JOHN MONTGOMERY – DICTIONARY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002 - SECOND
PRINTING 2006
This is an indispensable tool if
you want to start penetrating the Maya language. Yet you will get very
frustrated because the list of T numbers is not full, because the simple
alphabetical order does not satisfy your curiosity and particularly if you re
using the dictionary intensively. Maya is using hieroglyphs as a writing
system. Some of these hieroglyphs are representing actual objects, people,
animals. They are real images standing thus for the names of those things,
animals or persons, a full word. Maya must have been at one time using a fully
and purely hieroglyphic writing system in which each word had its image. But it
is highly improbable it remained like that very long because a writing system
is always invented in a language that has been in existence for quite a while,
that has been stabilized in its oral use. Writing is a practice that in a way
ossifies a language and that language has to be already stable to accept to be
ossified.
When we compare the successive
states of this language in its written form we find out that Maya is mostly
advancing towards a syllabic writing system, meaning that the hieroglyphs
either were simplified or simple hieroglyphs were invented to stand for
syllables, and probably the first syllable of the words they were standing for.
This is a standard procedure even in alphabetical writing systems like
Phoenician, Greek, runic (Germanic) and Ogham (Celtic), and I guess many
others. This writing system is based on a syllabary and some syllables can be
reduced to one vowel like the “u” third person anaphoric or cataphoric personal
pronoun. And that is just what is missing in this dictionary: a systematic
listing of the hieroglyphs that represent single syllables used as prefix or
affix of any sort since the writing system can use an affix, before (prefix),
over (superfix), after (postfix) or under (subfix) the block that is then
generally called a glyph that can be a complex phrase containing several words,
or that can be the syllabic writing of one particular word. These affixes
should have been set in one section so that visually they could easily be scanned
to find the one you would be looking for. In this dictionary you cannot have
that overview of all affixes.
Such an overview is available in “
A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs numbered by
J. Eric S. Thompson” (http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/thompson/index.html)
but under their T numbers only and not their phonetic equivalents. To find this
visual presentation under the phonetic equivalents we have to go to
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mayan.htm,
but this time you will only have the syllabary and that will not give you the
words and how they may be composed since phonetic writing is a little bit
tricky: a syllable starting with the last consonant of a word is added to the
other syllables to specify this final consonant and its vowel then is not
pronounced. A syllable consonant-vowel can be used to actually give the
inverted order vowel-consonant. The basic vowels can be syllables on their own.
And the most difficult element is that these syllables can be words of their
own with real meanings. This by the way might be a sign of an agglutinative
language, these affixes being derived from semantically meaningful lexical
units. We must also see that these previously meaningful semantic units may
have evolved into simple affixes that no longer have any semantic meaning
beyond their functional roles. Some of these affixes are yet meaningful like
“u” that refers to the third person and thus is a cataphoric or anaphoric
pronoun, since this “u” is used to mean a genitive of some sort
(possession or attribution) for the
following noun as well as the person (third singular) of the following verb, or
even at times the verbalizing 3
rd person pronoun in front of what is
generally considered as a preposition turning it into some kind of positioning
verbal copula. This seems to indicate the great autonomy of this affix and thus
to indicate this language is not agglutinative because this affix is not a
simple agglutinative functional affix but a semantic unit of its own that can
be used with various elements. It sounds a lot more like a synthetic language.
The
sections of this dictionary called indices, two bilingual ones English-Maya and
Spanish-Maya and one monolingual Maya only, will be great help for you but they
are only indices and not bilingual dictionaries: they only refer to what is in
the main section of the dictionary. You will find cacao, beans, corn (maize)
and (maybe) tobacco but not tomato or pumpkin/squash. The sacred plants of
American Indians were tobacco, corn, beans and squash, and tomato and many
other plants were Mexican by origin. Maybe these words have not been found yet
carved or written, but that’s what a dictionary should tell me and the non
mention of such words does not mean that they have not been found: they are
plainly not included in this dictionary.
Some of
the subject indices will be useful for numbers, days, verbs, etc, including
phonetic signs, in other words the affixes I was speaking of, though on a wider
basis, but not visually so that we cannot use this listing to decipher a glyph:
we have to get into the dictionary to look for the visual glyph corresponding
to the phonetic transcription.
The dictionary is also “old” for
Maya and it should integrate new elements every single year since Maya is in the
process of being deciphered and the dictionary was first published in 2002. But
then you would have to go to other resources like those you find on the
FAMSI.org site and particularly the 2012 “
Maya Hieroglyphics Study Guide Compiled by
Inga Calvin,” http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/calvin/glyph_guide.pdf.
This guide gives you a few tables of the five basic vowels crossed horizontally
with all the consonants set vertically. Then the words are presented collected
under semantic or syntactic sections like numbers, verbal inflectional endings,
various verbs in full verbal phrases at times corresponding to more than one
glyph, ergative pronouns, prepositions, warfare, animals, titles, etc. But this
time the T numbers are not given which is a shortcoming since these T numbers
are often used by other scholars.
This dictionary then is a useful
tool but it will make you lose some time because it will be hard for you to
remember the T number, phonetic value and visual glyph of every single affix or
semantic, syntactic and lexical element.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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This is a
dictionary and you cannot expect more than it proposes. It is organized in
alphabetical order but based on the phonetic transcriptions of the glyphs. Note
they use two phonetic transcriptions: Ch’olan and Yucatec.
The glottalized consonants (consonants followed by a glottal stop marked in the
transcription with an apostrophe) follow the non-glottalized consonants in the
alphabetical order. Thus CH’ comes after CH.
But the great advantage is that you can really understand the composition of
the glyphs thanks to the transcriptions first but also because you will find
the various components in the dictionary as such. The writing system is thus a
composite writing system since the glyphs are composed of various glyphs
associated to build new words. We are dealing here with the morphology of the
compound words and many Mayan words are compounds.
It also gives you the various categories and declension or conjugation elements
of the words. Hence you have nouns, verbs, adjectives. Nominal phrases are
often treated as one glyph composed of various elements showing that the syntax
of the nominal phrase is treated as if it were morphology. And we have the same
thing for verbal phrases. That seems to show this language is developing on the
basis of the second articulation of human language, though it seems to be
developing the first steps towards the realization of the third articulation
which implies declensions and later prepositions to express nominal cases, and
conjugations for the verbs.
To specify that language more we will enter the details of the description of
its syntax. Since it is a Native American language we know today it comes from Siberia where two vast families of languages, and ethnic
groups, cohabited. DNA has confirmed these dual origins. On one hand the agglutinative
languages of the Turkic family mostly settled in Central Asia, South West
Siberia (Urals for example), Asia Minor and the whole of Europe before the last
ice age up to the arrival of Indo-Europeans in Europe
a few thousand years after the ice age. On the other hand the Sino-Tibetan
family us composed of isolating languages.
Most of Native American languages are thus mapped on one pattern or the other.
Further studies have to be made to check if the two affiliations are strictly
respected or if some languages actually merged the characteristics of both
families. The Turkic family is third articulation, whereas the Sino-Tibetan
family is second articulation.
I will then have to come back to the subject after more studies.
This dictionary has many indices at the end and these indices transform the
dictionary into a multilingual and a practical tool. Three languages are
concerned first with the Mayan Index, the English Index and the Spanish Index.
Then you have the Index of Visual Elements and then a collection of Subject
Indices: Numbers, Days, Months, Long Count, Phonetic signs, Verbs/Verbal
Phrases, pronouns, adjectives. T-numbers.
Per se this dictionary cannot teach you the language, but it is an
indispensible tool for learning that language.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
JOHN MONTGOMERY – HOW TO READ MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002
This book by John Montgomery is
irreplaceable though already slightly old in its field. It will not be enough
for you to understand everything, but it will be a starting point. The first
thing you will understand is that the numerical system of the Mayas is not
decimal since it is not based on ten but it is based on twenty. The point is
though that these Mayas had invented what we call zero in our decimal system
without understanding that zero is not a number of its own. There is no year
zero for instance when -1 BCE is finished we shift directly to +1 BCE. Zero is
the threshold point between -1 and +1. Thus the first decimal group, the first
TEN years is not from 0 to 9 but from 1 to 10. Zero is not a number in itself but
the sign of the completion of a group of ten elements, enabling us to start a
second group of ten, and so on. The decimal system enables us to cross under
the unit that is divided in the same way into ten elements, which creates full
continuity from the count of units to the subdivision of a unit into tenths and
then hundredths and then thousandths of that unit.
The Mayas invented a completion
sign for a group of twenty standing for the twentieth element of that group. So
they count from 1 to 19 and then have this sign of completion for 20. Then they
can start a new group of twenty and they can multiply this group of twenty and
once again have twenty such groups to make the next level of the counting
system: 20 then 20x20 = 400, then 400x20 = 8,000, etc. We don’t have any notion
about them having invented a way to count under the unit itself, hence to
divide it into twenty particles and then 400 and then 8,000. They do not seem
to have a dividing vigesimal system. They only seem to have a multiplying
vigesimal system. So the role of this completion symbol for a group of twenty
items has not yet been understood as the limit between plus and minus, or the
threshold enabling us to get under the unit itself. Any presentation that sets
this completion symbol before unit 1 is mistaken. It is the last element of a
group of 20. It is twenty and as such the last element of the group that
triggers the beginning of another group. And this book is quite mistaken in its
presentation.
Page 59 he gives the numbers in
their symbolic variants and twenty is not even provided. In fact it is but called
zero, which is a mistake, though the symbolic hieroglyphic representation for
one is a finger showing clearly they counted on their fingers at first, which
all human beings must have done at one time. But these symbolic variants are
not associated to the phonetic equivalent so that we gave the bars and dots,
the English numbers up to nineteen and not the Maya phonetic transcriptions of
the symbols. Page 59 he gives the same numbers with the head variants but this
time from 1 to 19 with the phonetic transcriptions and nothing at all for
twenty. He does not seem to have understood this essential value of 20 as the
completion of a set, group, slice of numbers. In the same way he does not
really understand that this vigesimal system in its bars and dots version has
several stages of mental development: five with one bar for the first time here
and then used for the next numbers up to nine; ten with two bars used for the
next numbers up to fourteen; and finally fifteen with three bars used for the
next numbers up to nineteen. Then if he had given that progression he would
have understood that twenty was the completion of that group or set and not zero,
the last step before climbing to the next twenty. In fact the use of twenty as
a base for counting sheep for instance in the Middle Ages was commonly used in Europe and each group of twenty was indented onto a
counting stick. It is in fact the very principle of an abacus, though the
abacus seems to work on a decimal base, but it could work on any base. Pascal’s
counting machine was decimal and used the very same principle: the tenth dent on
one dented wheel turned one dent onto the higher wheel. This system was still used
in the registering cash desks of the 1960s before digital counting machines or
calculator.
In the same way he does not explain
why as for the names of these numbers there is a full continuity in original
names up to 9. Then 10 introduces a /la-/ prefix followed by the name of one,
hence /la-jun/. Then for 11 it is a fully new name not connected to one (/jun/)
at all. And then for 12 we use the ten prefix /la-/ and a root that is totally
original in the series, and finally from 13 up to 19 we use the number for 3 to
9 followed by the name of the number 10 (/lajun/), thus producing 16 =
wak-lajun from 6 = wak. It is quite obvious here they used the base five and
hesitated a lot from ten to twelve when they invented their numbering system.
In fact they used their hands first which makes five and ten and then like in
numerous systems in the world (English pennies up to their decimalization in
the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher, oysters and eggs in Europe and probably in
other places, and nails were still sold by the gross, 12x12 = 144, and are
maybe still sold like that for big ones) 5 fingers + 5 fingers + 2 hands = 12,
and later they relapsed into the five-ten base probably by introducing the toes
and that leads to twenty (remember the twenty base for the shilling up to its
decimalization by Margaret Thatcher that got rid of the shilling altogether).
It is surprising John Montgomery did not see that. It is a very common
problematic in all counting systems in the world.
The second element that will
irritate you to the utmost, though it is a very good pedagogical means (yet not
meant as such by the author) since it forces you to use the dictionary all the
time: very often the various elements of a glyph (or writing block) are not
properly identified. Either the transcription is given for the whole block and
not specified as for the elements in the block corresponding to the elements in
the transcription mostly specified by the author with dashes. Or the various
glyphic elements are actually identified phonetically as the various elements
of the transcription but the T numbers are not provided, which makes it
difficult to use the dictionary then because the various affixes can have many
glyphic realizations and we do not always know which one is concerned because
of the great variations on the real glyphic realizations. At times too in that
line a vowel is attached to its preceding consonant though it should be
attached to the following consonant, or vice versa. Finding then the real
glyphic realization is not that easy. Or, third possible trap, he does give us
the T number composition of the particular word, but since his dictionary does
not have the full list of T numbers you are lost in a jungle: you cannot find
the glyph corresponding to this particular T number.
You end up for some simple
affixes turning all the page and screening all the glyphs in order to find the
proper one in the dictionary and then have the T number of it. In other words
it is done for beginners as he constantly repeat, but for obstinate and
persistent beginners who will spend hours on one page of this supposedly simple
manual. I would personally have organized this manual differently and have
systematically identified the glyphs or glyphic elements with the visual
realization, the phonetic transcription and the T number with a dictionary
giving first all the affixes in alphabetical order of their transcriptions and
with their real names when they have one, the meaning of the glyph that it
still is or from which it is derived, and the semantic or syntactic value it
has in the language. Too often in the manual but also in the dictionary of the
same author these affixes, and at times simple fully autonomous glyphs, are
just specified as being vowel or phonetic sign, and yet some after this
“phonetic sign” specification are provided with one or several semantic meanings
and no explanation is given about using the moon sign in four different though
similar or connected forms as the “phonetic sign” of /ja/. If in its use in the
composition of glyphs it retains its “moon sign” value, how does it do it, and
then the language is agglutinative. If it has lost all its “moon sign” value in
its phonetic use then the language is synthetic. Maybe we can’t answer such a
question but it HAS TO BE ASKED.
I will make only one more remark.
It is quite obvious this language is ergative in many ways. But is it purely
ergative or something else. The fact, and Montgomery
is not the only one to say so, there is a passive suffix is surprising since
the reversal of an ergative sentence by a “passive” suffix would produce an
active sentence. When we know this passive suffix is used with the verb meaning
‘to die’ which is normally intransitive meaning that the “subject” is also the
element that carries the ergative value, its passivization seems to imply that
this ergative “subject” is not only the theme of the action but the real agent
of it as if the sentence was a transitive sentence like “X dies (a real good
death)” becoming “(a real good death) is died by X” and X is the agent of that
death, of his own death. The cultural value of such a structure frequently
found in the various inscriptions considered by Montgomery is extremely
far-reaching and it goes the same way as all he said about “letting blood” or
“blood letting” or “self-mutilating/scarifying one’s own penis in order to shed
blood” leading to the understanding that the prisoners so often represented on
the temples were supposed to die in and by shedding as much blood as possible
as slowly as possible in as long a time as possible. This leads me to another
question: is the language the result of the blood letting practices or are the
blood letting practices the result of the language? Since my idea about any
language is that it is produced, invented, developed by human beings and human
communities from the very start in Africa, I believe Homo Sapiens was
practicing blood rituals very early in his history (meaning when he started
emerging 250,000 years ago) as a way to communicate with the spiritual forces he
could not completely identify, as a way to bring the community together in
ritual suffering or painful rituals all turning around blood, or sperm, or
urine, or water. In Maya the four of them are connected in many words meaning
dripping, shedding, letting flow.
And that is universal. In the
same way as /ja’/ means water constructed on the vowel /a/ and then connected
to blood, urine, water and sperm in /ch’a/ which then develops into /ch’ul/
meaning the soul in connection with blood, and then the ritualistic
scarification of the penis to shed blood gets to its full meaning. In Sumerian
in the same way the word /a/ means equally water or any fluid, hence sperm and
even father as well as the irrigation canals running at the top of the levees
protecting and defining the fields, hence the property of the master of this
field, hence his house and household rendered by /en/ or /in/ with /e/ meaning
the temple. In the same way blood rituals existed in Sumer dedicated to the
goddess Inanna, unification of /in/ the estate, the master and water as the
base of the master’s power and authority, and Nanna, the God of the moon who is
the father of Inanna: the blood rituals were centered on a castrating knife
used by the priestess of Inanna to impose respect for the goddess to reluctant
men who became slaves in the temple. The same way as /ja/ water is quite close
to /ja’/ the moon in Maya. This universality as Joseph Greenberg would say of
the sound /a/ meaning water is all the more important here if we see on many
glyphs the representation of blood and blood letting as a chain of drops and we
find these in /a/ or /aj/ T228 and 229, masculine, agentive pronoun third
person also used as an agentive prefix which is not necessarily agentive but is
personal like in the case given by Montmgomery: /aj naab/ meaning /he of water/,
and yet it is the second person pronoun of the ergative set when it marks the
subject of the verb. This second person is necessarily the theme of the
speaker’s utterance, hence the non agentive person in the communicative act,
and yet the subject of the ergative verb meaning it is in-between being the
originator of the action and the receiver of the same action. He is there
dealing with something that has to do with the soul, the ritual of blood letting,
the self-submission to it in order to serve the community and to save himself
by communicating with the gods.
In this language we have a lot
more than Montgomery
says. This language was spoken for many thousand years before it was written
and the writing system that we can follow in its evolution must have taken
millennia to become fully developed and significant, and it must have develop
slowly along with the architectural ability and the technology to provide
surfaces where to write it, material media without which the written medium
will never reach people several thousand years later. The Sumerian writing
system took at least 5,000 years to emerge and it was rather simple when
compared with the extreme intricacies of this written system. But saying that
means that these Mayas are the descendants of people who must have arrived in
the Americas a long time
before the Clovis hypothesis that is maybe valid for northern American Indians
but does not work for the highly sophisticated civilizations of Mesoamerica and
Southern America. We have to come to another
hypothesis that gave these people at least 15,000 years or more to devise their
architecture, language and writing system, not to speak of their religions and
of the cultivation of their god Maize, often know as Corn or Atole, T278, Tnn,
T630, T630v and a few others all standing for /sa/.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 9:05 AM