#ch'olan

Divine Ritual, K'uh (Ch'uh, Ch'olan).

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The Maya hieroglyphic writing system was developed by the Ch'olan speakers (one of the main Mayan language groups) sometime in the Middle Preclassic.  The Tzeltalan speakers also used hieroglyphs, and the Yucatán Maya adopted & adapted them to write their language, Yucatec Maya.

However, the royal inscriptions throughout Maya territories were still written in Ch'olan, so it was obviously a kind of prestige language, like French in the medieval English courts.

The hieroglyphs use both logograms (signs symbolizing a word/meaning) and syllabograms (for sounds).  There are hundreds of glyphs, using depictions of humans, animals, deities, objects, and abstract designs.  Not all of them have been deciphered.

The hieroglyphs are laid out in a grid pattern, but they are not read top-bottom or in rows.  They are read in double columns – looking at the glyphs above, it goes A1 B1, A2 B2, A3 B3, A4 B4, then B1 C1, etc.

Each square is a glyph block, containing 1-5 glyphs within it. A glyph block is often a word or phrase.

Syllabograms

The syllabograms represent syllables, not individual sounds like the Latin alphabet.  There is often more than one possible sign for a syllable.

A subset of the syllabograms:

Pronounciation notes: j = German ch; x = sh; tz = ts.

A consonant with an apostrophe after it means that the following vowel is glottalized, i.e. it has a glottal stop where the apostrophe is.

The basic glyph structure is consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), although it can be CVCVC as well.  The first CV is easy to write – just the syllabogram that represents it.  The final C is more tricky. You take the syllabogram for that consonant + the middle vowel, but the vowel is omitted when reading it.  For example, tzul means “dog”, and it would be written as tzu-lu, with the final “u” silent.

When the final C takes the middle vowel like this, it is called synharmony.  It almost always does.  Sometimes it takes a different vowel (and is still silent), and this is called disharmony.

Disharmony is used when the spoken vowel is complex – i.e. if it is a long vowel (romanized as a double vowel), or aspirated (romanized with “h” following it).  This makes it easy to recognize if the spoken vowel is complex or not, though of course it doesn't tell you which type of complex.

For example, the word ahk means turtle, with the “ah” being an aspirated “a”.  So it is written as a-ku, not a-ka..

The first row of glyphs uses synharmony, and the second row uses disharmony.  All the glyphs are made up entirely of syllabograms.

Logograms

Here are some of the logograms:

There were multiple ways of writing a single word.  It could be done through just logograms; just syllabograms; or logograms with phonetic complements – phonetic signs (using syllabograms) that clarified the word's meaning by giving the beginning/end sound.  However, when this was the case, that sound was not repeated – the phonetic complement was silent.

If the phonetic complement gave a reminder of the beginning sound, it was placed at the start of the word, and vice versa.

Below, pakal (shield) and witz (mountain) are spelled in different ways – 1) logographic; 2) logographic with phonetic complements; 3) phonetic.

Phonetic complements were necessary for various reasons.  One of those reasons is that a single logogram can have multiple readings – this is called polyvalency.  For example, there are two words for “jaguar” (balam and jix), but the same logogram is used for both.  So for balam, “ba” is placed before it, or “ma” after it.  For jix, “ji” is placed before it.

Also, a glyph can function both as a logogram and syllabogram.  The syllabogram “ku” is also the logogram TUUN (and the calendrical sign for the tzolk'in day Kawak).  So when it's a logogram, “ni” is placed after it as a phonetic complement.  The calendar sign will have a numeric sign before it, and will be in a calendrical context.

Just like glyphs composed only of syllabograms, the rules of synharmony & disharmony apply to phonetic complements.  Balam has a short vowel [I'm not sure which vowel you look at in a CVCVC word, it appears to be irregular], so the phonetic complement is “ma” (synharmony). Tuun has a long vowel, so the phonetic complement is “ni” (disharmony).

Phonetic signs are also attached to logograms as prefixes or suffixes, to create new words from the root word, or conjugate a verb.  The most common suffixes are used with verbs, to indicate person, number, tense, and other things.

The verb ch'am means “to grab”.  “He/she grabs” is u ch'am-wa, so there is both a prefix and a suffix.

Verbs don't have to be written as logograms + phonetic complements, of course.  Below is the verb uut (to happen) written phonetically in 3 different tenses.