Maya language

“ The geographical relations of the members of the Maya stock are in marked contrast to those of the Uto-Aztecan—its only rival in civilization. Except the colony of the Huastecas on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in the valley of the Rio Panuco, all its dialects were in contiguity. The true Maya, which is believed to be the purest form of the language, extended over the whole of the peninsula of Yucatan, around Lake Peten, and far up the affluents of the Usumacinta, the dialect of the Lacandons being closely akin to it. ”

“ All the Maya tribes had strong literary tastes, but with characteristic tenacity they clung entirely to their native tongues; and I know not a single instance where one has left compositions in Spanish. Their language is easy to learn; to a stranger to both, Maya comes easier than Spanish, as intelligent writers in Yucatan have testified; and this aided its survival. Their passion for learning to read and write was strong, and had it been fed, instead of rigidly suppressed, there is little doubt but that they would have become a highly enlightened nation. ”

“ The leading authority on Maya grammar is Father Pedro Beltran, who was a native of Yucatan, and instructor in the Maya language in the convent of Merida about 1740. He was thoroughly conversant with the native tongue, and his Arte [74] was reprinted in Merida, in 1859, as the best work of the kind which had been produced.74-1
The eminent antiquary, Don Juan Pio Perez contemplated writing a Maya grammar, and collected a number of notes for that purpose,74-2 as did also the late Dr. Berendt, but neither brought his work to any degree of completeness. ”

“ The ruins of Yucatan, those of the state of Chiapas and of the Island of Cozumel, are very splendid remains, and they are all of them situated in a region where the Maya language is still spoken, substantially as at the time of the Spanish discovery.9-*
Don Manuel Orosco y Berra, says of the Indian inhabitants, “their revengeful and tenacious character makes of the Mayas an exceptional people. In the other parts of Mexico the conquerors have imposed their language upon the conquered, and obliged them gradually to forget their native language. ”

“ The Maya language as a whole exhibits certain points of similarity to that of the Mixtec and Zapotec, but its structure is more akin to that spoken on the islands of the Mexican Gulf and the northern coast of South America. A tradition existed in Yucatan that an early section of the inhabitants had come from the east, and the Maya of this neighbourhood were certainly good seamen, since large canoes with sails were met by the expedition of Columbus, so it is at least possible that a section of the early population were immigrants from the Antilles. ”

“ Most, if not all of them, are related to, if indeed they did not spring from one mother tongue, the Maya, of which a dialect, called the Tzendal is said to be the oldest language spoken in any of these countries. In fact, they all appear to be dialects and variations of some few tongues of yet greater antiquity, which again have sprung from the oldest of all, the Maya. ”

“ The language numbered about sixteen dialects, none very remote from the parent stem, which linguists identify as the Maya proper of the Yucatecan peninsula. While there are a number of verbal similarities between Maya and Nahuatl, the radicals of the two idioms and their grammatical structure are widely asunder. The Nahuatl is an excessively pliable, polysyllabic and highly synthetic tongue; the Maya is rigid, its words short, of one or two syllables generally, and is scarcely more synthetic than French. ”

“ Very little is known of the Mayas of Afghanistan, except that they call themselves Mayas, and that the names of their tribes and cities are words belonging to the American Maya language.
Who can give the etymology of the name Magi, the learned men amongst the Chaldees. We only know [83] that its meaning is the same as Maya in Hindostan: magician, astronomer, learned man. If we come to Greece, where we find again the name Maia, it is mentioned as that of a goddess, as in Hindostan, the mother of the gods: only we are told that she was the daughter of Atlantis—born of Atlantis. ”

“ This volume contains five brief chronicles in the Maya language of Yucatan, written shortly after the Conquest, and carrying the history of that people back many centuries. To these is added a history of the Conquest, written in his native tongue, by a Maya Chief, in 1562. The texts are preceded by an introduction on the history of the Mayas; their language, calendar, numeral system, etc.; and a vocabulary is added at the close. ”

“ I am acquainted with many people—and not ignorant—who believe that by wearing on their persons rosaries, made in Jerusalem and blessed by the Pope, they enjoy immunity from thunderbolts, plagues, epidemics and other misfortunes to which human flesh is heir.
That the Mayas were a race autochthon on this western continent and did not receive their civilization from Asia or Africa, seems a rational conclusion, to be deduced from the foregoing FACTS. If we had nothing but their name to prove it, it should be sufficient, since its etymology is only to be found in the American Maya language. ”

“ The Maya, containing words from almost every language, ancient or modern, is well worth the attention of philologists. And since, as Professor Max Muller said, philology is the shining light that is to illuminate the darkness of ethnology, besides the portraits of the bearded men discovered by me in Chichen, those of the princes and priests, and the beautiful statue of Chac-Mool, which serve to determine the different types, may be a guide to discover whence man and civilization came to America, if the American races can be proved not to be autochthonous. ”

“ The majority of the sculptured tablets which are preserved are no doubt in the Maya or some of its dialects. What is most satisfactory to us, is the probability that the language is spoken to-day by the mass of the native population of Yucatan as it was anciently, for says Señor Pimentel, “the Indians have preserved this idiom with such tenacity that to this day they will speak no other,” and he adds that it is necessary for the whites to address them in their own tongue in order to communicate with them. ”

“ During the afternoon, whilst resting in the shade, I listened to the loud, discordant, and grating sounds pronounced by the Indians around me. The language spoken was Maya, which has been ascertained to be the parent stock of most of the languages and dialects spoken in Guatemala, Yucatan and the bordering territories. I asked my host to give me a specimen of their dialect. ”

“ But all this is very far from showing that at any time a race speaking the Aztec tongue ruled the Peninsula. There are very strong grounds to deny this. The traditions which point to a migration from the west or southwest may well have referred to the depopulation of Palenque, a city which undoubtedly was a product of Maya architects. The language of Yucatan is too absolutely dissimilar from the Nahuatl for it ever to have been moulded by leaders of that race. The details of Maya civilization are markedly its own, and show an evolution peculiar to the people and their surroundings. ”

“ The Maya is the chief Central American tongue, but traces of it may be found as well in Mexico. Thus we see that while the cradle of the Tinneh tongue appears to be in the centre of British North America, its dialects extend westward and southward, lessening in intensity the further they are removed from the hypothetical original centre, suddenly dying out in some directions, fading gradually away in others, and breaking out at disconnected intervals in others. So with the Aztec language, whose primitive centre, so far as present appearances go, was the valley of Mexico ”

“ The Maya language has naturally undergone considerable alteration since they were written; therefore, even to competent readers of ordinary Maya, they are not readily understood. Fortunately, however, there are in existence excellent dictionaries of the Maya of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which, were they published, would be sufficient for this purpose.
A few persons in Yucatan have appreciated the desirability of collecting and preserving these works. Don Pio Perez was the first to do so, and of living Yucatecan scholars particular mention should be made of the Rev. ”

“ The Tzendal, the language in which Votan is said to have written a history of the foundation of his city, and still spoken near the ruins of Palenque, is said to have been the oldest of American languages, but linguistic investigations have proven that it is an offshoot from the Maya, the mother tongue. [711] It is probable that the Maya was first planted at some point in the territory which it now occupies, and gradually extended its domain until its colonies reached northern Vera Cruz and southern Nicaragua. ”

“ On the whole they kept them down, below the danger mark, but the Maya race of Yucatan was seemingly a far more virile race than the natives of Cuba so quickly exterminated by the Spaniards, and despite their subjugation and the servile condition of even the highest among them, they not only increased in numbers but actually enforced their language upon their conquerors. Today, he who lives in Yucatan, outside the greater cities and cannot speak the native tongue, is like one apart. ”

“ Thus we have in the ancient Maya a fine example of the height to which a people may rise with only tools of stone and wood. While the later Aztec culture was in foundation a stone culture, it went somewhat farther than the Maya in the development of copper tools, but not so far as did the Inca of Peru.
The present state of native culture in the Central American States is quite the reverse of what the archæology would lead one to expect. This is particularly true of the Maya area in which quite primitive and loosely organized groups of people are found still speaking Maya languages. ”

“ On the Language of Central America.
In Yucatan the structure and details of the language are sufficiently known, and so are the ethnological affinities of the tribes who speak it. This language is the Maya tongue, and its immediate relations are with the dialects of Guatemala. It is also allied to the Huasteca spoken so far N. as the Texian frontier, and separated from the other Maya tongues by dialects of the Totonaca and Mexican. This remarkable relationship was known to the writers of the Mithridates.
In South America the language begins to be known when we reach the equator; e. g. ”

“ Very many of the nations not clearly affiliated with either branch show evident traces of both cultures, and may be reasonably supposed to have developed their condition from contact and intermixture of the parent stocks with each other, and with the neighboring savage tribes. It is only, however, in a very general sense that this classification can be accepted, and then only for practical convenience in elucidating the subject; since there are several nations that must be ranked among our civilized peoples, which, particularly in the matter of language, show no Maya nor Nahua affinities. ”

“ I pointed out that in this he was wrong, as early Nahuatl records use it in this sense.
The Alaguilac language of Guatemala, long a puzzle to linguistics, is shown in (44) to be an isolated dialect of the Nahuatl.
Nos. (45) , (46) , (47) , (49) and (54) , have been already mentioned.
The term Chilan balam, which may be freely rendered “the inspired speaker,” was the title of certain priests of the native Mayas. Many records in the Maya tongue, written after the conquests, go by the name of “the Books of Chilan Balam.” They have never been published, but copies of them, made by Dr. ”

“ Even today, in many places in Yucatan the descendants of the Spanish conquerors have forgotten the native tongue of their sires, and only speak Maya, the idiom of the vanquished. Traditions, religious rites, superstitious practices, dances, were handed down from generation to generation. But, as the sciences were of old the privilege of the few, the colleges and temples of learning having been destroyed at the downfall of Chichen, the knowledge was imparted by the fathers to their sons, under the seal of the utmost secrecy. ”

“ The various dialects spoken by the folk of Maya origin, although they exhibit some considerable difference, yet display strongly that affinity of construction and resemblance in root which go to prove that they all emanate from one common mother-tongue. In Chiapas the Maya tongue itself is the current dialect, whilst in Guatemala no less than twenty-four dialects are in use, the principal of which are the Quiche, or Kiche, the Kakchiquel, the Zutugil, Coxoh Chol, and Pipil. ”

“ The languages of the civilized nations of Central America, being all more or less affiliated, may be not improperly classified as the Maya-Quiché family, the Maya constituting the mother tongue. Commencing in the neighborhood of the river Goazacoalco, thence extending over Tabasco, Chiapas, Yucatan, Guatemala, and portions of Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, it occupies the same relatively important position in the south as the Aztec farther north. ”

“ This annihilation of their sacred books affected the natives most keenly, as we are pointedly informed by Bishop Landa, himself one of the most ruthless of Vandals in this respect.5-‡ But already [6] some of the more intelligent had learned the Spanish alphabet, and the missionaries had added a sufficient number of signs to it to express with tolerable accuracy the phonetics of the Maya tongue. Relying on their memories, and, no doubt, aided by some manuscripts secretly preserved, many natives set to work to write out in this new alphabet the contents of their ancient records. ”