Day 5:
So today i learned a bit more since it was the weekend. Now, as anyone may or may not have noticed, Maaya T'aan generally lacks the use of gender. Especially in personal pronouns and possessive adjectives. Gender isn't really THAT important in grammatical consideration, but i decided to learn a few things about gender anyway just in case I see or hear anything with it (Plus i found out some cool stuff worth mentioning). I learned that in Maaya T'aan, there are three genders. They are masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Now like in most languages, there are words that already obviously state the gender alone. Here are some of those words in Yucatec Mayan.
Xiibpal/Xibpal=Boy
Xiib/Xib=man/male
Uinik=man
Iicham =Husband
Tancelem=Teenage Boy
Ch'up=Woman
Atan=Wife
When the gender is not already determined like the ones above, the can also be determined using the prefixes "
J" for males and "
X" for females. An intresting thing is that there is actually a reason why these 2 letters were chosen to represent genders in Modern Yucatec Mayan. Now if your a glyph student like me you might already know what I'm about to get at.
In pre-colonial times, "
Aj" and "
Ix" were used to determine gender, thus today the first letters were just taken off. Now
Aj and
Ix are still used today rarely (usually for religious purposes, Mayan or Christan) or for Mayan names today such as:
Aj Na Pot Xiu
Aj Xupan Nauat
Aj Kin Chilam Balam
Ix Chel
Ix Kan le Ox
Ix titibe
I don't know the exact meaning of most of these, so if anyone knows, it would be really cool if you could do some research and comment. However i do know that "
Chel/Cheel" means rainbow so
Ix Chel means "She of the Rainbow". I also know
Ix Chel was the name of the classical Mayan moon goddess and is used today to represent the Virgin Mary. Not a whole lot of mayans are named traditionally today anyway, but they also use play names(later). Now "
Aj" and "
Ix" are sometimes used modernly in other (holy, sacred) things like:
Aj k'in=A priest, now reffering to the prist of the Cruzoob of Quintana Roo(He of the Sun)
Aj tepalo'ob=The ruling ones, one of the dieties called upon in shaman rituals.
Aj kan titzilo'ob=The ones of the four corners of the world, another set of dieties.
K'in also means day or sun.
Now lets talk about the word "
Men". As noun it means "Maker" and as a verb it means "To make". It is usually used to describe occupations. Lets see some.
H men xanab=Male Shoe maker
H men tsʼaak =Male Medicine maker/Pharmacist.
X men xanab=Female shoe maker
X men ts'aak=Female Medicine maker/Pharmacist.
(
Xanab=Shoe)
(
Ts'aak=Medicine)
Now how i typed "medicine maker" above actually isn't the common way it is usually said. Only use that for clarification if necessary. Usually just "
H men or
X men" is understood as a shaman or a medicine maker. Kinda weird isn't it?
Any way remember when i mentioned play names? In Mayya T'aan, play names is said
"Baxal K'aaba'o'ob". They are usually alternatives to Aj and Ix and are more than often related to animals... Just that was kinda funny
. Speaking of kinda funny things, one way to indicate the male gender of animals, all you have to do is stick the word "Penis" in front of it. Lets have some examples and learn some new words...
Ton/Toon=Penis
Ton pek'=Male dog
Uakax=Bull
Ton Uakax=Male bull
You are still litteraly saying "Penis __Animal__"
. As for female animals, it is just assumed. Some Mayans use the word
Kep or
Keep for penis as well. Now this is not the only way to indicate the gender of animals, and is actually the less common one. It can also be determined by using the actualy words male or female in front of the animal being described. For Example:
Xibil pek'=Male dog
Ch'upul pek'=Female dog
Now that had me thinking "Hmmm, but isn't Xiib the word for man and Ch'up the word for woman?" Well then I found out about turning nouns into adjectives.
Turns out, many adjectives in Yucatec are formed from nouns by taking a vowel which agrees with the last vowel in the noun and adding it to the ending of the word along with "
L". For example:
Xib/Xiib(Man)=Xibil/Xiibil(Female)[as seen above]
Ch'up(femlae)=Ch'upul(female) [as seen above]
Kaab/Kab(earth)=Kaabal(Low, short) [In comparison to the sky]
Book (Smell)=Bookol(smelly)
Ka'an(sky)=Ka'anal(High, tall) In comparison to the ground]
pet(circle)=Petel(round)
This is also were we get the K'aaba' for the infamous Mayan deity "
Kukulkan". With this information alone we can pull apart and decipher his name
.
Kuk=Feather
Kukul=Feathered
Kan=Snake, serpent
If your a fan of mythology like me you probably already the that Kukulkan meant feathered serpent but now we actually know why. Isn't that amazing?!?!?!
Alright, even tough i learned more than just that today, i'm going to wrap up this post with one last thing. Very often you will see words that end in the suffix "
-Tsil" and "
-Bil".
They basically suggest a deep respect towars the person or object modified by them, such as:
Yuum(father)=Yuumtsil(Lord)
Mama(mom)=Mamatsil(Respectfull mother)
Colel(woman)=Colelbil(lady)
Utsil also means beauty
Yuumtzil and
Colebil are often used by modern day
H meno'ob when talking about religion. I'm sorry i lied, one last thing since it goes with the whole gender thing
.
Today some towns have x infront of them. Here are some Spanish names but in Mayan.
Nicolasa=
X NicoVictoria=
X BicaEmilia=
X milaHowever the "H" in front of male names is much less common, even rare. One example is
Manuel=
H uelOther words are used for respect today too like
Don and
Doña. Also
Mam is used in the same sense
as
Doña, but
Doña is often is used for non-indigenous women and
Mam for Mayan born females.
Sometimes you will even see
Xch'upal, for some weird reason. Almost like Someone really want's to confirm that the person they are describing is a girl. Finally that's all for today.
[flag=]cak[/flag]Xuul.Jach yuum bo'otik, Tak uláak' k'in
[flag=]cak[/flag]