The failure of the Landa alphabet left many scholars total skeptics as to the phonetic values of any of the Maya characters. To name a conspicuous and recent example, Prof. Leon de Rosny, in his edition of the Codex Cortesianus, published in 1883, appends a Vocabulary of the hieratic signs as far as known; but does not include among them any phonetic signs other than Landa’s.
But if we turn to the most recent and closest students of these records, we find among them a consensus of opinion that a certain degree, though a small degree, of phoneticism must be accepted. Thus our own able representative in this branch, Prof. Cyrus Thomas, announced in 1882, in his Study of the MS. Troano,[[202]] that several of the day and month characters are, beyond doubt, occasionally phonetic.
Prof. Förstemann, of Dresden, whose work on the Dresden Codex has appeared quite recently, announces his conclusion that the Maya script is essentially ideographic;[[203]] but immediately adds that the numerous small figures attached to the main sign are to be considered phonetic, and no matter in what local relation they may stand to this sign, they are to be regarded either as prefixes or suffixes of the word. He does not attempt to work out their possible meaning, but, as he says, leaves that to the future.
Almost identical is the conclusion of Dr. Schellhas, whose essay on the Dresden Codex[[204]] is a most meritorious study. His final decision is in these words: “The Maya writing is ideographic in principle, and probably avails itself, in order to complete its ideographic hieroglyphs, of a number of fixed phonetic signs.”
Fig. 1.—The Maya Hieroglyph of the Firmament.
Some of these signs have been so carefully scrutinized that their phonetic value may be considered to have been determined with reasonable certainty. An interesting example is shown in Fig. 1, for the analysis of which we are indebted to Dr. Schellhas. The quadrilateral figure at the top represents the firmament. One of the squares into which it is divided portrays the sky in the day time, the other, the starry sky at night. Beneath each are white and black objects, signifying the clouds, from which falling rain is indicated by long zigzag lines. Between the clouds on the left of the figure is the well-known ideogram of the sun, on the right that of the moon. In the Maya language the sun is called kin, the moon u, and these figures are found elsewhere, not indicating these celestial bodies, but merely the phonetic values, the one of the syllable kin, the other of the letter u. The two signs given in Landa’s alphabet for the letter u are really one, separated in transcription, and a variant of the figure for the moon with the wavy line beneath it. The word u in Maya is the possessive adjective of the third person, and as such is employed in conjugating verbs, the Maya verbal being really a possessive.
A very common terminal syllable in Maya is il. It is called by grammarians “the determinative ending,” and is employed to indicate the genitive and ablative relations. Dr. Schellhas considers that this is represented by the signs affixed to the main hieroglyphs shown on Fig. 2.[[205]]
Fig. 2.—Maya Phonetic Terminals.