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 Maya Compendia
(extracts from my book)
Language, Literature and Writing
Recent studies reveal that there are around 25
languages split into ten groups and spoken by approximately
2,500,000 people in Mexico and Guatemala.
Yucatec Mayan is still spoken throughout the
Yucatan Peninsula. Outside the Maya territory, the descendents of
the Huasteca culture in northern Veracruz and Tamaulipas (on the
border with Texas) still speak a language that is related to the
Mayan language.
Like our own language, languages in the ‘Maya’
family have three tenses: past, present and future.
Writing is based on syllables and a technique now exists to decipher
a large part of it. The experts who decipher Maya inscriptions are
known as epigraphists and they are true detectives in search of
clues. With patience and a great deal of methodical and scientific
work they achieve their goal.
One of the early epigraphists was Constantin
Samuel Rafinesque Schmaltz (Constantinople, Turkey, 1783-1840, who
deciphered the number glyphs in 1832. He was followed by Valery
Valentinovich Knorosov (Kharkov, Ukraine, 1922-1999), a Russian
academic who is famous for his ground-breaking research into
deciphering Maya scripture. His work was a great influence on Maya
studies and there are currently around 30 epigraphists in the world.
Thanks to the progress made by such researchers,
we can read many of the inscriptions, for example, those carved on
standing stones or steles. New light has been shed on political
history of ancient cities with the identification of dates, years,
events such as wars, accessions, births, deaths and marriages, the
names of rulers and nobles and family ties.
Only four books written in Maya have survived the
passage of time. They are called ‘codexes’ and are written on bark
paper. They are the Dresden Codex, the Tro-Cortesian Codex, the
Paris Codex and the Grolier Codex (recent studies declare that this
is a fake...). These are found in Dresden, Madrid, Paris and Mexico
City, respectively.
Other books were also written in Yucatec Mayan,
Quiché Mayan and Cakchiquel Mayan. These used the Latin alphabet,
which was introduced by the Spaniards at the time of the conquest.
Examples of these publications include the Chilam Balam, Popol Vuh
and the Cakchiquel Annals. However, it is difficult to know how much
of the information contained in these books was altered by the
Spanish.
The following are examples of a stele and
syllabus, according to the epigraphists.
please note that Maya people used syllables and
vowels.... that is you cannot see the consonant alone.
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Sound |
According
to Michael D. Coe and Mark Van Stone |
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According
to Nikolai Grube and Simon Martin |
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K’a |
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K’e |
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K’i |
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K’o |
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The author was born in
Poza Rica, Veracruz, Mexico in 1968. He is actually working as a
tour guide and lives in Cancún. Among his many and different
activities: he owns a website for
hotel reservations in Cancun,
edits a cultural monthly
magazine and his own books.
ph:
+52 (998) 112 1003 (Nextel) CD 62*15*66939
jahg1968@gmail.com
info@cancunideas.com |
