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 Maya. While it denotes use, it does
not convey the idea of ownership. Thus, u c[=h]een in yum, my father's
well, means the well that belongs to my father; but c[=h]enel 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 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:
c[=h], k, pp, t[=h], tz, [c].
Of these the c[=h] resembles dch, pronounced forcibly; the [c] is as dz;
the pp is a forcible double p; and in the t[=h] 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 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.[35-1]
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 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:--
MAYA. ENGLISH. bateel, battle. c[=h]ab, 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,
[c]a=dare, etc.
In fact, no relationship of the Maya linguistic 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.
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