This essential preliminary question, as to the extent of the phonetic element in the Mexican and Maya systems of writing, is that which I propose to put at present, and to answer it, so far as may be. Hitherto, the greatest diversity of opinion about it has prevailed. Some able writers, such as Valentini and Holden, have questioned the existence of any phonetic elements; but most have been willing to concede that there are such present, though their quantity and quality are by no means clearly defined.
We may assume that both systems under consideration are partly ideographic. Every system of phonetic writing introduces ideograms to some extent, our own among the number. The question is, to what extent?
But before we are prepared to answer this question about the extent of the phonetic element, we must seek to ascertain its character. We are all aware that a phonetic symbol may express the sound either of a whole word of several syllables, or of a single syllable, or of a simple acoustic element. Again, a single phonetic symbol may express several quite diverse sounds, as is familiarly exemplified in the first letter of the English alphabet, which represents three very different sounds; and, on the other hand, we may find three, four or more symbols, no wise alike in form or origin, bearing one and the same phonetic value, a fact especially familiar to Egyptologists.
We must further bear in mind that the arrangement to the eye of phonetic symbols is altogether arbitrary. Because a prefix is pronounced first in the order of time and a suffix last, it by no means follows that the order in space of their corresponding symbols shall bear any analogous relation. The idea awakened by the sound of the word is a whole, and one; and so that this sound is represented, the disposition of its component parts is, philosophically speaking, indifferent. When it is remembered that in most American languages, and notably in the Mexican or Nahuatl, there is a tendency to consolidate each phrase into a single word, the importance of this consideration is greatly increased.
As the position of the phonetic parts of the phrase-word may thus be disregarded, yet more indifferent is the order of sequence of the symbols. There is no a priori reason why this should be from left to right as in English, or from right to left as in Hebrew; alternately, as in the Boustrophedon of the Greek; or from top to bottom, as in Chinese.
In such an examination as the present one, we must rid our minds of the expectation of finding the phonetic elements in some familiar form, and simply ask whether they are to be found in any form.
We are not without a trustworthy guide in this quest. It is agreed among those who have most carefully studied the subject that there is but one path by which the human mind could have originally proceeded from picture-writing or thought-writing to phonetic or sound-writing. This was through the existence of homophones and homoiophones in a language, of words with the same or similar sounds, but with diverse significations. The deliberate analysis of a language back to its phonetic elements, and the construction upon those of a series of symbols, as was accomplished for the Cherokee by the half-breed Sequoyah, has ever been the product of culture, not a process of primitive evolution.
In this primitive process the sounds which were most frequently repeated, or were otherwise most prominent to the ear, would be those first represented by a figure; and the same figure would come to be employed as an equivalent for this sound and others closely akin to it, even when they had other connections and bore other significations. Hence affixes, suffixes, and monosyllabic words, are those to which we must look as offering the earliest evidences of a connection of figure with sound.
According to the theory here very briefly indicated, I shall examine the Maya and Nahuatl systems of writing, to ascertain if they present any phonetic elements, and of what nature these are.
Turning first to the Maya, I may in passing refer to the disappointment which resulted from the publication of Landa’s alphabet by the Abbé Brasseur in 1864. Here was what seemed a complete phonetic alphabet, which should at once unlock the mysteries of the inscriptions on the temples of Yucatan and Chiapas, and enable us to interpret the script of the Dresden and other Codices. Experience proved the utter fallacy of any such hope. His work is no key to the Maya script; but it does indicate that the Maya scribes were able to assign a character to a sound, even a sound so meaningless as that of a single letter.