Mayan Languages

Mayan Languages.

Compared with many American languages, the Mayan languages are simple in construction. It is analytic rather than synthetic; most of its roots are monosyllables or dissyllables, and the order of their arrangement is very similar to that in English. It has been observed that foreigners, coming to Yucatan, ignorant of both Spanish and Maya, acquire a conversational knowledge of the latter more readily than of the former.

An examination of the Mayan languages explains this. Neither nouns nor adjectives undergo any change for gender, number or case. Before animate nouns the gender may be indicated by the prefixes ah and ix, equivalent to the English he and she in such expressions as he-bear, she-bear. The plural particle is ob, which can be suffixed to animate nouns, but is in fact the third person plural of the personal pronoun.

In the Maya Languages the conjugations of the verbs are four in number. All passives and neuters end in l, and also a certain number of active verbs; these form the first conjugation, while the remaining three are of active verbs only. The time-forms of the verb are three, the present, the aorist, and the future. Taking the verb nacal, to ascend, these forms are nacal, naci,nacac. The present indicative in the Mayan Languages are:—

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Nacal in cah,	I ascend.
Nacal á cah,	thou ascendest.
Nacal ú cah,	he ascends.
Nacal c cah,	we ascend.
Nacal a cah ex,	you ascend.
Nacal u cah ob,	they ascend.

When this form is analyzed in the Maya languages, we discover that in, á, ú, c, a-ex, u-ob, are personal possessive pronouns, my, thy, his, our, your, their; and that nacal and cah are in fact verbal nouns standing in apposition. Cah, which is the sign of the present tense, means the doing, making, being occupied or busy at something. Hence nacal in cah, I ascend, is literally “the ascent, my being occupied with.” The imperfect tense is merely the present with the additional verbal noun cuchi added, as—

Nacal in cah cuchi,	I was ascending.
Nacal á cah cuchi,	Thou wast ascending.
	etc.

Cuchi means, in the Maya language carrying on, bearing along, and the imperfect may thus be rendered:—

“The ascent, my being occupied with, carrying on.”

This is what has been called by Friedrich Müller the “possessive conjugation,” the pronoun [30]used being not in the nominative but in the possessive form.

The aorist presents a different mode of formation:—

Nac-en, (i.e. Naci-en)	I ascended.
Nac-ech,	Thou ascended.
Naci,	He ascended.
Nac-on,	We ascended.
Nac-ex,	You ascended.
Nac-ob,	They ascended.

Here en, ech, on, ex, are apparently the simple personal pronouns I, thou, we, you, and are used predicatively. The future is also conjugated in this form by the use of the verbal bin, binel, to go:

Bin nacac en,	I am going to ascend.
Bin nacac ech,	Thou art going to ascend.
	etc.

The present of all the active verbs in the Maya languages usee this predicative form, while their aorists and futures employ possessive forms. Thus:—

Ten cambezic,	I teach him.
Tech cambezic,	Thou teaches him.
Lay cambezic,	He teaches him.

Here, however, I must note a difference of ]opinion between eminent grammatical critics. Friedrich Müller considers all such forms as—

Nac-en,

I ascended,

to exhibit “the predicative power of the true verb,” basing his opinion on the analogy of such expressions as—

Ten batab en,

I (am) a chief.

M. Lucien Adam, on the other hand, says:—“The intransitive preterit nac-en may seem morphologically the same as the Aryan ás-mi; but here again, nac is a verbal noun, as is demonstrated by the plural of the third person nac-ob, ‘the ascenders.’ Nac-en comes to mean ‘ascender [formerly] me.’”

I am inclined to think that the French critic is right, and that, in fact, there is no true verb in the Maya language, but merely verbal nouns, nomina actionis, to which the pronouns stand either in the possessive or objective relations, or, more remotely, in the possessive relation to another verbal noun in apposition, as cah, cuchi, etc. The importance of this point in estimating the structure of the language will be appreciated by those who have paid any attention to the science of linguistics.

[The objective form of the conjugation is composed of the simple personal pronouns of both persons, together with the possessive of the agent and the particle ci, which conveys the accessory notion of present action towards. Thus, from moc, to tie:—

Ten c in moc ech,	I tie thee,
literally,	I my present tying thee.

These refinements of analysis have, of course, nothing to do with the convenience of the Maya language for practical purposes. As it has no dual, no inclusive and exclusive plurals, no articles nor substantive verb, no transitions, and few irregular verbs, its forms are quickly learned. It is not polysynthetic, at any rate, not more so than French, and its words undergo no such alteration by agglutination as in Aztec and Algonkin. Syncopated forms are indeed common, but to no greater extent than in colloquial English. The unit of the tongue remains the word, not the sentence, and we find no immeasurable words, expressing in themselves a whole paragraph, such as grammarians like to quote from the Eskimo, Aztec, Qquichua and other highly synthetic languages.

The position of words in a sentence is not dissimilar from that in English. The adjective ]precedes the noun it qualifies, and sentences usually follow the formula, subject—verbal—object. Thus:—

Hemac	cu	yacuntic	Diose,		utz	uinic.
He	who	loves	God,	[is]	good	man.

But transposition is allowable, as—

Taachili	u tzicic	u	yum	uinic.
Generally	obeys	his	father,	a man.

As shown in this last example, the genitive relation is indicated by the possessive pronoun, as it sometimes was in English, “John, his book;” but the Maya is “his book John,” u huun Juan.

Another method which is used for indicating the genitive and ablative relations is the termination il. This is called “the determinative ending,” and denotes whose is the object named, or of what. It is occasionally varied to al and el, to correspond to the last preceding vowel, but this “vocalic echo” is not common in the Maya language. While it denotes use, it does not convey the idea of ownership. Thus, u cħeen in yum, my father’s well, means the well that belongs to my father; but cħenel in yum, my father’s well, means the well from which he obtains water, but in which he has no proprietorship. Material used is indicated by [34]this ending, as xanil na, a house of straw (xan, straw, na, house).

Compound words are frequent, but except occasional syncope, the members of the compound undergo no change. There is little resembling the incapsulation (emboitement) that one sees in most American languages. Thus, midnight, chumucakab, is merely a union of chumuc, middle, and akab, night; dawn, ahalcab, is ahal, to awaken, cab, the world.

While from the above brief sketch it will be seen that the Maya is free from many of the difficulties which present themselves in most American tongues, it is by no means devoid of others.

In its phonetics, it possesses six elements which to the Spaniards were new. They are represented by the signs:

cħ,

k,

pp,

tħ,

tz,

ɔ.

Of these the cħ resembles dch, pronounced forcibly; the ɔ is as dz; the pp is a forcible double p; and in the tħ the two letters are to be pronounced separately and forcibly. There remains the k which is the most difficult of all. It is a sort of palato-guttural, the only one in the language, and its sound can only be acquired by long practice.

]The particles are very numerous, and make up the life of the Maya language. By them are expressed the relations of space and time, and all the finer shades of meaning. Probably no one not to the manor born could render correctly their full force. Buenaventura, in his Grammar, enumerates sixteen different significations of the particle il.

The elliptical and obscure style adopted by most native writers, partly from ignorance of the art of composition, partly because they imitated the mystery in expression affected by their priests, forms a serious obstacle even to those fairly acquainted with the current language. Moreover, the older manuscripts contain both words and forms unfamiliar to a cultivated Yucatecan of to-day.

I must, however, not omit to contradict formally an assertion made by the traveler Waldeck, and often repeated, that the language has undergone such extensive changes that what was written a century ago is unintelligible to a native of to-day. So far is this from the truth that, except for a few obsolete words, the narrative of the Conquest, written more than three hundred years ago, by the chief Pech, which I print in this volume, could be read without much difficulty by any educated native.

Again, as in all Mayan languages largely monosyllabic, there are many significations attached to one word, and these often widely different. Thus kab means, a hand; a handle; a branch; sap; an offence; while cab means the world; a country; strength; honey; a hive; sting of an insect; juice of a plant; and, in composition, promptness. It will be readily understood that cases will occur where the context leaves it doubtful which of these meanings is to be chosen.

These homonyms and paronyms, as they are called by grammarians, offer a fine field for sciolists in philology, wherein to discover analogies between the Maya and other tongues, and they have been vigorously culled out for that purpose. All such efforts are inconsistent with correct methods in linguistics. The folly of the procedure may be illustrated by comparing the English and the Maya. I suppose no one will pretend that these languages, at any rate in their present modern forms, are related. Yet the following are but a few of the many verbal similarities that could be pointed out:—

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Maya Languages.	English.
bateel,	battle.
cħab,	to grab, to take.
hol,	hole.
hun,	one.
lum,	loam.
pol,	poll (head).
potum,	a pot.
pul,	to pull, carry.
tun,	stone.

So with the Latin we could find such similarities as volah=volo, ɔa=dare, etc.

In fact, no relationship of the Mayan language group to any other has been discovered. It contains a number of words borrowed from the Aztec (Nahuatl); and the latter in turn presents many undoubtedly borrowed from the Maya dialects. But this only goes to show that these two great families had long and close relations; and that we already know, from their history, traditions and geographical positions.

Origin of the Maya and Aztec Tribes

Origin of the Maya  and Aztec Tribes.

Mayan Origins with the god Itzamna

The Mayas did not claim to be autochthones. The Maya legends of their origins referred to their arrival by the sea from the East, in remote times, under the leadership of Itzamna, their hero-god, and also to a less numerous, immigration from the west, from Mexico, which was connected with the history of another hero-god, Kukul Càn.

The first of these appears to be wholly mythical, and but a repetition of the story found among so many American tribes, that their ancestors came from the distant Orient. I have elsewhere explained this to be but a solar or light myth.

The second tradition of the Maya origins deserves more attention from the historian, as it is supported by some of their chronicles and by the testimony of several ]of the most intelligent nativs of the period of the conquest, which I present on a later page of this volume.

It cannot be denied that the Mayas, the Kiches and the Cakchiquels, in their most venerable traditions, claimed to have migrated from the north or west, from some part of the present country of Mexico.

These traditions receive additional importance from the presence on the shores of the Mexican Gulf, on the waters of the river Panuco, north of Vera Cruz, of a prominent branch of the Maya family, the Huastecs. The idea suggests itself that these were the rearguard of a great migration of the Maya family from the north toward the south.

Support is given to this by their dialect, which is most closely akin to that of the Tzendals of Tabasco, the nearest Maya race to the south of them, and also by very ancient traditions of the Aztecs.

It is noteworthy that these two partially civilized races, the Mayas and the Aztecs, though differing radically in language, had legends of their origins which claimed a community of origin in some indefinitely remote past. We find these on the Maya side narrated [in the sacred book of the Kiches, the Popol Vuh, in the Cakchiquel Records of Tecpan Atitlan, and in various pure Maya sources which I bring forward in this volume. The Aztec traditions refer to the Huastecs, and a brief analysis of them will not be out of place.

At a very remote period the Mexicans, under their leader Mecitl, from whom they took their name, arrived in boats at the mouth of the river Panuco, at the place called Panotlan, which name means “where one arrives by sea.” With them were the Olmecs under their leader Olmecatl, the Huastecs, under their leader Huastecatl, the Mixtecs and others. They journeyed together and in friendship southward, down the coast, quite to the volcanoes of Guatemala, thence to Tamoanchan, which is described as the terrestialparadise, and afterwards, some of them at least, northward and eastward, toward the shores of the Gulf.

On this journey the intoxicating beverage made from the maguey, called octli by the Aztecs, cii by the Mayas, and pulque by the Spaniards, was invented by a woman whose name was Mayauel, in which we can scarcely err in recognizing the ]national appellation Maya. Furthermore, the invention is closely related to the history of the Huastecs. Their leader, alone of all the chieftains, drank to excess, and in his drunkenness threw aside his garments and displayed his nakedness. When he grew sober, fear and shame impelled him to collect all those who spoke his language, and leaving the other tribes, he returned to the neighborhood of Panuco and settled there permanently.

The annals of the Aztecs contain frequent allusions to the Huastecs. The most important contest between the two nations took place in the reign of Montezuma the First (1440-1464). The attack was made by the Aztecs, for the alleged reason that the Huastecs had robbed and killed Aztec merchants on their way to the great fairs in Guatemala. The Huastecs are described as numerous, dwelling in walled towns, possessing quantities of maize, beans, feathers and precious stones, and painting their faces. They were sig]nally defeated by the troops of Montezuma, but not reduced to vassalage.

At the time of the Conquest the province of the Huastecs was densely peopled; “none more so under the sun,” remarks the Augustinian friar Nicolas de Witte, who visited it in 1543; but even then he found it almost deserted and covered with ruins, for, a few years previous, the Spaniards had acted towards its natives with customary treachery and cruelty. They had invited all the chiefs to a conference, had enticed them into a large wooden building, and then set fire to it and burned them alive. When this merciless act became known the Huastecs deserted their villages and scattered among the forests and mountains.

These traditions go to show that the belief among the Aztecs was that the tribes of the Maya family came originally from the north or northeast, and were at some remote period closely connected with their own ancestors.

Mayan Language Family

The Maya Language Family.

Whatever the primitive meaning and first application of the name Maya, it is now used to signify specifically the aborigines of Yucatan. In a more extended sense, in the expression “the Maya language family,” it is understood to embrace all tribes, wherever found, who speak related dialects presumably derived from the same ancient stock as the Maya proper.

Other names for this extended family have been suggested, as Maya-Kiche, Mam-Huastec, and the like, compounded of the names of two or more of the tribes of the group. But this does not appear to have much advantage over the simple expression I have given, though “Maya-Kiche” may be conveniently employed to prevent confusion.

These affiliated languageof Maya tribes are, according to the investigations of Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt, the following:—

1.	The Maya proper, including the Lacandons.
2.	The Chontals of Tabasco, on and near the coast west of the mouth of the Usumacinta.
3.	The Tzendals, south of the Chontals.
4.	The Zotzils, south of the Tzendals.
5.	The Chaneabals, south of the Zotzils.
[18]6.	The Chols, on the upper Usumacinta.
7.	The Chortis, near Copan.
8.	The Kekchis, and
9.	The Pocomchis, in Vera Paz.
10.	The Pocomams.
11.	The Mams.
12.	The Kiches.
13.	The Ixils.		In or bordering on Guatemala.
14.	The Cakchiquels.
15.	The Tzutuhils.
16.	The Huastecs, on the Panuco river and its tributaries, in Mexico.

The Mayan languages of these do not differ more, in their extremes, than the French, Spanish, Italian and other tongues of the so-called Latin races; while a number resemble each other as closely as the Greek dialects of classic times.

What lends particular importance to the study of this group of Mayan languages is that it is that which was spoken by the race in several respects the most civilized of any found on the American continent. Copan, Uxmal and Palenque are names which at once evoke the most earnest interest in the mind of every one who has ever been attracted to the subject of the archæology of the New World. This race, moreover, possessed [19]an abundant literature, preserved in written books, in characters which were in some degree phonetic. Enough of these remain to whet, though not to satisfy, the curiosity of the student.

The total number of Indians of pure blood speaking the Maya proper may be estimated as nearly or quite 200,000, most of them in the political limits of the department of Yucatan; to these should be added nearly 100,000 of mixed blood, or of European descent, who use the tongue in daily life. For it forms one of the rare examples of American languages possessing vitality enough not only to maintain its own ground, but actually to force itself on European settlers and supplant their native speech. It is no uncommon occurrence in Yucatan, says Dr. Berendt, to find whole families of pure white blood who do not know one word of Spanish, using the Maya exclusively. It has even intruded on literature, and one finds it interlarded in books published in Merida, very [20]much as lady novelists drop into French in their imaginative effusions.

The number speaking the different dialects of the stock are roughly estimated at half a million, which is probably below the mark.