Talk:Maya calendar/Archives/2006/June

Glottal Stops

None of the books that I have about the Maya and the calendar spell the names of the days of the Tzolk'in with as many glottal stops (') as the chart of the Tzolk'in in the article. The chart also seems to be unattributed so it's hard to know if it's correct.

None of the names in the list of Haab month names is spelled with a glottal stop. According to my sources, Yaxk'in, Ch'en, K'ank'in and K'ayab all have them.

The glottal stop is not used in English so we tend to ignore it but it is as important to languages that use it as any other phonym.

Perhaps some linguist familiar with Yucatec could help with this.

206.54.110.21 20:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)Tlaloc

The orthography of the Tzolk'in day names given in the table follows (as is noted) the orthography standardised by the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, and as published by that institution in Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala: Documento de referencia para la pronunciación de los nuevos alfabetos oficiales (1988), Instituto Indigenista Nacional, Guatemala (document 1). The Academy's site seems to be unavailable, but this orthography is reproduced elsewhere, such as here. Most (but not all) Mayanist scholars have subsequently adopted this orthography (albeit with differences over when to apply it for toponyms and other commonly-used expressions) in preference over the 'older' orthography which derives from 16thC. spanish transcription of Yucatec (or Yukatek, per the academy). I will add in an explicit footnote/reference and ext link for this and an example publication which follows the convention.

The (') symbol used here does not (for these particular words) represent a glottal stop (in the sense of a distinct phoneme), but is rather the manner chosen to mark what are ejective consonants or stops, and is "part of" the preceding character (ie <b'> not <b><'>, <k'> not <k><'>, etc). One of the prime arguments for observing this orthography is that most Mayan languages have phonemic contrasts between non-glottalised and glottalised consonants, and so [ k ] is different to [ k' ] (eg. kan—"four", k'an—"yellow, ripe"). The orthography only uses <b'> not <b> for voiced bilabial, however (presumably it's always glottalised), and so Akbal (16thC orthog.) becomes Ak'b'al.

The Haab' names had not (as you observed) been updated from the old orthography, I've gone through those now and made them consistent. Both orthographies should be mentioned, particularly since most pre-1990s publications use the 'old' form and they remain familiar, but in presenting them we need to make clear which is the orthography being used.--cjllw | TALK 03:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)