| Taachili | u tzicic | u | yum | uinic. |
| Generally | obeys | his | father, | a man. |
As shown in this last example, the genitive relation is indicated by the possessive pronoun, as it sometimes was in English, “John, his book;” but the Maya is “his book John,” u huun Juan.
Another method which is used for indicating the genitive and ablative relations is the termination il. This is called “the determinative ending,” and denotes whose is the object named, or of what. It is occasionally varied to al and el, to correspond to the last preceding vowel, but this “vocalic echo” is not common in Maya. While it denotes use, it does not convey the idea of ownership. Thus, u cħeen in yum, my father’s well, means the well that belongs to my father; but cħenel in yum, my father’s well, means the well from which he obtains water, but in which he has no proprietorship. Material used is indicated by this ending, as xanil na, a house of straw (xan, straw, na, house).
Compound words are frequent, but except occasional syncope, the members of the compound undergo no change. There is little resembling the incapsulation (emboitement) that one sees in most American languages. Thus, midnight, chumucakab, is merely a union of chumuc, middle, and akab, night; dawn, ahalcab, is ahal, to awaken, cab, the world.
While from the above brief sketch it will be seen that the Maya is free from many of the difficulties which present themselves in most American tongues, it is by no means devoid of others.
In its phonetics, it possesses six elements which to the Spaniards were new. They are represented by the signs:
| cħ, | k, | pp, | tħ, | tz, | ɔ. |
Of these the cħ resembles dch, pronounced forcibly; the ɔ is as dz; the pp is a forcible double p; and in the tħ the two letters are to be pronounced separately and forcibly. There remains the k which is the most difficult of all. It is a sort of palato-guttural, the only one in the language, and its sound can only be acquired by long practice.
The particles are very numerous, and make up the life of the language. By them are expressed the relations of space and time, and all the finer shades of meaning. Probably no one not to the manor born could render correctly their full force. Buenaventura, in his Grammar, enumerates sixteen different significations of the particle il.[35-1]
The elliptical and obscure style adopted by most native writers, partly from ignorance of the art of composition, partly because they imitated the mystery in expression affected by their priests, forms a serious obstacle even to those fairly acquainted with the current language. Moreover, the older manuscripts contain both words and forms unfamiliar to a cultivated Yucatecan of to-day.