consonants without vowels. If the Maya needed to write a consonant that didn't have a vowel, they chose a glyph that had the same vowel as the previous glyph (ie. 'xan' can be written 'xa-na', and 'okib' can be written 'o-ki-bi'.)

So to write 'yunärnik', 'in the village', I used the glyphs 'yu-nu-ru-ni-ki'. A bit harder to parse for someone who doesn't know the language, but probably pretty clear to anyone who knew Mochica suffixes.

[kiragecko]

Put simply, what determines how mayan glyphs are arranged?

Mainly appearance, though some glyphs are more common in secondary form (I forget the actual term for the skinnier glyphs on the edges of blocks), and others need to be the main glyph in a block.

Different scribes had different preferences. Some tried to keep individual words together in a block. Some gave more space to complex glyphs so they didn't have to make the details as tiny. (I avoid making 'tz'i' small. Too much work.) Some would emphasize important parts of the writing by giving it more space. Names usually get a lot more space the first time they show up, and are then compressed in later appearances. Some scribes used one glyph a block - either because they weren't comfortable enough with writing to play with it, or because they were using a special, extra fancy variant that turns each glyph into a full person who takes up their own block.

Glyphs that stand for full words are usually in the same block as their phonetic compliments (the glyphs that tell you their first or final sound).

Numbers and 'ʔu-' (which means 'they/it/he/she') are usually first in a block (at the left/top), and I've never seen 'ʔu-' alone. On the other hand, 'w-vowel', 'ni,' and 'TE' glyphs are usually in the final position (right or bottom).

Often, a set amount of space for the writing was decided beforehand, and scribes did their best to make the writing fill that space.

'ʔu-' means he/she/they/it, and I've never seen it on it's own, or in any non-initial position in a block. (It's always either the left side or the top.) Glyphs that stand for 'w-vowel,' 'ni,' and 'TE' are usually, but not always, in the last position (right side or bottom).

Reading order is from top left of a block down to the bottom right.

Glyphs that stand for full words are usually in the same block as their phonetic compliments (the glyphs that tell you their first or final sound).

While some scribes stack secondary glyphs, that isn't common. (Usually there aren't 2 skinny glyphs on the same side of a block.) Main glyphs are fine to stack, though, and having a secondary glyph on multiple sides is common. (Also, some secondary glyphs have half versions, so you can stick 2 together in the same spot.)

The amount of variation is breathtaking. Some monuments have glyph-blocks so big and complex that entire sentences fit in one. More casual writing on cave walls usually consists of 1-3 glyphs a block. And monuments can also have really simple blocks. It's up to the scribe.

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On a larger scale, blocks of glyphs are USUALLY in horizontal pairs (left to right). These pairs can then be laid out in any order you want. The whole text can be horizontal, the pairs can be arranged vertically, they can start vertically down the side of an image, and then continue horizontally underneath it, etc.

You also get single columns, rather than pairs, and even glyphs being read from right to left.

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In summary, it's mostly personal preference. Even glyphs that usually fit in a certain spot can be stretched/squished into another if the scribe really wants them to.

But once you figure out the writing style of the scribe (or your own writing style!) it's often possible to predict roughly how things will be laid out.

[kiragecko]

It's my friend, @plotbunny-bundle!

They've been sending me asks, which makes me happy, and I show love by writing things pretty. So I translated their Tumblr name into Classical Maya.

The first phrase is a transliteration. That means I copied the sounds as closely as possible.

ʔɑj polot ɓuni ɓuntel

The 'b's have little curves on the top because they're implosive, which means the sound is made while the air is going in, rather than out.

Glyphs: ʔAJ-po-lo to ɓu-ni ɓu-nu te-le

The second phrase is a translation. I matched the meaning of Bunny's name as well as I could to Classical Maya words:

Scribe Rabbit Bundle

I don't know of a word for 'plot' or 'idea', but Maya mythology does have at least one rabbit scribe, and I felt that might get the idea across. More literal translation:

sir/one.who writes rabbit bundle/tribute

Pronunciation: ʔɑj tz'ihɓ t'ul ʔikɑɑtz

Glyphs: ʔAJ-tz'i-ɓɑ T'UL ʔi kɑ-tzi

[kiragecko]

It’s my friend, @tuesdayisfordancing!

They’ve been writing really cool comments on my posts, which makes me happy, and I show love by writing things pretty. So I translated zir Tumblr name into Classical Maya.

The first phrase is a transliteration. That means I copied the sounds as closely as possible.

ʔɑjix tuustɑy is po tɑnsin

Glyphs: ʔAJ-ʔIX tu-sɑ tɑ-yi-si-po tɑ-nɑ-si-ni

The second phrase is a translation. I matched the meaning of Tuesday’s name as well as I could to Classical Maya words:

Sir-Lady 3rd Day for Dancing

The Maya didn't have a 7 day week, so this is actually the third day of a 260 day cycle that uses 13 numbers and 20 names. More literal translation:

sir/one.who-lady 3-darkness for/of dance

Pronunciation: ʔɑjix ʔux ʔɑhk'ɑɓ ti ʔɑhk'ot

Glyphs: ʔAJ-ʔIX 3-ʔAK'AB ti-ʔAK'-tɑ

(Note: I do not know why 'ʔahk'ot' has an 'o' but is spelled with an 'ɑ'. Sometimes this language is a mystery.)

Just for fun I also included the version I made 5 years ago. There have be improvements.

(This reads 'ti ɑhk'tɑj ʔɑhk'aɓ' with the glyphs 'ti-ʔAK'-TAJ-ja ʔAK'AB', but the 'ʔAK'AB' glyph is half way between the normal one for 'darkness' and the special day name version. I got the fat border, but forgot the legs. Also, this version translates as 'for to dance darkness', which I think is wrong. The modern version may STILL be wrong, but I think it's closer.)