Tzotzil Written in Maya
Tzotzil Written in Maya
Note: This is a work in progress and just a place holder for jotting my thoughts down.
Disclaimer: This should not be viewed as being a legitimate source of information, and just as something fun (and I do find it fun, 😊 ). As well as I am getting older, and my hardware is fairly outdated, and the programmers are a joke. So expect a lot of this to be the mere musings of a madman.
I will be updating this, eh, as much as I can. Anyway, let's do this thing.
I have had this idea of writing Tzotzil (as it's the only Mayan dialect I know well enough) with the Mayan characters, and the following are the rules that I am attempting to adhere to.
Basics
- Abide as much as possible with known Mayan rules and knowledge of their writing.
- Standardize and simplify the characters as much as possible as if they have continual use into a college setting, internet chatroom setting, written novels, mathematical texts, technical documentation, or children passing notes in grade school.
- If the need arises to create a character, use only what is known.
(And I've lost my train of thought for the moment. Ok, at least I got this part started).
What I'm working on at the moment is writing down the lyrics to Vayijel's "Kux Kux".
Top: Is a fancier writing and closer to the original Mayan.
Middle: Is a more simplistic shorthand which I am attempting to further simplify the codices written forms.
Bottom: Is a transliteration of the characters used.
Non Modified Characters
a, li, ku, to, la, e, me, na.
Modified Sounds of Known Mayan Characters (That follow Mayan rules).
- vu <= huun (Huun is the Yucatec word for paper, which is vun in Tzotzil).
- s <= u (u is the third person pronoun in Yucatec, and since there are several characters for the sound u, I repurposed one of those characters for s, which is the third person pronoun in Tzotzil).
Modified Characters of Known Mayan Characters (That do not follow Mayan rules).
- xu <= nuuk (I have found a 'xu' character in my "The New Catalog of Maya Nieroglyphs Vol. 2", but haven't implemented it as of yet).
- Since ku is spelled twice, I added an extra tail onto the character xu to reduplicate it across both ku characters.
- k'o <= o embedded with the letter k'i.
The final word "svulanot", is spelled "s vulan[a] to" with "s" and "to" as affixes separated by a space to the verb vulan[a], but this may change once I start making it possible to write these characters much smaller (as should be for written novels, text books, etc).
(Ok, I've spent what little brain power I've had...Man, I hope I can remember this...I really really enjoy this kind of thinking, heh).
(Also, if ya'll have any questions, just ask. Maybe it will help this aging mind to concentrate a bit better...Anything is possible, 🤣 ).
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Ok, I wanted to get this uploaded before my brain stops thinking about it. I wanted to show...erm...the path that I take to create/re-write the Mayan characters in a simplified script. You'll see three titles: Stone (What was most often carved into stone), Codex (What was more predominately used in their books), and Mine (Which are the variants that I'm creating).
I'll label these by their rows. So 1 will be the top row (and will include the codex form on what should be row 2), then row 2, 3, and 4.
- You'll note that the Codex form doesn't look like Mine, as the Codex form would be too similar to other characters of Mine. The last two characters with Mine and with the Stone forms show how I came up with the design.
- There's probably no mystery how I designed Mine, as the Codex form is pretty much a copy of it.
- Again, there's probably no mystery how I designed Mine here, as well.
- If you look at the affix (3rd character from the left), I took the circular part of the bottom, and only went up one side, then I used only two of the lines that span the entire width of the character rather than 1/3 to 1/4th the width as in the Stone variant.
And that's my brain power for today.